Ones to Watch shows ATL as a dialog of differences
August 28, 2009 at 9:45 am by Jeremy Abernathy in Visual Arts, review
LUVVY DUBBY, DRIPPY WIPPY? Dosa Kim's 'Nurturing' is just one of several works in Alan Avery Art Company's 'Ones to Watch.'
The Ones to Watch at Alan Avery Art Company makes its boldest statement up front, by pairing the works of Meg Aubrey and Dosa Kim. The former creates austere landscapes of endless manicured lawns; Aubrey lives in the suburbs and paints what she knows. The latter paints cuddly Asian-esque teddy bears. In one stroke, the room unites two artists from wildly different backgrounds.
The exhibit is gallery owner Alan Avery’s snapshot summary of what’s hot in Atlanta art today. Perhaps coincidentally, it’s also a nod to veteran art dealer Fay Gold, whose final show before closing her gallery in April was titled Four Artists to Watch. Similarly, with only four artists, Avery’s Ones to Watch each have ample space to fully articulate a moment of their career.
At 14 feet in length, Daniel Biddy’s Monomaniac, Ahab (Poor Bastard) features behemoth whales surfacing an ocean of magazine clippings and rainbow paint. Monomaniac is powerful, but Biddy seems a little too eager to fill space. His smaller works are more smartly composed. In Sacred Rites, Biddy achieves a shabby-chic kudzu garden of paper and abstract dots, while Pugilisticism features a pair of dueling Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots.
Donna Johnson’s Ride the Dragon 3 is an array of nine square panels recalling the Zen allegory of the Ten Ox-herding Pictures, interpreted as abstract paintings. Elsewhere, her Asian motifs can seem cliché, and distract from an otherwise pleasant image.
Dosa Kim’s Nurturing is an allegory of love, the cutesy kind that’s also wet and sticky, and drips into tiny pools of white aftermath. Three panels depict two cartoon silhouettes, perhaps a doe with her fawn. Despite their odd sexual innuendo, Kim’s characters retain their innocence; his animals are sugary metaphors for problems of race and identity.
And in Meg Aubrey’s Another Conversation, three identical SUVs bulge the edges of the canvas. The drivers have blocked the right-of-way for an obnoxious open-window chat. The mood is existential: This is life, for better or worse. Aubrey compares her landscapes to the beauty of the desert.
With only four bullets, the exhibition can’t afford to miss. But through a series of meaningful contrasts, in style and demographic (two men and two women, half in their 30s, half in their 40s), the Ones to Watch achieves what it set out to do: up the ante for art in Buckhead.
(See also my interview with three of the artists at BURNAWAY.ORG.)
(Art by Dosa Kim/Photo courtesy Alan Avery Art Company)
September 1st, 2009 at 9:55 am
correction:
“Monomaniac, Ahab( “poor” bastard)
thanks,
db