“Y’all in the cut,” said my Lyft driver as we drove down a dark forest road in Atlanta, Georgia, to arrive at Hawkins Headquarters, “HQ” in short, just minutes from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The space run by founder and director Alexander Hawkins is on the top floor of the former Hopkins Motel, a property dating back to the 1960s that feels aligned with my own encounters with airport lodges. Rumors of an abandoned strip club in the basement of the building circulate as I greet familiar faces in the crowd that lean precariously against the metal railing. Renovations expanded one viewing room into two, connected by a slim corridor that hides away office space and a bathroom. HQ’s brightly lit walls are an invitation into the space, now showcasing the group exhibition Weight.
Curated by Hawkins himself, the floors of Weight contain the scattering of dried and dead flowers, a collection stemming from the community; the flowers were donated to the space over the course of two years. Park-plucked bouquets from friends lie next to preserved florals from break-ups and relationship losses between strangers. As a flower gifter myself, I understand the urge to give bouquets to those I love for celebrating, grieving, and gathering.
The works exhibited in Weight mirror the accumulated flowers through motifs found in each artwork. Davion Alston’s Untitled (to Ahmaud) (2021) encapsulates petals across a fragmented wall that holds an assortment of still-life photographs. The juxtaposition of the dried petals against the photographs of a living vase of roses and their silhouettes against a home captures the passing of time in days, weeks, years. Adjacent to Alston’s wall is Rosa Duffy’s Contact Zone (2024) that sits like a throne in the middle of the first gallery. The black and white archival images printed across the piece bleed dimensionally outward and are reminiscent of Rorschach ink blots. As the neon yellow letter stencils rests precariously on them, the grit of the industrial matches the intimacy of what the sculpture prides itself in being: an open book, the labor of preserving the archival, and the revolution of code in our everyday language.
As I circulate around the group show, the conversation between Atlanta artists is broadened with those from Canada, such as Luca Soldovieri and Graham Krenz, and those hailing from Tennessee, including David Onri Anderson and Cody Tumblin. Krenz’s Raspberry Dad (2023) is the first sight that greets me on the renovated side of HQ—a hollow-eyed corpse in mid-conversation made out of wood and soap with raspberry bushes shielding the body—I am instantly aware of how the living are memorialized. Krenz’s portrait of his father strives to preserve a human in the present. As I witness the loss of life in the flowers strewn across the floor, it’s a harsh reality to be reminded of: that aging can’t be stopped.
The painted glow of a photorealist picnic in the dark of night draws me into Phillip Warner Patton’s Untitled (Honeydew) (2024). I am pushed away by the immensity of certain works and then pulled in by those that are more intimate, such as Jackson Markovic’s lens-based object presentations in Wallet 03 (Rainbow) (2024) and Wallet 04 (JOHN DEER) (2024). The draping of a photo gallery in the form of a wallet’s plastic walls spans everything from photobooth snapshots with the artist’s partners, former and current, to tiny prints of home scenes. Its simplicity is earnest, its proximity in relatability powerful.
As new life is breathed into HQ, Weight carries the momentary joys and long-lasting burdens of time through the conduit of a flower, a seed, a petal, a stem, a thorn.
Weight at Hawkins Headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia is on view through November 24, 2024.
