Artists exist everywhere, including in places that critics like me rarely cover. It’s a gift, then, when someone brings a glimpse of another art scene to town. That’s the case with an intergenerational exhibition featuring 12 artists based in Atlanta, curated by Daniel Fuller. The title, “The sea swept the sandcastles away. (To wake up in Atlanta!),” alludes to the constant change and development of the city that these artists are working through and against.
The most imposing piece, Antonio Darden’s “S Tenebris” (2023), barely fits in the gallery. A wooden reproduction of a truck in Darden’s studio, it suggests both a spaciousness beyond New York and the confines of stereotypically macho Southern culture. The sculpture is covered in black cloth, which in a garage might look unassuming; here it evokes a shroud.
A current of spirituality runs through the exhibition, from the ghostly profiles in Lonnie Holley’s paintings on quilts to the stained glasslike quality of Hasani Sahlehe’s acrylic abstractions. It animates two of the show’s rightful centerpieces, bronze sculptures by the Atlanta elder statesman Curtis Patterson. Their curvaceous forms interlock like rhythmic puzzle pieces.
Patterson’s titles, “Hymn to Freedom” (2019) and “Ancestral Dance” (2020), complement María Korol’s wickedly surreal paintings of animals playing music and dancing. Dianna Settles brings a welcome anarchic edge to the revelry, with a painting that freezes a performance staged by her friends on the lawn of the High Museum. The players were in costume, the musicians live, the audience seated — all that was missing was the institution’s permission.
