This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
“Facing Y’all: Inclusion Through the Lens,” at Spruill Gallery through Oct. 29, is a sweet-tempered arrangement of photographs documenting Southern contradictions and tensions while hoping to induce a spirit of renewed harmony implicit in its folksy title.
This title unintentionally embodies the problem of language in the South, a region where there is an ever-increasing number of languages spoken. The photographs, from the equally idealistic-sounding Do Good Fund collection, are an aesthetically diverse documentation of the utterly unexpected diversity of today’s American South.
Curator Shannon Morris has adroitly juxtaposed Southerners who would in real life most likely be uncomfortable sitting in the same room with one another.
The interplay of particularly strong photography and social analytics make this a show worth contemplating, even if its tone of optimism may end up feeling cloying in our deeply cynical times.
Credit: Courtesy of Sheila Pree Bright
Credit: Courtesy of Sheila Pree Bright
Morris has engaged in a variety of subtle pieces of artistic deck-stacking, most notably by creating a diptych with Mike Smith’s “Sullivan County, TN (boy/dirt bike)” and Titus Brooks Heagins’ “Marco and Irma at La Vaquita.”
The composition of diagonal lines and the similar color palettes of the two works harmonize even though the individuals in the two photographs quite possibly would not.
In an adjacent gallery, Morris has very deliberately placed Peyton Fulford’s “Hayden and Conor,” a portrait of two trans people, in the central location over the fireplace, a spot often reserved for distinguished family members in certain Southern households.
The show contains work by several names familiar to Atlanta audiences, including Sheila Pree Bright, Jerry Siegel, Jill Frank, Carl Martin, Pinky Bass and Michael Stipe, best known as the former R.E.M. frontman.
Credit: Courtesy of Anna Gay Leavitt
Credit: Courtesy of Anna Gay Leavitt
The show’s high points, however, come from things like the juxtaposition of the assertive portraiture of African American photographer Arielle Gray with Anna Gay Leavitt’s self-portrait. The latter has her in a demure, undramatic pose found in Northern European Romantic paintings from Caspar David Friedrich to Vilhelm Hammershøi.
Virgina Derryberry’s “Private Domain,” at Marietta Cobb Museum of Art through Dec. 17, uses compositions borrowed from what used to be called the Old Masters to transpose themes from Greco-Roman mythology into moments in the lives of persons from Derryberry’s own surroundings. “The Three Graces” are multiethnic in the world Derryberry inhabits and distinctly down to earth. And what looks superficially like classical technique turns out to be another example of contemporary complexity — light and shadows come from all directions, and nothing is as clearly defined as it seems.
The myth of the descent to the underworld is not found in Derryberry’s show, but it occurs throughout Thaddeus Radell’s “That Further Shore,” at Thomas Deans Fine Art through Nov. 13, where thickly layered semi-abstract figuration evokes such classic moments as Dante and Virgil on the banks of the Acheron.
Credit: Courtesy of Adam Gabriel Winnie
Credit: Courtesy of Adam Gabriel Winnie
The theme of metaphoric and literal descent into the depths of the Earth or the psyche is the subject of Adam Gabriel Winnie’s “Chthonic Passage,” at Whitespec through Nov. 25. The depths of interior darkness are explored in such auditory and visual works as a six-hour sound composition and the charcoal and pastel drawing “Katabasis,” the title of which denotes an initiatory descent.
In Sonya Yong James’ Whitespace show “The Pleasure Was All Mine,” also through Nov. 25 , the great themes of psychic complexity, light and darkness, and spooky season themes such as “Witching Hour” twine together like the woven fabrics themselves. James’ work reaches new heights that deserve closer analysis than I am capable of giving them. As in Winnie’s show in Whitespec, the visual art is accompanied by a sound piece, in this case by Craig Dongoski.
Eddie Farr’s “Longleaf,” in Shedspace through Nov. 25, suspends luminescent sculptures from the abstract branches of a symbolic longleaf pine. They will be removed one by one over the length of the exhibition.
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Jerry Cullum’s reviews and essays have appeared in Art Papers magazine, Raw Vision, Art in America, ARTnews, International Review of African American Art and many other popular and scholarly journals. In 2020, he was awarded the Rabkin Prize for his outstanding contribution to arts journalism.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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