Whitespace Gallery

Teresa Cole, "Curling in on Itself," relief prints on paper with cotton and silk saris

May 18 – June 30, 2012

Opening: Friday, May 18 | 7 – 10 pm

Between Origin and Present is Teresa Cole’s second exhibition and first solo show with whitespace gallery.  It is coming directly from the Contemporary Art Center in New Orleans and consists of both a series of prints and an installation component.  The objective of these two bodies of work is to complete a tracing, be it of the past or the present, to hopefully understand our complicated world. The work addresses a need to recover an imagery’s origins by finding similarities and differences between cultures and to search for a source of identity through an exploration in pattern.   It is also about trying to understand ornament as a visual language, and, ultimately through this use of pattern, explore how cultures influence and affect each other.

Teresa Cole created Curling in on itself, the installation centerpiece of the show, in India during the Khoj Kolkata International Artist Residency. Through the work, she is examining the malleability of sensory knowledge by layering enlarged marks and magnified views. The result is the formation of relationships between abstraction and representation, the simple and the complex, confusion and order.

Teresa Cole holds the Ellsworth Woodward Professorship in Art in Tulane University’s Newcomb Art Department. She earned a BFA in fiber arts from the Maryland Institute’s College of Art and received much of her early printmaking education as a working member of Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen, Scotland. She completed an MFA in printmaking at the Cranbrook Academy of Art. Working either on paper or directly onto the wall, Ms. Cole shows print installations both nationally and internationally. Public collections include: The Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia; the Auckland Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand and the Frederick R. Weisman Collection in Los Angeles, California.  Her recent visiting artist engagements include Hard Ground Printmakers in Cape Town, South Africa; Frans Masereel Graphics Center in Kasterlee, Belgium and Khoj Kolkata in Kolkata, West Bengal, India.

whitespace gallery hours: Wednesday – Saturday | 11 am – 5 pm or by appointment

814 Edgewood Avenue | Inman Park | 404.688.1892

To mark the close of Sarah Emerson’s exhibition, Underland, at whitespace gallery, the Atlanta artist explores the term, “representational abstraction” and what it means in terms of her work.

Sarah Emerson writes:

“The other night I was asked a question regarding abstraction as a new development in my work and I thought since I didn’t address it in detail that night I would try to do it here on the whitespace blog.  Sometime before we entered into the 21st century I heard Dave Hickey speak at Harvard and he used a phrase I have been exploring in my work ever since.  He used the term “representational abstraction”.  This quote is severely out of context and I recognize that I might have heard mostly want I wanted to hear in his speech that night but over the years I decided that because of his love for everything subversive and anti-institutional he wouldn’t much care how I used the information he gave to the room that night.  I only bring it up now because it was at that moment that I truly began to believe that painting could be reinvented exponentially on the surface and as a medium it could communicate varying concepts and complex visual relationships in spite of it’s antiquated bourgeois status.  I still believe that today but I am also interested in using the formal concepts of painting to create a narrative–abstraction just happens to leave a little room for the viewer.  I’ve always thought that the best moments in cinema are when the screen goes black and you can only hear the sound of events–your imagination does all the work and it’s usually far more detailed than showing the scene.

I can’t help it, I am seduced by the endless possibilities of color and shape in paint but I also see the act of painting as a privileged and futile endeavor, similar to the production of trophies or coveting relics housed in white, empty rooms. I am haunted by the implications of such a futile endeavor and load my work with dead animals and deteriorating landscapes filled with dislocation and peril but that’s a story for another time, if anyone should ask.   It seems that our relationships to abject concepts and actual reality is increasingly simplified to the extreme in a variety of video games and virtual shopping experiences that unapologetically profess to be better than the real thing.

I continue to paint because the act itself reminds me that my experiences are physical and as a society we have a shared visual vocabulary that can be appropriated to manifest actual moments that call into question the very nature of how we experience the physicality of our environment both literally and psychologically.  that’s it, take it how you want:)”

Kelly Cloninger’s opening of Girl Party in whitespec at whitespace can only be described as “an explosion of pink.” However there is more to the story than that. Evolving from her interpretation of feminism versus historical viewpoints, Cloninger asks: “If feminism is suppose to be about the support of femininity, why has it so often revolved around the refusal of it?” Girl Party celebrates all things “girl” in a vast explosion of hot pink and glitter! Here are some highlights from the evening. The show runs through June 16.

Kelly Cloninger looking pretty in pink with Ann-Marie Manker

whitespec visitor contemplating the celebration of everything "girl" and feminine in "Girl Party"

Photos by Rose Barron

Whitespace and Atlanta Ballet present

OFFStage: Party in the Garden + Group Artist Chat

Wednesday, May 9 | 6:30 – 9 pm

Last night whitespace hosted a conversation with artist, Sarah Emerson, whose current exhibition, Underland, is showing at whitespace through May 12.

Sarah Emerson discussing "Underland" her current body of work at whitespace

Sarah began the conversation explaining how in this series she set out to create a continuous landscape, imagining what was left or right to each piece giving the viewer a space to see the overall panorama, the bigger picture.  Basing this work Continue reading →

Kelly Hansen of Kelly Hansen Interiors, Julia-Carr Bayler of Belvedere and Susan Bridges, Whitespace Gallery owner/director, at the 42nd Annual Decorators' Show House and Gardens event.

Last night was the opening night party for the 42nd Annual Decorators’ Show House and Gardens, a nationally recognized event featuring the Southeast’s finest interior and landscape designers. Organized by Atlanta Symphony Associates, proceeds will benefit the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Education Continue reading →