Saturday night April 3rd, 2004

We started with the SO ATLANTA show and it was just that, SO SO. Not to say that there was no good work to be found, but for someone who so often criticizes ungainly group shows, The Beaster has birthed a monster. So beware cuz it is without teeth and it might gum you! There was little curatorial vision evident in this show plagued by redundancies and non-sequiturs. Were we meant to see the city reflected in the work of contemporary Atlanta artists or was this merely a chance to re-do the ATL Biennial more to the curators’ tastes?

First, more shit we did not like....like who thought that J. Ivcevich and Ron Witherspoon....wait, we need to make the vagina dentata mini movie right now. Ah, another classic!!! We feel better now. So back to why Ivcevich & Witherspoon’s work shouldn’t be in the same room together ever!! EVER!!! Stylized black ass crack as signifier of hipness [on the one hand] and a project which is so raw and tender in the portrayal of african american realities [on the other] make no sense side by side. Ron is trying to undo macho mythic bullshit about the black male by photographing fathers with their children in a tender & protective way. J. on the other hand goes for cool-am-I points with his flattened, Tang-colored painting. We do like J.’s other work, but this one falls flatter than the fat he is depicting. Speaking of ass crack. We saw a black man lying on the road near Eyedrum with his bare ass exposed to the world and a kind policewoman trying to help him. Closer to Sheila Turner’s photographs from “outside her window” and Ron’s world of heartfelt reality than to J.’s though the view was similar.

We guess that ATL is both of these things, shallow posing and committed artmaking based in heartfelt social realities, but there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the curatorial placement of the show. No comment held within for us to uncover by juxtapositions.

Make a lion face now!

A wonderful sub-show could have been curated of Martha Whittington’s hollow wax branch, Meshakai Wolf’s roadkill photographs, Theresa Bramlette Reeves' watercolor drawings of suburban mcmansions, and Julie Stuart’s Gwinnett Development Viewmaster, all about environmental concerns and the struggles of growth. Another sub-show would include Ron Jude, Russell Carnes, Ron Witherspoon and Sheila Turner (minus the bad wall writing), all focused on sustained collective portraits of the city’s inhabitants.

But instead there was a higgledy-piggledly mass explosion of artlike product on the walls of the contemporary jostling for space and attention.

In the midst of all this, the stuff we did like....First, we loved seeing the Contemporary full of a good crowd of interested viewers and finding out from the director that the center is on more sound financial footing after a long period of uncertainty.

Second, these are the artists of our hit parade... We liked Ron Jude with his huge, cutting prints of businessman monoliths, all suit and neck- tell it like it is, boyo!! He shares ratsalad top honors with our boy, Meshakai Wolf- who by the way was working the style like no other man present in his pink polyester slacks. Meshakai’s pieces were beautiful mementi mori of the unspoken animal denizens of our city, their brutally ended lives caught in a moment of perfection in death. Taken from the creatures’ eye view, these are intimate caring portraits rather than a domineering chronicle or Serrano-style gore fest. This is no surprise given Meshakai’s sensitivity as a documentary film maker.

Martha Whittington’s branch piece was refreshing and beautiful, seeming like a memorial or deathmask for a tree. Within a landscape where fallen branches & smashed animals alike are often treated as inconveniences to be brushed away, collateral damage of our urban lives, we are reminded by Wolf and Whittington that these things are also more.

We journeyed onward to more animals and some other stuff: ever cool Saltworks. The front gallery installation reminded us of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. But instead of scale models of the mountain, these were scale models of the Glenn Iris Sol LeWitt project. Who are these bloody aliens and what do they want? Or worse, is Sol Lewitt really an alien? We have suspected such ever since reading his mathematical progressions writing. How else do you explain the forest of grey 4x4’s mere feet from their cinderblock originals? Minimalism based solely in formal progressions and the allure of industrial materials should have ended in the sixties, give it up!!! It is time to move on! Try throwing yourself over in a box!

Moving on, more animals....pandas and bunnies and puppies- o my! Ann-Marie Manker made a lot of work about animals caught in boxes. Overall the work was finely crafted and the strongest pieces were the large panel paintings in the smaller side gallery wherein the instruments of the animals' confinement were themselves confined to separate geometric shapes enclosed within the panels. Other pieces fell short of these larger works by a good margin and devolved into contrived allusions to preschool building block games. In these pieces, the predicament of real animals caught in human scenarios was less present. Instead they felt like Hallmark puzzles from the vivisection lab. Hurry and collect them all with your factory farmed happy meals!!! Still, the large works were interesting and beautiful.

Zane Lewis made exemplary use of the Project Room, aka utility closet, with his itty bitty pink lemonade installation. We know we ragged on minimalism just a minute ago but this was laugh out loud funny. A tiny pink phallus of fluid with a thundering holy holy church sound track in the pitch black darkness. A very fitting Easter treat or rite of spring! Just so it is clear, we like minimalism with a sense of humor. Get it? good.

We tried to go to Eyedrum to see the Breast Milk show but only saw ass crack instead. Eyedrum was closed already. We also were able to help some nice white people out of the ghetto who were looking for Eyedrum too. One of our editors is occasionally portrayed by her pubescent students as a campfire lassie and believe you me, we are both just as helpful! :)

So on to our final stop of the evening, The Ballroom Studios where Judy Rushin had a show of paintings in the grand Ralph Gilbert acolyte tradition. These were slightly more interesting than the norm. In common with other students of Ralph Gilbert, Rushin shares a strong focus on the human figure, an interest in images of childhood and a mutated old master palette. In this case a Roccoco redux palette. However her unexpected use of childlike drawings and figures alongside more academic figures and renderings was playful and lent a depth of meaning and visual enjoyment to the pieces. One painting which stood out especially for both of our Ratsalad Ace Reporters was And the World Comes Tumbling Down. It was more polished, the colors were cleaner, and the setting and psychological predicament of the subject were clearer. We FEEL the peril of this child and her playful enjoyment simultaneously.

We also had a little time and look-see with two of Ballroom Studios' resident artists: wonderful Chris Herren and later wonderful Daniel Pettrow. Chris makes lovely little bird paintings the same color as Julie’s sweater. Isn’t that nice? We thought so. Didn’t we tell you that this was a new voice for art criticism? We have the look, color coordinated for your visual pleasure & with the lightning truth for your heart and soul.

ART ART ART We fell short of the six openings we planned to attend. ART ART ART but hey, people talk, wine gets drunk, as does rum, & we did the best we could for you. If you want more than this, go see it yourself!! GET OUT THERE CULTURE BUCCANEER! HAVE SOME FUN!!!!