Best Art Exhibit

Artist SARAH HOBBS explored human neuroses in Perspectives of the Unexpected, a February show at Chastain Arts Center that also featured Atlanta artist Susie Winton. Hobbs’ large-scale chromogenic prints focused on modern anxieties ranging from the everyday, such as the homesickness that comes with frequent travel, to OCD issues rivaling “Girls’” Hannah Horvath on a bad day. Hobbs chose homey suburban spaces to distort and humanize with clever installations, which she then photographed. In “Avoidance,” swaths of aluminum foil covered the windows and door of a neutral entryway. Post-It notes filled with tiny handwriting loomed over mismatched vintage floral-and-white bedding in “(untitled) insomnia.” Hundreds of vibrantly colored and black dreamcatchers overwhelmed the otherwise spartan bedroom of “untitled (voluntary mental facility).” Hobbs’ work questioned the idea of “normal” and how our inner states contrast with the curated masks we show the world. Her work drilled past social stigmas and expectations to portray day-to-day fears, look at what’s really going on inside, and make the viewer feel less alone. www.sarahhobbs.net. less...

A subconscious tendency emerged among a handful of artists, gallerists, and curators this year for producing immersive art exhibits. In particular, shows at Get This! and Beep Beep galleries, and another by Dashboard Co-op in a vacant Summerhill bungalow, looked to installations to transform familiar spaces into moody set pieces. Ben Roosevelt’s The Blue Flame, a physical manifestation of a dream Roosevelt had about Iggy Pop, Samuel Coleridge, Dante, and conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, converted Get This! Gallery into a faux dive bar reminiscent of the one in “Twin Peaks,” complete with wood paneling and live karaoke. At Beep Beep Gallery, Jason Kofke and Chris Chambers collaborated on The Ends, an ode to the analog, the transience of technology, and the fear mongering that pervades our collective modern psyche. An ’80s-era Pontiac Fiero was wedged into the small gallery space and surrounded with digital ephemera (old MacBooks, a video yearbook) and references to 1986’s Challenger shuttle disaster. Dashboard Co-op curated Nathan Sharratt’s Come. Inside Me., a compelling performance-based installation about family, home, sense memory, and the circle of life. In all three cases, the risk-taking paid off to create some of the year’s most spectacular and transportive experiences. less...

It hasn’t always been easy for the ATLANTA PHOTOGRAPHY GROUP GALLERY, tucked away inside an obscure downstairs nook of the Tula art complex. But the space really distinguished itself this year by breaking out of its usual roster of juried art shows and exhibitions featuring regional photographers. In an art scene that often seemed oblivious to world events, two exhibitions reminded Atlantans of the despair beyond American borders. Unembedded: Independent Photojournalism in Iraq featured the work of independent photojournalists in Iraq, while the genocide in Democratic Republic of the Congo: Forgotten War highlighted the world-class talents of such humanist photojournalists as James Nachtwey. less...