SUMMER

Exhibition Dates: June 1 – September 28, 2024

Opening Reception

Saturday, June 8, 2024

1:00 – 3:00pm

Transcendent Geometries

Ato Ribeiro | Carrie Marill with Andy Burgess

Exhibition

March 2 – May 25, 2024

Opening Reception with the artists

Saturday, March 2, 2024

1:00 – 3:00pm

Ato Ribeiro: Under Her Canopy

Exhibition Dates: Aug 19, 2023 - Oct 14, 2023

2022/2023 Working Artist Project

This round of Working Artist Projects was curated by Drew Sawyer, Phillip Leonian and Edith Rosenbaum Leonian Curator of Photography at the Brooklyn Museum

mundane x sacred x profane

Exhibition Dates: 29 Jun - 12 Aug 2023

Featuring artists: Valerie Amani, Philip Crawford, Samuel Baah Kortey, Sekai Machache, Ato Ribeiro

The Next 100 Years III

April 29 - July 31, 2023

Curated by Ren Dillard and Tracy Murrell

HOMAGE

April 6 - May 7, 2023

Curated by Derek G. Larson and Jeff Wallace

Featuring artists: Alex Paik, Ato Ribeiro, Austin Ballard, Dakota Gearhart, Derek G. Larson, Henry Chapman, Jeff Wallace, Leah Beeferman, Leslie Roberts, Stephen Sollins, Suzanne Song, Taylor Baldwin, Theresa Ganz

Could the prevalence of our scrolling culture be a result of intentional design? Edward Bernays, an influential American advertising pioneer who drew inspiration from the Bauhaus movement, believed that geometric shapes and patterns had the power to sway human emotions and convince individuals to support products and causes. Geometry has long been a crucial element of art, influencing artists of diverse styles and mediums for centuries. With the emergence of social media, this influence has only intensified, impacting not only the creation and appreciation of art, but also the human mind.

The artists featured in HOMAGE draw inspiration from the geometric principles of Gropius, Moholy-Nagy, and the New Bauhaus, integrating algorithmic components into their artworks. HOMAGE displays an assortment of pieces that incorporate both traditional crafting techniques and artificial intelligence storytelling to classify and situate us within an array of diverse media, urging us to contemplate the structure of social media. Although these works may seem machine-generated at first glance, a closer look exposes the human touch behind them.

Entwined: A Group Exhibition of Textile and Fiber Art

April 1 – June 4, 2023

This exhibition of fifteen contemporary artists displays techniques in sewing, weaving, felting, quilting, dyeing, draping, and more. In addition to exploring the multivalent technical aspects of textile and fiber-based artwork, this group exhibition will also examine the different subjects, narratives, and contexts implemented by artists who all work within this vast artistic realm. The range of the artists’ backgrounds and methods will inform how craft and fine art convene in ways that play a part in a greater conversation of history, heritage, and identity.

Featuring Rose M Barron, Nicole Benner, Kate Burke, Hannah Ehrlich, Sally C Garner, Sonya Yong James, Susan Lenz, Richard Jonathan Nelson, Ali O’Leary, Ato Ribeiro, Jess Self, Kathryn Somers, Zipporah Camille Thompson, Gabrielle Torres, and Jamele Wright Sr.

THE ALCHEMISTS

OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, MARCH 3 FROM 6 - 9 PM

RUNS MARCH 3 THROUGH APRIL 29

Co-Curated by Donovan Johnson and Seph Rodney

“This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

— James Baldwin

How is blackness — as a set of ideas, as ways of being, as inherited legacies — transformed in an artist's practice today? This question is the heart of our thinking around this exhibition because it is an urgent one; at a time when the commodification and dilution of blackness into mainstream culture is escalating.

Leaning on lessons gleaned from cinema, literature, music, and performance, this show peruses the influence of ideologies concerning what it means to be Black, looking through the lens of artistic practice to gaze perceptively on material culture, resistance strategies, rituals of commemoration, forms of play, speculative fantasies, and all else that lives in the house of blackness.

Today, Black culture is increasingly associated with taste-making and trendsetting, cultivating the notion of “Black Cool” and thus reformulating what has been an undervalued and ignored history, set of traditions, and collective identity. As it stands, there is almost no creative field where Black source material — and by extension, the ideas and experiences that undergird this material — have not found their way to influencing that field. Blackness impacts global popular culture.

Yet, in our exuberant and sometimes uncritical participation in these widespread, attenuated forms of blackness, we risk a diminished comprehension of all that blackness can be, and often is. “If blackness is separated from this aesthetic of cool that comes out of our culture... we lose the understanding of how much we are actually giving to this world," wrote Rebecca Walker in Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness, arguing that our intricately tangled heritage, is being simplified (and perhaps even romanticized) into reductive accounts.

How does an artist transform matter and transcend the ordinary? The Alchemists offers artists who construct unique forms rooted in the Black experience and ancestral legacy to demonstrate that this magic can indeed be done. Featuring works across a wide range of mediums, including painting, drawing, video, collage, assemblage, and installation, this exhibition aims to function as a critical platform for the manifestation of Black folks thinking their way through blackness, informally documenting Black material and ideological culture.

Johnson Lowe Gallery has long been interested in the influence of source materials and the creative process of constructing, reimagining, appropriating, and rendering such materials, both natural and artificial, into unanticipated forms. In physics, the term transmutation refers to the conversion of one element into another. Though transmutation can also refer to radioactive decay, ancient Alchemists continuously aimed to create precious metals, or some ideal of a universal elixir, in their quests for wealth, longevity, and immortality. But they never had the source material of blackness. We do.

They know from whence they came

Featuring Kevin Cole, Ato Ribeiro, Freddie Styles, and Jamele Wright Sr..

29 September – 2 October 2022

Congo Biennale: ‘Le Souffle des Ancêtres’ (The Breath of the Ancestors) - 16 September – 23 October 2022

Curated by Armelle Dakouo and Fahamu Pecou.

«Le Souffle des Ancêtres» «The breath of the ancestors»

We are opening a new chapter. One that reveals humanity rising to face its shadows. We are creating a world that will be more harmonious. A world that requires us to interact differently with nature and with one another.

OF THE FANTASTIC: EXTRAORDINARY ATL - JUNE 1 - JULY 31, 2022

An outdoor digital exhibition featuring artwork that is ethereal, yet layered in emotion and context.

Arts & Entertainment Atlanta presents its third digital exhibition, Of the Fantastic: Extraordinary ATL, from June 1 - July 31. Curated by Lauren Jackson Harris, work by 11 Atlanta-based artists are featured on three A&E Atlanta digital signs throughout Downtown Atlanta.

Featured Artists:

Chloe Alexander, Chiomma Hall, Lewinale Havette, Melissa Huang, Horace Imhotep, Emily Mann, Kristian Melom, Ato Ribeiro, José Ibarra Rizo, Timothy Short, and Aineki Traverso.

By employing familiar practices - of collecting, joining, and refining natural and repurposed materials - In Due Time provides educational opportunities to seek new points of reference while preserving layers of African cultural heritage and varying ethnic perspectives. Ribeiro’s research mines and honors a variety of shared and neglected histories to visually speak to a contemporary sense of cultural hybridity.

Through the use of discarded materials, the query of this work is in part a look into torturous separation - of peoples, of fact from accounts - and rectification through remembrance. What, to some, should be avoided or deemed ahistorical, for others, presents the most befitting opportunity for healing, rebuilding, and the fostering of optimistic growth. Ribeiro’s practice is the result of a process aiming to preserve invaluable communities and explore alternative methods of making a home.

Storyteller: Mona Cliff, Sanaz Haghani, and Ato Ribeiro

Curated by Jacob O’Kelley and Abigail Justman of ShowerHaus

The Swan Coach House Gallery is pleased to present Storyteller, an exhibition of sculpture and installation by Georgia-based artists Sanaz Haghani and Ato Ribeiro, and Kansas-based artist Mona Cliff. The exhibition is curated by Jacob O’Kelley and Abigail Justman of ShowerHaus, an Atlanta-based curatorial team.

Weaving together lived experiences through cultural symbolism, each artist constructs works that investigate self-expression, identity, and future possibilities. Influenced by their mutual backgrounds in printmaking, each artist embraces a labor-intensive, process-based studio practice. Leaning into the journey of past lives and reflecting upon collective memory, the artists’ stories intuitively unravel new narratives creating through lines to themselves, their surroundings, and their invaluable communities.

Traversing across various complex histories, Ribeiro’s intricately patterned wooden tiles, Cliff’s meticulously beaded landscapes, and Haghani’s heavily inked draping monoprints evoke curiosity; the onlooker is inspired to invest time to thoroughly explore the messages, meanings, and decisions made by the artists. Storyteller begs the question: Do we continue down the path designed for us, or do we pivot into a future where we learn from, celebrate, and uplift communities that we have continued to neglect?

Quilting plays a central role in many cultures in shaping community through ritual, collective making, and storytelling. Students in this one week class will explore questions of cultural hybridity through experimental processes that cross found material with traditional crafting methods including metal working, woodworking and a variety of stitching and applique techniques. Taking traditional and contemporary approaches to gathering and communal labor as points of departure, The Built Quilt merges group explorations of quiltmaking and hybrid craft practices with critical conversations about culture, place, and history. Communal making will provide a basis for class discussion and material research and complement self-directed projects in a supportive and collaborative atmosphere. Seminar discussions on critical theories in cultural studies will engage the works of Fred Moten, Stephano Harney, Sarah Ahmed, West African folklore and artists including Ibrahim Mahama, Harriet Powers and Sadie Barnette, giving context to the intersections of contemporary theory and practice. Students will participate in material demonstrations, performance workshops and seminar discussions and contribute to a collaborative class quilt.

LISA SETTE GALLERY 35 YEAR ANNIVERSARY EXHIBITION

Lisa Sette Gallery, an internationally-recognized advocate of contemporary art, will commemorate its 35th anniversary with a March exhibition entitled Serenity Now: Meditations on Humanity. The midtown Phoenix gallery, housed in a strikingly renovated Al Beadle office building, has maintained its unique aesthetic vision and relationships with artists, collectors, and the arts community for over three decades, defying the notoriously transitory art market. Lisa Sette Gallery is recognized for its radical and inclusive curatorial vision, working with significant regional, domestic and international artists and exhibiting work that addresses urgent social and political issues. These essential values give rise to the gallery’s March anniversary exhibit.

From January 24th to March 6th, artists Yehimi Cambron, Ato Ribeiro, and O.M. Norling present their work in a joint art exhibit in Conant Lobby. Cambron, a Mexican born DACA recipient and former high school art teacher, uses mural work as a form of activism and to tell the stories of the immigrant experience and to reclaim their narrative. Ribeiro, a multidisciplinary artist, uses his wood-working and print media skills to create  pieces inspired by traditional Ghanaian Kente cloth and African American quilts to help bridge his West African culture and African American identity in western culture. Norling, who paints under his Swedish great-great grandfather's name, uses his ancestor's story of life and compulsion as inspiration for his whimsical paintings featuring animals, furniture, and objects that are reflective of a different time and embody the human experience. Each artist provides a unique perspective, and each has a story to tell through their art. All are welcome to come hear these stories on January 30th 6pm-8pm at the Art Reception and Artist Talk, which will begin at 7pm. This exhibit and event is free and open to the public.  

In collaboration with SHOWERHAUS, The Goat Farm Arts Center, and several emerging Atlanta art spaces, Fulton County Arts and Culture will host a multi-level art exhibition in 34 Peachtree featuring two of Basquiat’s works beside numerous emerging artists from the Greater Atlanta Region for a one night only event. Artwork from the County’s 2019 Fine Art Acquisition will also be on display. The exhibition will remain in the space for another two weeks following the opening night event.

White contains all wavelengths of visible light, and in turn humans have deposited within it our multitudes of meanings, reflecting opposing and essential facets of human experience. Inspired in part by James Baldwin’s observation that “Color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality,” Subversive Whitepresents a response to a specific strain of white that has permeated our national dialogue: the ugly, enduring premise of white supremacy and the host of oppressive systems that it engenders and enables. The artists included in Subversive White pull at the veil of whiteness, investigate the tendency of white to imply both beauty and menace, take aim at the false notions of ethnicity and biology, and the presumed opacity of white and its ability to cover, obscure, or erase. Throughout the show, white reemerges as a purifying flash of light and heat, a conflagration with the potential to reveal the phantasms within. Artists include: Enrique Chagoya, Sonya Clark, Claudio Dicochea, Ben Durham, Angela Ellsworth, Rob Kinmonth, Carrie Marill, Trina McKillen, Mark Mitchell, Ann Morton, Fiona Pardington, Ato Ribeiro, Julianne Swartz, and Hank Willis Thomas.