Visual Arts - Come one, come all

Ah the thematic group show. She’s a slippery miss, hard to get a hold on but as tantalizing to curators as Mt. Everest is to mountaineers. The bold ones prevail, but a badly broken and bloody majority wind up dropping from her craggy face and plummeting into a great chasm of curators past.

Imagine Nation is one such endeavor, a vaguely formulated exhibition of 11 artists working within the loosely defined scope of the “imagination.” The show appears at ArtSpot and has been curated by Annika Connor. The great thing about ArtSpot, but also its fatal flaw, is its egalitarian sense that it is open to all comers. Its motto could be: “Give us an idea, we’ll give you a wall.”

A large number of the artists in Imagine Nation make works of such a small and humble dimension they often suggest postcards. Ben Foch’s paintings do more than simply refer to postcards; they are replicas of them. Foch creates detailed paintings of the Manhattan skyline and Vegas strip commemorated on postcards, crafting something playfully homemade and unique out of the mass-produced. The work references the idiosyncratic, warping lens of nostalgia, too, which can craft a city of the imagination out of an actual place.

That diminutive postcard-size is in keeping with a show that often defines imagination as travel. There is travel into the interior self, as in Miranda Zimmer’s psychedelic, acid tab Rorschach paintings or Teodor Dumitrescu’s melancholic image “Farewell Oneira” of a man peering up a staircase as if in pursuit of his own fleeing unconscious. There are also indications of actual travel, as in curator Connor’s paintings of herself, which have a touristy snapshot aesthetic, or Kate Bae’s image of travelers inside an airplane who are (to confuse things further) also engaging in interior travel by wearing headphones. Bae’s are some of the strongest images in the show, moving from Elizabeth Peyton-style devotionals to pretty dreamboat boys in “A certain boy” and “Succulent,” to larger, more abstract works that are beautifully rendered.

There is good work, there is bad work. But ultimately, who knows with any certainty whether Connor ever had an overriding idea for Imagine Nation or if she only imagined she did.

Imagine Nation runs through Aug. 29 at ArtSpot, 704 McGruder St., Studio N. Mon.-Fri. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. 404-659-0088, ext. 30. www.tubeartspot.com.