Nashville isn't that far away. If you can pack in 3 good gallery and museum shows it's worth the drive from Atlanta; 2 if one of those spaces is Ruby Green or Tag Gallery. Jonathan Bouknight (Atlanta), John Trobaugh (Birmingham), and Adam Davis (Claremont, CA) opened at Ruby Green earlier this month and the Atlanta contingent rolled up 5 deep and kept the owners up way past their bedtime.

In large scale C prints, Trobaugh poses male dolls in ways that distinctly subvert their intended use as just another accessory for their far more famous female counterparts. The dolls take themselves very seriously, but the photos do not. The images are always morbidly playful.



Meanwhile, Bouknight makes gender roles problematic by juxtaposing the inherent ambiguity of gender-as-performance against the ironclad specificity of the body.



Male things attempt to float free into something less determined, but are always brought down by their hairy, tattooed, earthbound bodies.



I'm also fascinated by Jonathan's obsession with sinews. These sinews--a thick braid, an exaggerated nightgown--signify by turns anchors, weights, and ropy streams of jizz. They tie all ethereal things tragically to the ground.

The photos are all hung in eccentric arrangements that imply connections and narratives. I know Jonathan sweated mightily over the exact placement of each one, but looking back I'm not convinced this added much. The images contain their own narratives, and we're smart enough to see connections between them without the artist adding formalism on top of form. I suspect simple diptych and triptych arrangements might have accomplished the same thing without the conceptual pretense. A few last-minute images had to be installed in the show to replace other damaged works. There was no time to mount these on plexi. Good thing. They were among the strongest pieces in the show in part because the artist was forced to trust them enough to just let them be.



Adam Davis is a strong conceptual artist. I assume the cost of shipping had something to do with what work was chosen because his contribution here was all relatively small stuff. Good stuff, though and it rounded out the show's third dimension. A visit to Davis's web site is worth it for a gander at his breadth and sense of intellectual adventure.



More discussion and better photos of the show are here.

I'm running out of time, so I hope this doesn't come off as a slight, but I'll let Vadis Turner's work do most of its own talking. Turner upends femaleness at Tag Art Gallery as completely as the boys at Ruby Green upend maleness. Turner's hilarious installations, sculpture, paintings, and other objects have catapulted the modern female through the looking glass.



One suspects that Turner dreams of being a crazy old cat lady some day.



Lingerie meticulously made of wax paper.



Foreground: Fabergé eggs made of birth-control pills; background right, working chandelier made of tampons



Candy boxes made from what has to be the tons of shit littering this woman's studio. Deerhead made from fast food wrappers; quilt made from lottery tickets, "While You Were Out" memo pad paper, and Dunkin' Donuts bags

I LOVE morbidly playful!!!! thanks so much for your comments. I woke up at 3am with one of the worst migraines in a long long while, so I am still a bit out of it. Thanks so much for your thoughtful words.

You, sir are morbidly playful!! Or maybe playfully morbid? Good luck with the headache.