Opening reception:  Thursday, August 9, 2012 | 7 – 10 pm

August 9 – September 1, 2012

Charlie Brouwer, "Now I Lay Me...", white-washed orchard ladders, dimensions vary

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

-Child’s prayer that first appeared in 1737 in

The New England Primer, America’s first school textbook.

Join us on Thursday, August 9 for the opening reception of Now I Lay Me…, artist Charlie Brouwer’s first exhibition with whitespace gallery. Brouwer is returning to Atlanta after organizing the very sucessful “Rise Up Atlanta” event last year with Flux Projects. Referencing this project that incorporated a series of stacked ladders borrowed from individuals and organizations around the city, Brouwer has once again created a ladder-based installation for whitespace gallery. The piece includes approximately twenty white-stained, old orchard ladders rising towards the ceiling with a life-size, reclining wooden figure suspended among them six feet in the air. Reminding him of the old children’s prayer, “Now I Lay Me,” he also constructed a dream-like over-sized grand piano that has seemingly serenaded the reclining figure into a deep sleep after his or her bedtime prayer.

The drawings act as an extension of his life – explorations of his past, present, and future. He makes art, so he can discover where he has been, what he thinks of the present and where he sees himself going. Pulling from meditations on prayer and the human soul, childhood memories and scenes from Atlanta, Brouwer’s work helps him make his way from past to present.