Curated by Kate Burke
Did you know the world ends every 8 – 12 years? Sometimes the endings are swift, other times they feel like the opposite of an end: rather Endless, unwinding, and monotonous. These endings aren’t always planned, but they do happen regularly, as we all know. 2024, 2020, 2016, 2012, 2000. You’d think we’d understand these Endings better by now, what with all the information we have out there, but it is a phenomenon that scientists are still studying.
As the world ends, we inevitably watch as things burn. Our heads turn to the right and to the left, and engage in a perpetual pivot, clocking the apples of our attention. If you look around, all sorts of fires are out there: wildfires, political fires, the infamous, Fire-Under-Our-Asses, firing ranges, hellfire, the list goes on–and does not happen to exclude the car fire I passed outside a Moreland Avenue gas station a few Sundays ago. I stopped and stared and lingered, then turned down a different road home.
RUBBERNECKIN‘ brings together the work of Reuben Bloom, Antonio Darden, and Matthew Evans to triangulate our place in this ending. Where is the runway to the new, strange beginning? How do we evaluate home in a fragmented, capitalized world, and ride it out on this existential tilt-a-whirl?
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Reuben Bloom (b.1986) is a multidisciplinary artist and filmmaker based in Atlanta, GA whose work explores the intersections of cultural memory and ecological tension through subconscious conceptualism. Bloom’s work has been exhibited across the South East including exhibitions at the Gibbes Museum of Art and Hodges Taylor Gallery, as well as internationally during the The Toricho Art Festival in Kanagawa, Japan. Reuben is a former resident artist and collective member of Goodyear Arts in Charlotte NC and in 2022 was awarded the artist SEED Grant by The Arts and Science Council of Mecklenburg County. In 2024 Reuben was an Artadia Award finalist.
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It is enervating to exist as a multi-racial man in the American south. In 1978, Antonio Darden’s West Indian mother entered the United States by way of New York. She relinquished her Caribbean/South Indian heritage and adopted a pseudonym. Darden’s mother met his African-American father at a funeral, fell in love and relocated to North Carolina. His mother adopted a drawl, learned to cook soul food and in 1990 persuaded her family to relocate farther south to Georgia.
In 2006 Darden earned his BFA in Sculpture from Georgia State University. In 2009, he and fellow artist Matt Sigmon founded the artist collaborative, The Art Officials. His work as been exhibited in shows in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Most recently Darden was awarded a Juror’s Choice award at MOCA GA in a group show surveying the Georgia artists. In the summer of 2022 he was named the Southern Prize State Fellow for Georgia by South Arts. He subsequently opened two consecutive solo shows in Atlanta in the summer and fall of 2022. He currently lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia.
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