Wednesday, 2 Jul 2008 | 6:01 AM

Stuart Horodner with sledgehammer at the Contemporary. You're next, Donald Judd! Photo: CNN

Speaking of stepping down, the word is out now that Kay Kallos is leaving the Contemporary effective pretty much immediately. Her last day will be Monday, July 7th and she'll be in Dallas that same week.

Here's the Contemporary's statement, (phrased as a positive rather than a negative in good PR style):

Stuart Horodner named Artistic Director and Stacie Lindner announced Managing Director of the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, celebrating 35 years as Atlanta’s premier contemporary art venue, announces a new management team; Stuart Horodner and Stacie Lindner. Horodner, currently the Contemporary’s curator, and Lindner, gallery manager, will expand their roles to include fundraising, board and external relations, facilities and financial management and program and personnel oversight.

Executive Director, Kay Kallos will be relocating to Dallas in early July for personal reasons. She has been working closely with both Horodner and Lindner during her tenure and she is confident there will be a seamless transition to maintain the stability currently enjoyed by the organization. Kallos notes, “The strength of the Contemporary, witnessed by a 200% increase in attendance as well as significant new donor support in the last year, will be maintained by this team. I am confident that Stuart and Stacie are ready for new challenges at the Contemporary and I am pleased that they will take up the leadership of this outstanding organization and I wish them many years of great success.”

The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s Board President Baxter Jones states, “Stuart and Stacie will be a very strong team. They complement each other's skills effectively and have worked well as a part of the management structure at the Contemporary over the last year. Programs and exhibitions have witnessed record attendance and new program areas have been implemented to further the mission of the institution. I’m pleased about the prospect of working with them in their expanded roles.”

I always thought that Kay had a great sense of integrating the local with the national. You could not doubt her devotion to growing the local scene, and I'll miss that because I think the institution's relationship to the local community of artists (many of whom feel alienated from the institution) will be of paramount importance in how the Contemporary defines itself.

Does this mean Horodner is going back to being at the Contemporary full time? I'm watching the blog for answers.

Also, whether this new management situation is permanent remains to be seen. Apparently, DiverseWorks in Houston, among others, has been making the dual management structure work for a while. Meanwhile, I'm also waiting to see what direction Stacie and Stuart take the institution. Likely we'll continue to see a steady stream of Portlanders coming through, artwork and rain-soaked umbrellas in tow. But other programming? Let's hear it, y'all.

Monday, 30 Jun 2008 | 7:06 PM

Title Unknown, Salvador Diaz

It's tough all over for newspapers these days, and at the AJC the hemorrhaging just won't stop. Managing editor Hank Klibanoff just stepped down, and according to a memo to his staff, he's got nothing else lined up. He apparently thought that doing nothing was preferable to keeping his day job at the paper.

But that's not so bad. What's worse is that the paper that made national news for cutting its book review editor is getting ready to make further cuts in the newsroom. That's the rumor from a very reliable little bird, and yes arts staff once again feels vulnerable.

There's no actionable intelligence that I know of yet, but anyone who cares about the arts dialog in Atlanta should ready their poison pens for Angela Tuck if the shit really goes down in the arts pages. Actually, there's no need for vitriol right off the bat; Ms. Tuck takes phone calls and actually returns emails personally.

I'm not one of those people that thinks that the existence of newspapers is synonymous with all rational thought. In fact, I'm convinced that something much more subtle, flexible, timely, and accurate will replace it soon enough. And that something is a digital something. But until it comes along, the papers are what we've got.

Yes, I know I write for the competition. But a diminution of the arts dialog leaves everyone worse off.

Friday, 27 Jun 2008 | 11:13 PM

I haven't heard much from Dearraindrop lately, but four or five years ago, that quintet of Virginia-based artists rode the crest of the wave of so-called "bedroom shows" that took over the art world for a minute. Generally the idea seemed to be to gather up as much crap as you could, cram it anarchically into a single room, and then sit back and watch the sensory overload. And everyone from Cory Arcangel to Michael Velliquette to Assume Vivid Astro Focus was doing it. The artistic impulses at work seemed to be (in descending order of importance) obsessive compulsion, democratic idealism, contagious generosity, and rank sadism. As a friend of mine said at the time about one of these shows, "It looks like a homeless man, a crazy old lady, and a teenager all moved in together and became roommates."

That trend faded as quickly as it emerged, but the strategies of accumulation, information overload, and dross elevated to the status of art have stayed with us, if somewhat toned down from its giddy 2004 highs. Three Atlanta artists are making use of this aesthetic right now to very different effects.


The Gospel Truth #2, Danny Bruce Campbell, 2008

Allusion
Danny Bruce Campbell, the clear standout in the Hammond's House Praise Songs trio exhibition seems to willfully carry the entire weight of history on his back. In "The Gospel Truth #2," his accumulation is not the accumulation of a lifetime over years, but the accumulation of an entire race over centuries.



His encyclopedic, 2-wall installation includes: an old sewing machine, a Bible, license plates, quilts, kuba cloth, "whites only" signs, family photographs, cooking utensils, food packaging, a model ship, an American flag, and that portrait of Jesus Big Mama had hanging over the TV set.



Here, meaning is made through allusion; to a complex and rich set of intertwining histories of blacks, whites, and everyone else in the peculiar American context. The risk is that all these ready-made objects function as easily manipulated symbols, but Campbell avoids that risk through brute force of volume. It's as if historical memory itself has erupted through the walls and left us to wonder, given the millstone of our collective past, how we ever got from there to here.

More photos from Praise Songs here.


A Shrine to Nothing, Squanto, 2008

Metaphor
If Campell's installation is the eruption of history, Squanto's "A Shrine to Nothing" in MINT Gallery's Employee Picks show is the eruption of a hallucinatory psychotic break. Color is everywhere. Glitter, books, toys, religious icons, stickers, flags, all manner of paint on paper, on photographs, on collages, and just about every other surface imaginable.

There is a recurring motif of Native American-related imagery, but the motif seems to punctuate the work rather than unify it.



The work is fun, but hard to consider. How to look at Squanto's shrine to nothing after seeing Campbell's shrine to everything? The differences feel generational to me. The kind of breezy flippancy that my generation pioneered was institutionalized by the next generation, but this sort of lurid pop cultural anarchy already feels slightly dated. (By the way, I have no idea of Squanto's age; I'm talking about the work, not the artists.)



Here, metaphor makes meaning, such as there is. The collected dust and dross of culture become a metaphor for the leveling effects of kitsch. Everything is reduced to the importance of a disposable McDonald's figurine. This could be an interesting explosion of the language of kitsch, but I did not get the impression that the artist was entirely in control of this exploration. I'm looking forward to giving her work a second try; rumor has it she's coming back to MINT at Thanksgiving.

More photos from Employee Picks here. (Side note: a first-hand experience of Joy Prasavath's lyrical "Up on the Roof" alone is worth the trip to MINT.)


Junk in My Trunk, (detail), Emily Maxwell, 2008

Synecdoche
More successful was one of Emily Maxwell's works in Welcome Home at the new Art House Gallery in Castleberry Hill where Romo used to be. Maxwell is a young artist (a SCAD student?) who's still finding her voice, but her work is unfailingly honest and what my old painting teacher used to call "felt through."



"Junk in My Trunk" is Maxwell's careful, catalogued excavation of her own personal space (or at least what appears to be). Unlike both Squanto and Campbell, the work is deliberate, confessional, and unmannered. Arranged in a near-grid, Maxwell includes personal notes, cigarette cartons, sunglasses, advertising, CD cases, snapshots, ticket stubs, and a tinny radio playing a barely-audible song.



Each item is available for inspection and consideration, almost like an anthropological dig on her own life. This is synecdoche; each item stands in for a whole story, and it was fascinating to imagine the entire life that was built up around these objects. Emily Maxwell is quite good at this kind of unflinching self-examination; and I expect her to go far.

More photos from Welcome Home to come.

Previous page (newer posts)

Next page (older posts)

The last-minute push to finish the house

I've been a little quiet here, but not for lack of doing things. School begins next week, and about a month ago I realized that if I didn't finish the never ending house remodel now, it would never get done.
Read more...

Responses to a response to MODA

We got drama. A number of responses have emerged to my savaging of the latest MODA show – a richly deserved savaging, by the way. I'm hoping that more turn up over time.
Read more...

Carrie Mae Weems and NBAF cover story

Other work and projects have me completely jammed up at the moment. But my over-ambitiousness has paid off in a cover story on NBAF for the Loaf showing up on newsstands sometime today.
Read more...