Art Relish

Kelly Cloninger’s work for “Girl Party,” her upcoming show in whitepec at whitespace gallery, evolved from her own interpretation of feminism versus historical viewpoints. Since the rise of feminism in the 1970s, the movement’s ideas experienced several shifts and changes. When the idea of feminism first appeared, women felt compelled to liberate themselves from the objective demands of man. Bra-less, makeup-less, and high heel-less, women supporting the feminist movement gave up on what society had always considered “feminine.” Women using power tools and wearing suits became new forms of self-empowerment, but only for the sake of making the point that they could live up to the roles of men. Feminism is supposed to be about the support of femininity, so why has it so often revolved around the refusal of it?

Rejecting past actions of feminine denial, Cloninger’s body of work focuses on the celebration of all things “girl.” A vast explosion of hot pink and glitter, Girl Party aims to shine light on femininity and simply celebrate it. Let’s party!

Kelly Cloninger is an Atlanta-based visual artist who attended Atlanta College of Art and later received her BFA in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design. She has shown her work throughout Atlanta, including shows at Beep Beep Gallery, Kibbee Gallery, MINT Gallery, and Swan Coach House. She has also shown her work nationally in venues like the Dallas Museum of Art and participated multiple times in the annual Art Papers auction. Girl Party is Kelly Cloninger’s first show at whitespace gallery.

Through June 16.

Whitespace
814 Edgewood Avenue
Atlanta, Ga.

“The Ends” is a collaborative exhibition of new work by Jason Kofke and Chris Chambers, at Beep Beep Gallery in Atlanta through April 28, 2012. Kofke talks about the show and its intention to “decipher potential teleological ends of the modern past.”

Also, there’s a car in the gallery.

Also available on: Vimeo – iTunes – Blip.tv

The Blue Flame is Ben Roosevelt’s 2nd solo show with Get This! Gallery, this time using an immersive installation to turn his practice on its head, looking at the same time in to the past and in to the future to ask where things can go from here. Connecting the radical impulse of the origins of punk music to the urges of the Romantics and the trials of Dante as he wrote his medieval epic poem The Divine Comedy, Roosevelt places us in a seedy roadside bar known as The Blue Flame. The Flame exits in myth, somewhere between the stories of legendary performances at the Rock and Roll Farm of Wayne, Michigan and Twin Peaks’ Bang Bang Bar. Using drawing and sculpture to draw us in to the world of the Flame, Roosevelt asks if this is the place youthful dreams go to die, or where new dreams are born?

— For the past hour, all that’s been put on the juke is Iggy, over and over he keeps screaming.

I got nothing
I got nothing to say.

Everyone’s heard the one about the end of the road, but where does the road begin? It’s like everyone stumbled on this cul-de-sac and just assumed it was a full stop, not a launching pad or a slingshot. Me, I got nothing to say, but I still come here to talk. The celebration of emptiness and being bored, it’s a scene itself over sixty years old, and here we are still trying to dream up new words, new excitement over everything that pops up. The guy on the other side of the bar’s bawling, saying Kelley’s suicide was him saying, admitting that maybe the screams, howls and jagged cuts of amp feedback were hollow. We all got stuck somewhere, but that’s where you stay when things are happening. But in here, it’s like something’s always happening, even if it is the shredding of a dream. As the regulars say. You never step in the same flame twice. —

An artist talk will be held at the gallery on April 21.

Get This! Gallery
662 11th. Street NW
Atlanta, GA 30318