For Art’s Sake - Strength in numbers

Gallery association hosts citywide event

Spend enough time on Atlanta’s art scene and a litany of complaints become as inevitable as death and taxes: too few arts patrons, no real arts center, too little corporate support.

Though the organizers of the citywide ATLart04 event don’t claim to alleviate these problems, they take some significant steps toward addressing them.

ATLart04 is the brainchild of Buckhead gallery owner Timothy Tew, who has been a fixture on the Atlanta art scene since 1987.

Last February, Tew joined with the 29-member Atlanta Gallery Association to figure out a way to pool resources and forge connections between the city’s often fragmented collection of art spaces.

What they came up with was a three-week long citywide event beginning Jan. 14 comprised of gallery openings, special exhibitions, an art auction and parties aimed at promoting the visual arts in Atlanta. On Jan. 16 and Jan. 23, a crazy quilt of Atlanta galleries will stage simultaneous openings in a blitzkrieg of cocktail patter and paint.

AGA and Tew even managed to get corporate sponsorship from Delta Air Lines, Coca-Cola and Art & Antiques magazine. But perhaps more significantly, says Tew, “people really put their egos aside” to create an across-the-board alliance.

And what could be weirder — and potentially more interesting — than an event in which alternative art spaces featuring work by unwashed art-school hipsters rub elbows — virtually, that is — with the fancy-pants galleries where those same hipsters work days jobs uncrating and installing $85,000 oil paintings? What crazy synergy or drunken brawls could arise when these two worlds collide?

Though cynics may see ATLart04 as reeking of self-promotion and publicity stunt, the event has its merits. For one thing, it addresses the lack of any geographic centrality to the arts scene. By bringing so many diverse galleries together, from the high-end Lowe Gallery to new blood like the West End’s Elevation Gallery, the event creates a “virtual community” and a psychological strength in numbers.

Then there’s the added benefit of galleries working together and learning a thing or two from each other. Some established art spaces could stand to take risks that might actually trigger a synapse-fire in their Range Roverite audiences. And God knows some of the “what’s a price list?” indies could learn a thing or two about mailing lists and marketing.

As is to be expected in an enterprise this gargantuan, there is great work on exhibit, some genuine experimentation and even some risk-taking going down in ATLart04. But there is also a lot of ho-hum soy filler and unimaginative programming. So what’s worth checking out in the midst of this ATLextravaganza?

As usual, one-man band artist/gallery owner/curator Brian Holcombe has risen to the occasion, using the opportunity to launch an inspired experimental project. For the Jan. 24 “Art Night/Fourth Ward” event at his Saltworks Gallery, Holcombe has invited several artists to go on a kind of conceptual treasure hunt and make a collaborative installation for the gallery space out of nothing but building materials like light bulbs, tar paper and insulation foam.

It’s that occasionally wacky, youthful spirit that unites some of the more promising shows in ATLart04. They include up-and-coming artists Eric Mack (who plans to lay some funkiness on the house with a DJ), Paul Galloway and Melissa Herrington at Fay Gold Gallery Jan. 16, or the seven emerging artists featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, including Sheila Pree, whose latest photographic project centers on black Atlanta suburbanites, Jan. 28.

Several cleverly conceived thematic shows are also rocking the ATL. Under Different Circumstances at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, opening Jan. 17, features eight artists culled from AGA member galleries creating site-specific installations. On Jan. 23, The Spruill Gallery devotes a show to the prim and proper art of the silhouette with bigwigs like Kara Walker, as well as a host of rising Atlanta talents doing their own conceptual spin on the cut-and-paste form.

Also working that Southern angle is the Agnes Scott Dalton Gallery show Tender Landscape, featuring a compelling roster of 28 artists treating the regional terra firma, opening Jan. 23.

ATLart will feature work from some noteworthy national artists as well. Canada’s Kim Ouellette (recently relocated to Atlanta) will show her quirky works, formed from vintage wool blankets and thread, at the Jan. 16 grand opening of Marcia Wood Gallery’s Castleberry Hill digs, a relocation that has lit an adventurous fire in the gallery’s belly. Former-Atlantan David Ivie is one of the gems in Sandler-Hudson’s stable and will show charming new works on paper and diminutive sculptural pieces there Jan. 16. Spelman College Museum of Fine Art will feature internationally-happening artist iona rozeal brown’s investigation of African-American influence on Japanese culture in a3: black on both sides Jan. 23.

For a complete listing of ATLart04 events, visit www.ATLart.com.

Felicia.feaster@creativeloafing.com