Visual arts events in Atlanta are usually dominated by blockbusters like this summer’s Monet exhibit at the High Museum or by the numerous galleries that continue raise Atlanta’s profile as a city that supports world-class art. However, one of the most fascinating venues for seeing contemporary art in Atlanta is the Global Health Odyssey Museum at the CDC.

That’s right, there is an excellent contemporary art museum at the Centers for Disease Control here in Atlanta — and the current exhibition at the GHOM is definitely worth seeing.

“Consequential Matters” is an exhibition of four Atlanta-based artists doing work on the consequences of urbanization, technology, consumption, indulgence and globalization.

Peter Essick has documented the exponential growth of “e-waste” over the past two decades that has overwhelmed our abilities to safely handle the trash, producing a cottage industry of toxic recycling efforts in developing countries. Essick’s work hits the primary goal of environmental photojournalism by visually documenting and exposing social issues that would otherwise be buried and obfuscated by statistical data about high tech trash.

Carl DiSalvo and Jonathan Lukens’ “Smog is Democratic” speaks directly to the relationship between scientific representations and artistic representations of information. DiSalvo and Lukens present large quasi-scientific, but clearly more expressive, prints and a video of data visualizations of particulate counts in Atlanta. Where Essick’s photos evoke empathy for third-world laborers willing to work with deadly chemicals in order to eke out a living by handling first-world e-waste, DiSalvo and Lukens provoke a discussion of how information on the environment is expressed and interpreted.

The final local artist in the exhibition is Mark Wentzel, who also has work at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. For the CDC exhibition, Wentzel has created a piece called “XLounge x 3” in which he has taken a classic 1956 Eames lounge chair and ottoman and added stuffing to match society’s current level of overconsumption. Wentzel’s work suggests questions about how manufacturers have altered their product designs to fit the current supersizing of society, but the piece hits a poignant visceral note as the once stylish over-stuffed chair has become both tragic and hilarious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UV6dTM4nH68

“Fear Kills Pursuit” at Beep Beep through July 5.  Beep Beep also has a great studio visit video with Meko.

By Steve Aishman, Jason Parker
From our ongoing collaboration with the AJC

Marcia R. Cohen is pretty easy to spot at major Atlanta art openings: she’s the artist who always wears black and white, right down to her checkered eyeglass frames.

This week you can find her at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, which opens a new exhibit by the artist, a cornerstone of Atlanta’s contemporary art scene for more than 30 years.

Cohen’s signature style and gregarious demeanor make it easy to overlook an extensive resume of international exhibitions, grants, commissions, fellowships, and lectures. Her latest body of work, “Sight Specific,” is supported by the museum’s Working Artist Project (WAP), designed to provide Atlanta artists with financial support, a studio assistant, a solo exhibition and a catalog.

For “Sight Specific,” Cohen - a veteran of the Atlanta College of Art faculty who now teaches at SCAD-Atlanta - puts color theory directly into practice, continuing her exploration of visual perception of color in both the natural world and in culture. Her pieces highlight how the semiotics of color, usually taken for granted, actually have a huge effect on how humans interact with their world. Colors express coded information such as safety (yellow for caution, red for danger), social expectations (green for natural, purple for royalty, etc.), product branding (Tiffany Blue, UPS brown, etc.) and a host of other iconographies.

Cohen’s work brings the discussion of color theory to life by effectively inviting the viewer to see and discuss how colors both relate to and form human perception on a fundamental level.

“ACP is pleased to announce that Le Flash will be making its return to the streets of Castleberry this year on Friday, October 2nd.”

I visited Le Flash last October and look forward to the 2009 version, minus the rain!

track mp3 download

Erica Jamison of MINT Gallery, a founding organization of Gather Atlanta, says, “We saw a lack of communication among Atlanta’s arts organizations, for what could be myriad reasons - geographic distance, differences in philosophy, etc. - and figured, why not get all of these groups in one room? One of our main goals is to make Atlanta a more accessible and creative place and we see Gather as a way to expand our mission in a really incredible way.”

Gather Atlanta will feature a public discussion panel moderated by Cinque Hicks, with guests including artist Matt Haffner, Atlanta Celebrates Photography’s Michael David Murphy, and Louise Shaw, former Executive Director of Nexus, among others. Approximately two dozen galleries, cooperatives, and creative collectives will also have information on hand to help the public connect with Atlanta’s art community.
When: Saturday, June 6, 6-9 p.m.
Where: Eyedrum Art and Music Gallery, 290 Marin Luther King Jr. Drive SE, Atlanta, GA 30312
Cost: Free!

We spoke with the High’s Curator of Photography Julian Cox about the show.

Covenant House Georgia provides shelter, food, and services to homeless, runaway, and at risk youth ages 16-21. Ticket prices are $45/per person or $1,000 for a table of ten. Sponsorships from $2,500 to $10,000 are still available. Contact Krystal Mangum at 404-589-0163 or kmangum@covenanthouse.org for more information.

I spoke to the Youth Photography Project at their Haggedorn Foundation Gallery show back in March.

It finally struck me what to say about Allen Cooley’s “Normal” at Gallery Stokes.

Semantics. It all boiled down to semantics and the absurdity of language. And quite frankly I’ve been waiting to write something as challenging as this review for a while. See, in February 2009, I had my thesis show entitled *My black (American) Life* at City of Ink not too far away from Gallery Stokes in the Castleberry Hill district. I had been trying to look for a way to describe what it feels like to be black and marginalized from definitive black culture. I found that my photographs were reflections of the other weird people of color that I chose to be around as friends and colleagues.

As I began my thesis paper, I researched about questions of whiteness as mainstream cultural influences, DuBois’s notion of double consciousness and Foucault’s arguments of power and knowledge. All of these things began to matter as I tried to make my black ghetto gothic story sound sensational as a stand against the masses. Yes, there are strange black people. We exist but we have challenged the former notion of black culture by being black and claiming our individual freedom to *be*.

In the case of Allen Cooley, his search was similar but photographically different from mine. Throughout our time in graduate school, we’ve exchanged words and have tried to figure out a more concrete ideal of blackness and its inhabitants.

From the difference between our two bodies of work, I’d have to say we’ve found one level of relation that boils down to this: our blackness is defined in our own personal recorded experiences and how we relate to the historical pride of being black. Even though we come from similar upbringings, the cultural choices that we’ve made have shaped our individual experiences. I chose a counterculture life and he chose to be a success of the middle class. We share a tradition of being black in America through political struggles and mainstream successes however when it breaks down to the individual, as shown in Mr. Cooley’s portraits, their stories are only interesting when we become engaged with that individual.

If we were to look at just one of Mr. Cooley’s environmental portraits, we’d definitely notice the subject first. We look into their eyes, we pay attention to their clothes and finally we make a connection with the subject through the details in their environment. We become connected with his subjects more than ingest an overall summary of the African-American experience instead we have a representation of an African-American that has experienced life and chosen one that fits them. We then begin to notice that they aren’t the monolithic black male or female often found in white mainstream media. Now, we are dealing with a person just you, me and your next door neighbor.

They are somebody, they are someone.

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