“Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away: Ten Women Artists Respond to Secular Themes from the Renaissance,” on view at {Poem 88} through February 13, is anything but a lighthearted encomium to love and flowers. After all, Botticelli’s Primavera, often presented to artists as a source of inspiration, is such a difficult work of symbolism that art … Continued
Morgan Alexander’s exhibition “…between the sea and the sky,” at Berry College’s Moon Gallery in Rome, Georgia, through February 4, is almost stubbornly determined to be misinterpreted. Lacking explanatory labels, its transience is easily viewed as permanence. A perfect cube of dandelion seeds held together only by compression and gravity looks as enduring as marble. … Continued
Although conceived independently and presented as separate solo exhibitions, when taken together two shows at Kai Lin Art through January 30 reveal much about the intellectual and emotional trajectory of global civilization—East, West, and points between. The fact that neither artist necessarily set out to accomplish this goal makes the confluence truly seredipitous. Michael Elliston/Elliston … Continued
In “Love Me Till My Heart Stops,” at Marcia Wood Midtown through October 10, Joe Peragine continues the tightrope walk that a Lawrence Ferlinghetti poem describes as every poet or artist’s performance trick “constantly risking absurdity.” Once again, Peragine performs the trick magnificently, all the more so considering that he has added self-taught taxidermy to … Continued
For your summer reading pleasure, BURNAWAY brings you Just Like Suicide, a novel by artist Mery Lynn McCorkle, set in the Los Angeles art world. She writes from experience, having lived for years in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when it still was the art frontier, and then LA; she now resides in Rome, Georgia. She describes the book as … Continued
The exhibition “Pause,” at the Zuckerman Museum of Art at Kennesaw State University through June 6, takes a multidisciplinary look at some of the most fundamental of human refusals to accept the order of nature. Change is inevitable; growth and decay are built into the natural condition. Human beings, however, have sought to stop time … Continued
A show with a title like Richard Sexton’s “Creole World,” at Whitespace through November 22, sounds like it should consist of documentary photographs revealing the texture of daily life in the various creolized cultures of the Americas. When, instead, it turns out to be art photography shaped by architectural and cultural interests, the why and … Continued
John E. Ramspott’s “Not My Enemy: Photographs from Pakistan, Cambodia, and East Ukraine,” at Stan McCollum Gallery through November 22, illustrates a possible way of looking at information regarding often-stereotyped cultures. It also illustrates, more than most shows, how profoundly an exhibition is shaped by choices regarding the quantity and the format of the prints … Continued
In 2010, I wrote an essay titled “How to Write Art Criticism in 2010” (I had thought it was titled “How to Write Art Criticism in the 21st Century” but apparently I was more modest in my goals). Since then, I have very rarely lived up to my own prescriptive standards of taking into account … Continued
