Saltworks News

Shinique Smith: TORCH SONGS

2008-04-07T12:12:00.004-04:00

for partridges and wines, 2007-08, bricks & objects found in New Orleans/ Katrina aftermath,
fabric, binding & clothing. Scale variable.

Shinique Smith: TORCH SONGS

Curated by Isolde Brielmaier

Exhibition runs April 19 - May 31, 2008

ATLANTA – SALTWORKS is pleased to present the exhibition Shinique Smith: Torch Songs, curated by Isolde Brielmaier. In her first solo exhibition in the southeast, New York City-based artist Shinique Smith presents a body of work that explores her own romantic visions of love, legend and the objects that are imbued with these memories–the spaces where the memory of romantic events is retained and where imaginings of what ‘might’ve been’ linger. Featuring Smith’s painting, sculpture and drawings, Torch Songs, presents a multi-media display of individual works that reveal the triumphs and failures of love, torch song lyrics and the mythologies that inspire and build one’s character. With elements of Abstract Expressionism, urban graffiti and Japanese calligraphy evident in her work, Smith’s bold gestures communicate her unique vision whilst creating a distinctive equilibrium between painting and sculpture.

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Shinique Smith now lives and works in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions at Moti Hasson Gallery, Franklin Art Works and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and has participated in group shows at Yvon Lambert and the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America and Art Forum among other publications and is represented in several private and public collections including the Rubell Family Collection and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Isolde Brielmaier is a curator, professor, writer and consultant. Brielmaier holds a PhD from Columbia University and is based in New York City. www.isoldeb.com

Green & Pleasant Land

2008-02-22T10:15:00.002-05:00

Green and Pleasant Land
New works by Conor McGrady
Exhibition runs February 23 to April 5, 2008 Opening reception, Saturday, Feb 23 7-9pm (Artist talk at 6:30pm)

Saltworks is pleased to present Green and Pleasant Land, a solo exhibition of new works by Conor McGrady. Executed primarily in black and white, McGrady’s paintings take on an ominous tone with their depictions of uniformed officers enforcing the rule of law or menacingly still landscapes and city streets. Beautiful in their elegant use of line, the works have a stark quality as the contrast between purity and darkness pervades the work.
Born and raised in Castlewellan, Northern Ireland, McGrady has experienced first-hand the sense of civil unrest and social tension evidenced in his work. His works are an examination of the role of authority in contemporary society and how power manifests itself in individuals, nation states and through their public and social policies. In his most recent works, McGrady incorporates images of animals that embody the most predatorial aspects of human nature, such as vultures, symbolizing ritual and death; and packs of wolves embodying group mentality and implicit violence.
The title of the exhibition, derived from the poet William Blake’s Jerusalem, expresses the irony of the lengths to which societies will go in order to preserve the integrity of their idealized community. While the poem was written as an indictment of the power structure of Blake’s time, it has since been co-opted by conservative elements in Britain to create a sense of national mythology. In such cases, the abuses of power imposed by nation states are buried beneath the romanticized façade that characterizes the creation of societies built on utopian ideals.
Conor McGrady received his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1998. In 2000 and 2002 McGrady was awarded a Community Arts Assistance Program Grant from the City of Chicago. In 2002 he was selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2003 he completed a five-month residency in the Woolworth Building, New York, through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Studio Program. His work was recently included in the Spectral Evidence exhibition at Rotunda Gallery, Brooklyn in 2007. McGrady currently lives and works in New York.

No Peach Heaven: MuRungDowan

2008-01-02T22:56:00.000-05:00

New works by Jiha Moon

Exhibition runs January 12 – February 16, 2008
Opening reception Saturday, January 12 at 7pm
Artist talk begins at 6:30pm

SALTWORKS is very pleased to announce the debut solo exhibition of new works by Atlanta-based artist Jiha Moon entitled No Peach Heaven: MuRungDowan. Moon, a native of South Korea, draws upon Korean mythology and folklore to create intricate landscapes that are richly enigmatic and playfully clever. Conceptually, the work is heavily influenced by Moon’s own experiences of reconciling the divergent philosophies of Eastern and Western cultures.

Stuart Horodner, Curator at The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, makes the following observations on Moon’s works in his exhibition essay Finding No Peach Heaven: “Working on rare handmade Hanji papers from her native Korea not only offers Moon a tremendous surface richness to expand upon (using improvisational techniques from the Surrealist playbook), but also provides a traditional terra firma on which to build her utterly contemporary point of view. Her inclusive vision embraces Tang Dynasty painting and collectable kitsch, Disney’s classic animations and DeKooning’s notion of “the slipping glimpse.” Coursing through most of Moon’s work, are thin lassoes of line, wrapping objects in playful bondage and forming trajectories of time and desire.

While visiting the artist’s studio in Atlanta this fall, she told me the story of MuRungDowon, in which a fisherman follows the blossoming peach flowers along a creek until he finds himself at the entrance to a cave. Going further inside, he comes upon a utopia where there is no war and great happiness. Peach trees abound and people in silk robes care for him. Eventually, he is blindfolded and returned to his own land, where he tells everyone about his experiences. Many expeditions are undertaken to find the cave again, but they all fail, and the magical Shangri-La becomes a legend.

Her new works feature bold compositions painted on centrally located fan shapes. This is a new formal device in Moon’s arsenal, and she has stretched the fan from its classic silhouette to a more horizontal proportion, recalling the film screen or picture window. Each scalloped portal sits on a monochrome field of rice paper, whose repeated patterns are made more optically elaborate by the addition of lines rendering natural phenomena with coloring book clarity. This figure-ground relationship provides Moon with increased opportunities for pictorial delight, as she establishes the firm edge between inside and outside only to playfully contradict or collapse it.

With a nimble wrist, loaded brush, and synthesizing spirit, Jiha Moon embarked on a comic road trip to find the creek that leads to the cave that reveals a legendary land of transcendent beauty...”

Jiha Moon was born in TaeGu, South Korea and currently lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She has exhibited widely throughout the United States, Europe and Asia in solo and group exhibitions. Moon completed two artist residencies in the summer of 2007: Art Omi in Ghent, New York and the Acadia Summer Arts Program (Kippy Kamp) in Bar Harbor, Maine. In 2008, she will complete the Program Headlands Center for the Arts Golden Foundation Fellowship residency program in Sausalito, CA. Her work has been acquired for such notable collections as the Hirshorn Museum, D.C.; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA; the Neuberger Berman Art Collection, New York, NY; the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, Singapore; and the Asia Society and Museum, New York, NY, and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. This is Moon’s first solo exhibition at SALTWORKS.

Finding_No_Peach_Heaven.doc

Jiha Moon in INTERMIX Charity Campaign

2007-12-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

Artist Jiha Moon will be the featured artist for the holiday charity campaign for INTERMIX, an apparel company with venues throughout the United States.

INTERMIX has pledged a donation of $5 from every holiday gift card - designed by Moon - to benefit Free Arts NYC, an organization benefiting children and families with educational arts and mentoring programs.

Images of Moon's works will be displayed at all 20 US locations, including the INTERMIX store at Phipps Plaza in Atlanta.

For more information, visit http://www.intermixonline.com/jump.jsp?itemID=737&itemType=CATEGORY&path=1%2C3

Jiha Moon's first solo exhibition at SALTWORKS opens on January 12, 2008.

Pulse Miami Dec 5 - 9

2007-12-01T20:56:00.000-05:00

SALTWORKS will exhibit the works of Conor McGrady and Michael Scoggins at the PULSE Art Fair in Miami from December 5 to 9.

PULSE is a leading contemporary art fair featuring artworks from emerging and established artists. The fair will take place at SoHo Studios in the Wynwood Arts District during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach.

For further information visit http://www.pulse-art.com/miami/index.htm

PULSE Miami
SoHo Studios, 2136 NW 1st Ave, Miami, FL 33127.

ART 21: Art in the Twenty-first Century

2007-09-12T06:52:00.000-04:00

Pre-view Screenings
Wednesday, Oct 10 @ 7PM - Episode 1: Romance

Friday, Oct 12 @ 7PM - Episode 3: Ecology

Free. Limited seating, RSVP at info@saltworksgallery.com

SALTWORKS will screen two episodes of Season 4 of the PBS series Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century, the acclaimed primetime national television series to focus exclusively on contemporary art and artists. Through in-depth profiles and interviews, the series will reveal the inspiration, vision and techniques behind the creative works of some of today's most accomplished contemporary artists.

Episode 1: ROMANCE. Artists Laurie Simmons, Lari Pittman, Judy Pfaff and Pierre Huyghe.

Eposide 3: ECOLOGY. Artists Ursula von Rydingsvard, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Robert Adams, Mark Dion.

View the Podcast trailer (best resolution).

View the Quicktime trailer.

View the Windows media trailer.

Lyon, FRANCE

2007-09-07T14:05:00.000-04:00

SALTWORKS will be exhibiting at its first overseas art fair from September 17 - 23. DOCKS 07 is a contemporary art fair in Lyon, FRANCE. This is the inaugural edition of DOCKS and the gallery is very pleased to be joining galleries from across Europe for this event. SALTWORKS will exhibit a solo show of new work by Michael Scoggins.

The fair coincides with the opening of the 9th Lyon Biennale of contemporary art, organized by curators Stéphanie Moisdon and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. The concept of this year's biennale is THE 00s – THE HISTORY OF A DECADETHAT HAS NOT YET BEEN NAMED. Fourty-nine curators and critics were posed the question "who in your opinion is the artist who best represents this decade?" Seventeen additional artists "devise a program, a system or a problematics intended to define the decade in progress."

Days Press Release

2007-09-07T04:30:00.001-04:00

“Much of our knowledge must always remain uncertain. The most we can know is in terms of probabilities.” Richard Feynman, Lectures on Physics.

ATLANTA – SALTWORKS is pleased to present Days, a solo exhibition of new works by Alabama-based artist Christopher McNulty, on view from September 8 – October 20, 2007. The exhibition will consist of works on paper and sculpture inspired by the empirical processes of science and mathematics.

In his second solo exhibition at SALTWORKS, Christopher McNulty continues his exploration of the limitations of knowledge through observation. Known for his labor-intensive drawings and sculptures created through repetitive minimal actions and often utilizing basic handheld tools, McNulty’s methods for this exhibition include graphite pencil, soldering iron, glue gun, and throwing darts. The works are creations of feats of physical endurance illustrating human fallibility by testing the artist’s skills under duress.

McNulty describes the origins of his current body of work featured in Days, “This past year I consulted an actuary to determine my life expectancy. Using the probable number of days that I have left to live as my starting point, I have been making works composed of over 20,000 repetitive marks in an attempt to represent the remainder of my life and comprehend my mortality. Like unconventional calendars, these drawings and sculptures both represent time spatially and function as contemporary vanitas. These works continue my earlier concerns with the vulnerability of the body, and the relationship of beauty to the imperfect and contingent. In their absurd attempt to make the invisible visible, the unknowable known, and the uncertain certain, the works also address our culture’s anxiety over the future and death.”

Christopher McNulty received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His work has been included in biennials at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, GA; Mobile Museum of Art, AL; and Columbus Museum of Art, GA