Past Shows
“THE BEST OF THE WORST”
December 2019-April 2020
2 man art show featuring the work of Dave Meall and RC Hagans
Lifelong friends Dave Meall and RC Hagans have teamed up to bring you a multidisciplinary art experience that is sure to leave a mark. Paintings, photographs, functional home-defense sculptures, these works blur the line between sacred and profane. Our heroes’ outer appearance may be that of a black hat, but inside of each lies a heart of gold. Hedonistic-missionaries, artisan-vandals, destructive-creators.
[es·sence]
July-Sep 2019
TWO-PERSON EXHIBITION BY KRISTA M. JONES AND ANGELA BORTONE
A two-person exhibition by Atlanta-based artists and muralists Krista M.Jones and Angela Bortone. Their figurative paintings explore the connection between emotion, body, energy and environment. Their gestural mark-making is layered with figures as a way of suggesting the impermanence of the human experience.
Jones’ figures are created from background to foreground, typically pulling the light out of the darkness and highlighting topics of gender, sexuality, trauma and transformation. Bortone, with a strong sense of rhythm & movement, works against the chaos of ink splashes as a way of illustrating body & mind. Both artists are exploring how intuitive abstraction and representational figurative form can exist within the same space.
STEEL WHEELS 2018
Nov 10, 2018 - Jan 28, 2019 .
10 Year Anniversary Group Exhibition
Presented by Joe Dreher AKA JOEKINGATL
2018 marks our 10 year anniversary. In the 10 years since 2008, the lore
of railroad graffiti and railroad inspired art has gained tremendous momentum. It is currently one of the most popular underground trends on social media and Steel Wheels has inspired several other art shows with a similar theme around the country.
Fighting the Current
Sept 7 - Oct 7, 2018
Paintings & Performances by Amanda Grae Platner
Presented and Curated by: Joe Dreher AKA JOEKINGATL
Amanda’s work deals with the positive adaptation of stressful, uncontrollable situations. Resolve can be strength; standing up with determination to overcome, facilitate change, and force progress. Conversely, we can settle; resolve to give in, give up, or look away. Our personal lives, as well as our local and global communities are saturated with a constant drip of stressors, creating a continual need to choose the level of our involvement with progress. Fighting the Current, is a body of work exploring these challenges through painting and endurance performance.
DAYTONA
July 13 - Sep 2, 2018
Featuring new works by: Emily Braswell and Jenna Rees
Curated by: Joe Dreher AKA JOEKINGATL
DAYTONA is a collaborative show by Emily Braswell @strawberriemilk_ and Jenna Rees @warmmilkwithsugar. This body of work is an abstracted narrative of an impromptu road trip with a destination determined by digital chance (asking Siri, “heads or tails?”). The show explores themes of currency and sexuality with a relatable touch on today’s idiocies.
"UNRAVELED"
May 4 - July 7, 2018
Featuring new works by: Luca Barolli, Lauren Betty, Andrew Catanese and Igor Korsunskiy,
Work from the four individual artists fills the space around the collaborative focal point. Each piece represents the artists’ own intimate thread connecting themselves and their work to the collaboration process. As the eye moves from focal point to periphery, the installation unravels, revealing its individual parts and the conceptual lines tying them together.
All That Is Holy and The Infinite Absurd
March 2 - April 28, 2018
Two art exhibitions under one roof exploring spirituality in an unconventional way.
Blue Mark Studios proudly hosts two opening receptions on Friday March 2nd, both exploring spiritual themes in very unconventional ways. Running for two months, All That Is Holy is a group show featuring six Atlanta artists who explore the sacred-profane dichotomy: Rose M Barron, Daniel Biddy, Elyse Defoor, Deborah Hutchinson, Charity Lindop, and Robert Sherer. Alongside All That Is Holy, is a one-night-only installation by multimedia artist Christopher Hall, entitled The Infinite Absurd. This ephemeral installation features the premiere of Christopher Hall’s sound art work, and 1,355 ink drawings. To make things really interesting, the opening night of both shows will feature a surprise performance by Saint Mary of Egypt, who offers blessings and absolution, should audiences feel the need after viewing both shows.
The Art of the Portrait
Works By: Jane Shirek, Hollis King, Jessica Becker, Ambler Hutchinson
Blue Mark Studios proudly presents "The Art of The Portrait, a group exhibition featuring four contemporary artists exploring the traditional subject matter of portraiture.
Located in downstairs Blue Mark Gallery, "The Art of The Portrait" explores the dynamic potential of a portrait to express personal and universal truths. Featuring work by Ambler Hutchinson, Jessica Becker, Jane Shirek, and Hollis A. King.
Movement
Works By: Atlanta artists Niki Zarrabi and Julio Ceballos
Blue Mark Studios proudly presents “Movement”, a joint-exhibition by Atlanta artists Niki Zarrabi and Julio Ceballos. Featuring two distinct bodies of work, "Movement" explores both the spiritual and physical forces that impact and shape our world.
Located in downstairs Blue Mark Gallery, Zarrabi expresses metaphysical themes of cognition, reincarnation, and spirituality through an intricate combination of surrealism and mixed media. Alternatively, Julio Ceballo's visually-charged and dynamic paintings derive their inspiration from the tension and chaos that exist between civic and civil progress.
Better Than The Truth
New Works By R.C. Hagans II
Blue Mark Studios proudly presents “Better Than The Truth”, a solo exhibition by Alabama-based artist, R.C. Hagans. Self-taught and rapidly mutating, Hagans' pattern-centric works from a hyperactive array of contemporary influences such as fine art, train vandalism, and religious symbols.
Located in downstairs Blue Mark Gallery and featuring over twenty works from Hagan's prolific practice, "Better Than The Truth" spotlights his expansive and unrelenting exploration of cultural iconography though rigorous mark-making.
This Is It
Guest Curators: Albert Fernandez & Andrew Muñoz
“This Is It” is an art and music event spotlighting open dialogue and creative expression in 2017. The show is a celebration of outstanding contemporary work being created by artists from diverse backgrounds and practices, with the purpose of engaging our shared humanity through open dialogue during this important time in history.
INGEST IN JEST FEST
PERFORMANCE ART GROUP LXXX YOU (formally I.F.L.Y.) CURATES PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING ART EVENT
Ingest In Jest Fest is a LXXX YOU event and art show placing performance artists, dancers, choreographers, and eccentrics “in the ring” to expand on the theme of professional wrestling. The show will have evening performances followed by a dance party
During this vaudeville of the absurd, performers will be given 10 minutes inside a wrestling ring. A curated exhibit will coincide within the Blue Mark Gallery.
CHUTE
CHUTE is an interdisciplinary exhibition in which performance, video, and visual artists have created works in direct response to Sarah Minor’s essay with the same title. Minor’s essay collages historical and informational texts, splitting each paragraph into two via a “chute” of centralized text. Minor defines chute as passageway, hiding place, descending, while reminding us of its role as status symbol and of our own relationship with desire and lack thereof. The artists selected for response approach these themes related to the meanings Minor defines in their own personal practice.
Light Beings
“LightBeings” a group photo exhibition based on three artists perspective of LightBeings. Experience the realm where we unveil our deepest truths + embrace our divine nature. Guest curated by Stephanie C Magaldi.
Light-beings have experienced an awakening of self. Our spirits rejoice in the knowing of our deepest truths, thus our consciousness elevates, and the divine light within us begins to shine.
Tied Up At Home
a collaborative exhibition featuring a combination of five artists using traditional mediums along with three-dimensional site-responsive installation and video. These five artists, William Mize, Megan Mosholder, Wihro Kim, Ivan Reyes and Stacie Rose emulate notions of the intimacy of place, particularly within the clandestine space of the house. The work selected for this show reveals how these elements can contribute (or take away) to the home, creating a dwelling unique to its inhabitants.
Slightly Structured
A Group Exhibition featuring the works of Atlanta based Female Artists. These mixed media artists have developed a true visual language via a process of application, texture, layers, and depth. Creating works that become inherently narrative yet abstracted; co-mingling together yet invoking a distinct feeling individual to each painter.
Ties That Bind
An exhibition that poses the question of how a person is developed through family, heritage and personal history and how those life experiences inspire the need to create. Photography is inherently a narrative medium, this group exhibition will display works that create the photographer's personal narrative.
METHOD
A group exhibition highlighting artists working in new and multidisciplinary mediums that have developed a process and technique that is uniquely their own, their method accelerates the conceptual aspects of their work.
RITUAL # 9
A multimedia performance and group exhibition based on nine artists perspective of RITUAL 2015
Contemporary art protocols and rituals sustain inclusive, immersive, and transformational practices. Putting forth a heterotopic environment in which resonances emerge between various art methodologies (music, painting, performance, sculpture, dance/movement, word, optics) novel forms of ritualized space emerge.