this Category populates the Exhibitions page of the website

December 2012

Barter

Holiday Glee Market
by Samantha Marder and Neil Wyatt

The thrill of discovery. Unexpected finds — lush colors, organized chaos, and a sly sense of humor. In Barter, artists Samantha Marder and Neil Wyatt evoke the fun of an exotic market, where everything is unique and full of personality. Marder’s tiny tableaux play with place, scale, and the magic juxtaposition of imagination against reality. They enchant with the childlike question, “What if…?” Because their absurdity invites the viewer to invent narratives, Marder’s pieces are simultaneously funny, rich in meaning, and pregnant with possibility.

Whereas Wyatt’s abstract paintings take their cue from the metals, flowers and fabrics of a Middle Eastern bazaar. Wyatt is a painter’s painter, whose masterful command of his medium enables him to create a sense of mystery and joy that evades most artists. Deep bronze, copper and other gilded tones add depth and luminescence. The rich colors and complexity of his layers create a new surprise at every glimpse. The exhibition will also feature a holiday shop of affordable gifts.

December 1–29, 2012
Opening Reception:
Saturday, December 1, 6-9pm
music by Shaun England
Third Thursday Gathering:
December 13, 6-9pm

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November 2012

Welcome to Control

An Installation of Typographic Monoprints,
Mechanical Mind Control and Fiber Performance Art by Mitchel Ahern

As many people suspect, there is a pervasive international, pan-dimensional organization known as Control, responsible for cultural manipulation and management. Although the goals of the organization are kept secret, Control has established a visitor center and gift shop in East Boston at Atlantic Works Gallery. There, the public is welcome to view various visual, video and performance and textual works recently made public by the Freedom of Information Act, as well as Control devices including the Cut-Up Oracle of Control and a working Dream Machine Cone of Silence, inspired by Control agents such as Burroughs, Gysin, Oglivy, Maxwell Smart, Martha Stewart and Roger Ailes.

The artist, Mitchel Ahern, works in large-format typographic linocut monographs on fabric, which he incorporates into mechanical devices and performance, along with his self-invented musical instruments. His political/social installations have been exhibited at the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Atlantic Works, Galatea Fine Arts, and Gallery 119. He has also performed at The Knitting Factory, The Middle East, The Rat, and Exit 13.

Exhibition dates: November 1–24, 2012
Opening reception: Thursday, November 1, 6-9pm
Third Thursday reception and performances: November 15, 6-9pm

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October 2012

The Inspection House

New work by Martha McCollough and Matthew Keller

A panopticon is a circular prison with cells arranged around a central well, from which prisoners can at all times be observed. It is an apt metaphor for how we live today. We are photographed everywhere, recorded everywhere, and social media exposes the minute details of our lives and thoughts. Not only our own private lives, but also the machinations of the powerful become more transparent as information moves freely across borders and up and down hierarchies. What then? In their two-person exhibition, Martha McCollough and Matthew Keller take the panopticon as a starting point and explore how it affects our lives. With brilliant black humor, Martha McCollough’s videos and acrylic paintings explore our responses, which can run the gamut from exhibitionist euphoria to constant anxiety to outright paranoia. The constant question is how do we present ourselves, how do we choose to mask or unmask? The answer is dependent on whether we perceive surveillance as the harmless and even comforting interest of our friends as offered through social media, or as a tool of social control in the hands of repressive powers. McCollough is a two-time fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her text-based videos have recently been exhibited as part of the MIX Conference at Bath Spa University, UK, at the Void Network Film Poetry Festival in Greece, in Gone Lawn, an online magazine of experimental fiction, and in Rattapallax online magazine.

Matthew Keller’s oil paintings explore thoughts of observation and the acts of the observed. The focus is on individual perceptions relating directly to voyeurism, the changes in the activities of the watched, and the refusal to acknowledge the possibility of consequence by unknown onlookers. The goal is to not only comment on but also to preserve these feelings of alienation, inadequacy and powerlessness.

http://theinspectionhouse.org/about/

October 4 – 27, 2012
Opening Reception:
Thursday, October 4, 6–9pm, Catering by Bitter Science
Third Thursday Gathering:
October 18, 6–9pm

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September 2012

2012_9_augspurg

Diamond

new artwork by Justin Augspurg

Justin Augspurg is an artist who combines elegant painting and collage with a streetwise urban sensibility. In Diamond, his new exhibition at Atlantic Works Gallery, the diamond shape that is a unifying motif comes from the chain link fences he sees around his home in Chelsea. Augspurg is a scavenger, combining everything around him – fashion, automotive design, graffiti, store signage – into new and beautiful forms and ennobling them in the process. Because he insists on the right to appropriate, recontextualize and change what comes from the mass media, his painting is an assertion of personal and social freedom. Augspurg’s gritty new show is a diamond that could only have come out of the rough.

Exhibition dates: August 31 – September 29, 2012
Opening: Saturday, September 8, 6–9pm
Third Thursday reception: Thursday, September 20, 6–9pm

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July 2012

The Biennial Project presents

Bizarre Artist Happenings

The internationally renowned, cutting edge and East Boston based conceptual artist group, The Biennial Project, is pleased to announce the opening of their trail blazing newest show ‘Bizarre Artist Happenings’

Bizarre Artist Happenings’ will start off with a trail blazing opening reception at Atlantic Works Gallery this coming July 19th and will show until the boisterous closing reception being held on Thursday August 16th.These will be the art parties of the summer if not the decade and they are not to be missed. Partygoers are encourage to dress to impress as their ‘eclectic artist persona’. Bring out that Puchi or your leather chaps and lets all bring some of the faded glamour of the Warhol Factory to Beantown!!

We look forward to seeing you and your entire audience at our avant-garde, innovative event (which your grandchildren will surely be talking about)!!

Exhibition Dates: July 19–August 18, 2012
Opening Reception: Thursday July 19th 7–10pm
Closing Reception: Thursday August 16th 7–10pm

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June 2012

Skin

New work by Chris Spuglio and Stephanie Arnett

In SKIN, Atlantic Works veteran Chris Spuglio and newcomer Stephanie Arnett explore the types of identities we choose for ourselves through how we present ourselves to others.  Skin is our  blank human canvas indelibly marked with our life experiences.
Chris Spuglio’s new body of work explores the artistic and technical field of professional tattooing, from traditional to new school design. After a lifetime of painting on traditional surfaces, he now paints on bodies.

According to Stephanie Arnett, “As we become more accustomed to lives integrated with technology, we place more importance on finding ways of differentiating ourselves on the web. For Skin, I’ve been working with both the concept of constructing a curated digital identity as well as experimenting with new material surfaces.”

Exhibition Dates: June 8 – June 30, 2012
Opening Reception: Friday, June 8, 7-10 pm
Third Thursday Gathering: June 21, 7-10 pm

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May 2012

With a Little Help from our Friends

Work by ATLANTIC WORKS ARTISTS and Invited Guests

No artist is an island. Your ideas stimulate our ideas, and the exchange goes both ways. It is the dialog between the messages of friends, family and culture and our own internal dictates that makes art relevant. In our annual “Friends” show, we Atlantic Works artists invite friends whose input matters to us, whose work should be seen. We ask our artist friends with the most interesting ideas to contribute, to strut their stuff, to contribute to the dialog, to keep our gallery vital and fresh. We at Atlantic Works donʼt go stale. Our “Friends” show is part of the reason why.

Exhibition dates: May 5–26, 2012
Opening: Saturday, May 5, 6-9pm
Third Thursday reception: Thursday, May 17, 6-9pm
Open Studios: Saturday and Sunday, May 19-20, 12pm–6pm
Barbeque: Sunday, May 20, 4–6pm

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April 2012

Creative Couples:

artwork by 14 Boston-based artist couples

When two artists live together, what is the impact on their work? Creative Couples, an exhibit organized by Lola Baltzell, seeks to find the answer.

Of the encouragement that can take place in a creative couple, Mark Natale says, “My wife Lola Baltzell is fearless and her creativity is contagious. She inspired me to take my own photography more seriously. Now I am showing my work, which is very exciting.”

Sometimes a partner’s different background can lead a mate in a new direction. Marjorie Kaye, who will be showing with her partner George Shaw, says, “George is a finish carpenter who specializes in restoration, so he encouraged me to include more sculptural elements in my paintings.”

Or both artists may collaborate. Inspired by the writings of Carl Jung, photographer David Weinberg and painter Louise Weinberg began exploring the same house/tower that Jung built in Bollingen, each in their respective medium.

Anna Salmeron & Bo Petran
Lola Baltzell & Mark Natale
Kelly Slater & John Wilkinson
Laura Torres & Pietri Valbuena
Carol Odell & Tom Odell
Louise Weinberg & David Weinberg
Marjorie Kaye & George Shaw
Elisa Hamilton & Andrew Edman
Trish Crapo & Tom Ashley
Courtney Hadden & Michael Dowling
David Piemonte & Terry Del Percio-Piemonte
Charlene Liska & Bart Higgins
Jenny Grassl & Anton Grassl
Margot Stage & David Crane
Jennifer Amadeo-Holl & Tanwin Chang
Dominic Chavez & Silvia Lopez Chavez

Exhibition Dates: April 7 – 28, 2012
Opening Reception: April 7, 6 to 9 pm
Third Thursday Celebration: April 19, 6 to 9 pm

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March 2012

Getting There:  Terror and Desire in Uneasy Times

New work by Leah Grimaldi and Charlene Liska

What do we want?  We often seem to hover in the uncomfortable regions of knowing both too much and too little.  A fifteenth century inscription in Paris’s Cimetiere Des Innocents refers to us as “Oh rational creature/who wishes for eternal life.”  The Jesuits say we’re a “being without a reasonable reason for being.”  Hank Williams says, “I’ll never get out of this world alive.”  Little wonder then, that we’re, most of the time, more comfortable with the sweetly false sentiments of Disney’s ‘When You Wish Upon a Star”:”Fate is kind./She brings to those who love/the sweet fulfillment of/their secret longings.”

In painting and video, Charlene Liska entertains the extremes of aspiration and fear, the competing bids for our attention between pop culture’s appropriations of these and blunt reality, and the places where the differences are not so easily discernible, or possibly even meaningful.

Leah Grimaldi explores the boundary where horror and seduction meet. This is a place of terror and the sublime. Using paper cut-outs with cartoonish lines and candy colors, Grimaldi constructs imaginary organic forms.  Tiny two-dimensional flesh pieces conjoin to form weighty figures, which are both disgusted by and delight in themselves and their fluid ephemerality.

“extreme seductiveness is probably at the boundary of horror.”
-Georges Bataille

Exhibition Dates: March 9-31, 2012
Opening: Saturday, March 10, 6-9pm
Fourth Thursday: March 22, 6-9pm

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February 2012

control.release.transform.

Artwork by Atlantic Works New Members

At Atlantic Works, our new members show features three very different artists. Matthew Keller’s installation, prints and drawings are about intimate and subtle power over others, ideas of practicing restraint, thoughts of regulation of the dangers to oneself. He explores the daily give and relinquishment of power in personal communications, and the struggle to understand unknown entities.

Paintings of windows and doors have always held a special fascination for Kelly Slater. According to Slater, “Whether clearly recognizable or only merely suggestive, depictions of windows, doorways and other portals convey a sense of hopefulness and possibility–inviting us to look out onto a new vista or to cross a threshold into a different world.” In this series of abstract paintings and prints, Slater explores crossing over through the painted window and door.

In his kinetic sculptures, John Wilkinson uses common tools and materials to achieve a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Moving through space, propelled by subtle air currents often created merely by the movement of people within that space, these sculptures establish a delicate connection between the object and the viewer. This connection gives life to the mobile. And, adds John, “it is my hope that the mobile in some way returns the favor.”

Exhibition dates: February 2–26, 2012
Opening: Thursday, February 2, 6-9pm
Third Thursday Reception: Thursday, February 16, 6-9pm

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