What Business Are You In?
Saturday January 29 – March 26

Curated by Helena Reckitt
Curatorial Consultant, Sheep
Opening Reception February 4, 7 - 9 pm
(Free to ATLart[05] patrons)

Christian Philipp Müller Artist's Talk (Free)
Monday, January 31, 5 pm
Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University

Carey Young Artist's Talk (Free)
Wednesday, February 16, 7 pm

CAA Reception
Thursday, February 17, 5:30 - 7 pm (CAA members)
Irene Moon will perform My Queen and I during the reception

What Business Are You In? web gallery
Creative Loafing review
Atlanta Journal-Constitution review

An exhibition of national and internationally known artists who insert themselves into institutional structures and/or mimic the language and practices of business and academia. Includes video, installation, photography, and live performance.

Michael Aurbach (Nashville, TN), Alex Bag (New York, NY), Andrea Fraser (New York, NY), Jason Irwin (New York, NY), Gunilla Klingberg (Stockholm, Sweden), Lucy Kimbell (London, England), Irene Moon (Lexington, KY), Christian Philipp Müller (New York, NY and Frankfurt, Germany), Adrian Piper (USA), John Salvest (Jonesboro, AR), Carey Young (London, England). To learn more about the artists, visit their websites

Artists’ relationships with the corporate and academic worlds are complex and often contradictory. Far from the myth of the romantic outsider, most artists depend on the support of institutions and corporations, much as they did on the aristocracy or church in the past. Artists engage in self-promotion and branding, produce multiplies and outsource the production of work.

A number of artists immerse themselves in business life to revitalize the idea of what art is and might be. Some artists adopt mimicry and masquerade in order to explore corporate culture ‘from within’. Others take an anthropological approach to the cultures of the university and the corporation.

For some artists, the frustration with a day job that kept them out of the studio stimulated work about office life. For others, the experience of becoming a professional art teacher prompted artwork about their ambivalent relationship to authority.

Unlike earlier conceptual artists, whose tactics developed in tandem with - and were often absorbed by - the mass media, many of these artists are not strictly oppositional. Instead, by highlighting the co-dependence of individuals and organizations they explore the moral ambiguities of our ideologically impure times.

What Business Are You In? presents artists from Britain, Germany, Sweden and the United States working with photography, sculpture, video, performance, and installation. Playful and quizzical, rather than overtly didactic, they explore the slippery definitions of art, artist, and entrepreneur.

This exhibit is funded in part by the College Art Association, the British Council, and International Artists Studio Program in Stockholm.

Artist websites
Michael Aurbach - www.vanderbilt.edu/AnS/finearts/aurbach
Lucy Kimbell - www.lucykimbell.com
Gunilla Klingberg - www.gunillaklingberg.com
Irene Moon - www.begoniasociety.org
Christian Philipp Müller - www.minettabrook.org
Adrian Piper - www.adrianpiper.com
John Salvest - www.johnsalvest.com
Carey Young - www.careyyoung.com

Saturday April 16 – June 4
2005 Atlanta Biennial
Curated by Helena Reckitt

Artists' Reception April 16, 7 - 9 pm
   6 - 7 pm Artist led gallery tour with Barbara Campbell, Terri Jones,    Dona    Lief, Christopher McNulty, Matthew Weddington and    curator Helena Reckitt
   9 - 10 pm Music by the Glasses

Wednesday, June 1, 6:30 - 8 pm Artist led gallery tour with Benita   Carr, Santiago De Paoli, Cody VanderKaay and curator Helena   Reckitt

2005 Atlanta Biennial web gallery

The 2005 Atlanta Biennial features work by sixteen artists from five southern states. Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Tennessee are represented by the artists Barbara Campbell (Greensboro, NC), Benita Carr (Atlanta, GA), Santiago De Paoli (Atlanta, GA), Stephanie Dotson (Athens, GA ), Jennifer Drummond (Farmington, GA), Ben Fain (Atlanta, GA), Mirtha Ferrer (Atlanta, GA), Sally Heller (New Orleans, LA), Terri Jones (Memphis, TN), Dona Lief (New Orleans, LA), Lester Julian Merriweather (Memphis, TN), Christopher McNulty (Auburn, AL), Amy Pleasant )Birmingham, AL), Jane Timberlake (Birmingham, AL), Cody VanderKaay (Athens, GA), Matthew Weddington (Lexington, Kentucky)

Curator Helena Reckitt conducted extensive studio visits in order to identify the most vital work from among more than 250 regional artists’ submissions. As Reckitt explains, “The Contemporary is one of the few venues in Atlanta committed to presenting innovative work, if it looked like an artist was working at a level of formal or conceptual experimentation, I set up a studio visit.”

In addition to several respected local figures, the exhibition features emerging artists - including some still in graduate school - and those with established reputations who are not part of the Atlanta visual arts circuit. While a number of artists mine the potential of traditional media like painting, sculpture, and photography, many work across conventional boundaries, incorporating a wide array of materials and approaches in their work.

“Of course the show reflects my tastes,” notes Reckitt. “I’m interested in conceptually-oriented work, especially if it has a sense of wit or humor. My background in feminism makes me sympathetic to work which explores the broad area of ‘the feminine.’ I am suspicious of grandiose statements in art and am drawn to a delicate aesthetic. That said, I also enjoy artwork that provokes a strong, visceral response.”

Alan Sondheim initiated the Atlanta Biennial in 1984 as a tongue-in-cheek response to the Whitney’s influential survey (which, noticeably, did not include a single artist from the South in 2004). For 2005, the selection criteria 2005 Atlanta Biennial were broadened from artists in and around Atlanta to encompass those working throughout the Southeast. The Biennial will return to an Atlanta focus in 2007. While the exhibition makes no claims for, nor attempts to find a southern aesthetic, it does aim to celebrate the vitality and sophistication of artists who call the region home.

Atlanta Contemporary Art Center will take the opportunity of the opening of the 2005 Atlanta Biennial to recognize the Fulton County Commissioners and Arts Council for the invaluable support given to the Contemporary and for the important role they play in the Atlanta art community.

Saturday June 18 – August 13
Summer Solos 2005
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Katherine Mitchell The Krems Suite, Labyrinths and Related Works
Caroline Lathan-Stiefel Whorl
     Funded by Creative Capital
Mark Roeder Triangular Solid with Circular Inserts (Multiple Cracks, Possible Explanations)
Artists' Reception June 18, 7 - 9 pm
   Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Wednesday June 29, 6:30 pm
   Katherine Mitchell in Conversation with Maria Artemis, in    conjunction with ACA 100.

Solo projects by three artists – Katherine Mitchell, an established Atlanta artist, Caroline Lathan-Stiefel, a former Atlantan who now lives in Montreal, Canada, and Mark Roeder, an emerging artist from Los Angeles who has not exhibited in Atlanta before. All three explore aspects of the modernist legacy in their work, and share an interest in architectural and spatial metaphors.

Katherine Mitchell is a respected Atlanta-based painter who has exhibited her work since the early 1970’s. The exhibition will include a selection of work by Mitchell from the past decade.

After graduating from the Atlanta College of Art in the late 60’s Mitchell studied at the Tyler School of Art in Rome and earned an MFA from Georgia State in 1977. She has received many awards, grants and commissions. Most recently she was invited by the Galerie StadtPark, Krems, Austria to participate in their 2005-2006 residency program. Her work has been featured in more than 20 solo and 100 group exhibitions in museums and galleries including The Brooks Museum, Memphis, Tennessee, The High Museum, Atlanta, Georgia, Hunter Museum, Chattanooga Tennessee, Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Work by Katherine Mitchell is in the collection of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Georgia, The Georgia Museum of Art and The Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah Georgia among others. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Art Papers and New American Paintings. Katherine Mitchell teaches drawing and painting at Emory University. She is represented in Atlanta by Kiang Gallery.

Caroline Lathan-Stiefel is originally from Atlanta and currently lives in Montreal, Canada. Her new work for the Contemporary is a room-sized installation. Consisting of multiple, connected forms made of fabric, pipe cleaners, yarn, pins, thread, and wire, the immersive installation covers the ceiling, walls, and part of the floor of the gallery room. The fabric is either sewn or held together by sewing pins. The environment combines childlike three-dimensional sketches of houses and people with more abstract sections that echo microscopic imagery and aerial photography of cities.

Integral to the work is the idea of sprawl, as in the drive to take up space coupled with makeshift development. Because the systems of heterogeneous parts making up the piece have "run amok," the installation aims to spoof and transform seemingly coherent architectural, technological, and organic systems. Forms in the installation vaguely refer to interior and exterior architecture, domestic objects, plant and cell structures, plumbing, and marine biology. Lathan-Stiefel’s sculptural installations are often in dialogue with her drawings and possess a pictorial quality. While a pictorial quality is present throughout the new installation, the viewer cannot take in the whole piece with one look. Instead, multiple areas of focus are present with many opportunities for viewing "hidden" scenes.

Caroline Lathan-Stiefl studied at Brown University before earning her MFA from the Maine College of Art. Represented in Atlanta by Sandler Hudson, she has had solo shows at the gallery as well as the Westbrook Gallery at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has participated in group shows at FE Gallery, Pittsburg, Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York, New Jersey State Museum, The Morris Museum and the Lamar Dodd School of Art. In 2003 Lathan-Stiefel received the New Jersey State Council on the Art’s Sculpture Fellowship. Her work is in the collection of The Hunterdon Museum, Morris Museum, Newark Museum, and the Noyes Museum. Her work will be included spring 2006 in an exhibition at Galerie Articule in Montreal entitled "Immersive" in conjuction with a new show of work by Carolee Schneemann. Lathan Stiefel was awarded a Creative Capitol Foundation 2005 grant.

Mark Roeder is an emerging artist based in Los Angeles. His work deals with the influences and traces of minimalist and conceptual art. Roeder's new piece responds to Dan Graham’s Pavilion Influenced by Moon Windows which is currently owned by the Contemporary.

Roeder received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles CA, in Photography in 2000. In 2001 he had his first solo show at Low Gallery in LA. Roeder has participated in a number of national and international group exhibitions including: Art Needs an Operation, 2004, Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York NY, The Last of Blood and Guts Brigade, 2004, sixteen:one gallery, Santa Monica CA, Cruel Intentions, 2004, Sandroni Rey, Venice CA, When the Periphery Turns Center and the Center Turns Periphery, 1st Prague Biennial, National Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic, Unreal Estate Opportunities, 2003, PKM Gallery, Seoul, Korea, London Is Balling, 2002, The Bart Wells Institute, London, England, and The Fifth International, New York NY. In 2001 he curated The Soul Returns to the Body at Postartum, Long Beach CA. Richard Hawkins selected Roeder as one of his “Top Ten” of 2000 for Artforum International, and Bruce Hainley highlighted him as one of the “Best of 2001” for the same publication. His work has been included in several catalogues and been reviewed in Frieze and the Los Angeles Times. This will be his first exhibition in the Southeast.

Saturday September 10 – October 29
Red Beans and Rice: Asian Artists in the New South
Press and patrons’ preview Friday, Sept 9, 5 - 7 pm (by invitation)
Artists' Reception Saturday, Sept 10, 7 - 9 pm
   Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Curated by Kóan-Jeff Baysa and Craig Bunting

View the web gallery

The American South has struggled with the ideals of equality throughout its controversial history. The Civil Rights era and desegregation of the 1960’s began the era of the “New South”. Yet even today there are pockets of resistance, places where even though the law says that all people are equal, some are more equal than others.

Red Beans and Rice brings together an under-recognized group of artists profoundly influenced by their experiences in the Southern states. The exhibition dissects themes including cultural engagement, dual citizenship, Christian, American, and Asian ideals and stereotypes. Some of these artists were born in the South and have deep roots in the region. For others it has become their home through adoption and absorption, but their sentiments about the South are often in conflict with the traditions and cultures they grew up with. As the process of Americanization begins, these artists reexamine, redefine, and integrate a new vision of home. For many, the longing for distant homelands might never pass, with fantasies of home distorted through the processes of memory and myth making.

The show will include installation art, photography, fiber art, digital video & still imagery, painting, drawing and sculpture.

Artists participating include:
Yun Bai
Ying Kit Chan
J. Jaia Chen
Arthur Liou
Kazuko Matsumoto
ON/Megumi Akiyoshi
Jiha Moon
Osamu James Nakagawa
Lordy Rodriguez
Jan Ru-Wan
Prince Varughese Thomas
Edie Tsong
Bo Zhang

Saturday November 12, 2005 – January 7, 2006
Cindy Loehr and Rachel Lowther: Rough Magic and Dark Lullaby
Curated by Helena Reckitt
Cecelia Kane: Hand-to-Hand, a Project for the Round Gallery
Artists' Reception Nov 12, 7 - 9 pm
   Artists' Talk 6 - 7 pm
Cecelia Kane Artists' Talk & Performance, Nov 19, 4 pm
VIEW THE WEB GALLERY

The two-person show by Cindy Loehr and Rachel Lowther highlights artists who are gaining international attention for their installations and sculptural tableaux. Cecelia Kane is an Atlanta based visual and performance artist who easily traverses personal and political ground in her work. All three artists share an interest narrative and storytelling, making pieces that are emotionally resonant and viscerally charged. Loehr, Lowther, and Kane have also made work in collaboration with other people, often incorporating sound into their installations.

Cindy Loehr is currently based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She recently completed a two year Core Residency at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston. Her show will include several recent pieces, including Bluebird Burden, a 3-channel audio installation that evokes despair and loneliness. Loehr wrote the lyrics and vocalist Carlos Lama composed and sang the melody - three versions for the three birds. In Pillowheads, a two-channel audio sculpture that relates to the piece, towering pillow-head figures sing a lullaby about the dangers and seduction of comfort.

Rachel Lowther is based in the Berlin to Brooklyn. Her sculptures and performances combine apocalyptic visions with nostalgia for the 1970’s. As curator and Participant Inc. founder, Lia Gangitano, puts it, Lowther “mixes elements such as hard and soft, virility and delicacy, ‘secret poison [and] out and out carnage’. Recent works deploy such contradictions to examine masculinity and related violence. Creating a space that is poised--neither coming together nor falling apart--her work reiterates, from the present moment, the formative impact of Cold War warnings on a generation now grappling with deja vu.”

Since the beginning of the Iraq War in March 2003, Cecelia Kane has been painting a news story almost daily on white stuffed gloves. These gloves depict the headline, the date the story appeared and the relentless violence, daily killings and occasional positive or human-interest news from Iraq as featured in the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper. She has painted all the characters as clowns whether they are victims or perpetrators. She makes no other comment except what the viewer may surmise from the sheer, accumulating numbers of them.

"I use gloves, because fingers are used to count and this is a counting, time-based installation piece of unfolding events. Hands also act for good or evil, construction or destruction, help or hurt. Lined up chronologically on a wall, the stuffed hands with red tips begin to resemble little bodies each with a story to tell." Cecelia Kane