Fall is the best season for gallerygoing, and Nashville’s autumnal offerings include a varied seasonal selection of everything from animation and video art to oil painting and poetry. There’s lots of good work organized by local artist-curators coming in the next few months, and those are the folks to watch as we look ahead to a new calendar year. Artist-led projects do a lot of heavy lifting this fall, and there are also several noteworthy shows at local institutions like the Frist.
Museums and Universities
Journey Through Japan: Myths to Manga
Oct. 25-Feb. 16 at the Frist Art Museum, 919 Broadway
Journey Through Japan celebrates the exceptional culture of the Land of the Rising Sun in a wide-ranging display of more than 150 objects at the Frist this fall. The exhibition spotlights the art of origami, Japan’s storied masters of ukiyo-e woodblock printing, robot technology, animated film and even colorful youth fashion. Is there another culture that’s transformed the everyday into art like Japan has? This exhibition is my top pick for family art outings this season.
Gloss: A Measured Response to Recent Video Art
Through Dec. 8 at Vanderbilt University Museum of Art, 1220 21st Ave. S.
Vanderbilt University’s Museum of Art hosts a major new video art exhibition organized by VUMA curator Rachel P. Kreiter this fall. Gloss: A Measured Response to Recent Video Art includes 10 video works made in the past decade by a roster of international and U.S.-based artists celebrated for their time-based contributions at the frontiers of new media. Kreiter’s narrative display tells a story about aesthetics and how the grit and grain of early video art experiments gave way to the shimmering surfaces at the forefront of today’s video art vanguard.
Solar Wind
Through Sept. 30 at Lipscomb’s John C. Hutcheson Gallery, 1 University Park Drive
Solar Wind is an exhibition of art and writing that explores the relationships between contemporary culture and the planet. The show features work from 21 artists and writers, and includes painting, sculpture, video installation, printmaking and poetry. The works combine to create a broad conversation about the nuances of our global condition. The most provocative questions in the show address the consequences of human “un-wilding,” and the exhibition boasts work by noted Nashville artists like Caroline Allison, Mandy Rogers Horton and Billy Renkl, as well as exhibition curator Georganna Greene.
Nieko McDaniel: What’s Around, Found & Scrounged
Sept. 23-Oct. 17 at TSU’s Hiram Van Gordon Gallery, 1108 37th Ave. N.
Nieko McDaniel’s What’s Around, Found & Scrounged wins my award for best exhibition title this season. McDaniel’s imaginative street-inspired world-building art conveys utopian signs and signifiers, pointing to a fantastic graffiti-covered kingdom inspired by the ancient street writing frozen in time in Pompeii. McDaniel’s work is one part spray paint and one part hip-hop, and it would look great in a video game. The artist’s common materials and cartoon colors are broadly appealing. But for all of Daniel’s figurative work, the installation feels buoyant and unmoored by predictable narratives. This is a groovy show with some heavy vibes and some light ones, and an up-to-the-minute contemporary focus on form.
Galleries
Eve Maret: Space Noodles
Sept. 22-Nov. 17 at Random Sample, 407 48th Ave. N.
Local composer and synth maestra Eve Maret has made a home for her live ambient music performances at Random Sample. The gallery/shop/music venue is one of the only Nashville art spots regularly bringing music to its space. But Maret is leaving her keys, knobs and buttons at home this fall, and bringing a new exhibition of works-on-paper to the West Nashville gallery. Space Noodles is an art therapy diary consisting of a number of abstract forms and designs Maret created during a recent period of spiritual introspection. A friend of Maret’s gave her the paper and acrylic paint pens she deploys here, and her drawings speak to the larger creative project of communities supporting one another in our mental health and conscious evolution.
North Nashville Culture Crawl
Oct. 18-20
I love a summer festival as much as the next guy, but Nashville’s summer weather can make any day outdoors an endurance challenge. Sign me up for fun fall art festivals like the North Nashville Culture Crawl, which finds some of Norf’s usual suspects organizing a whole weekend full of creative fun and events. The crawl highlights the artists and creative venues that make the neighborhood a pillar of Nashville’s contemporary art community. The festival is hosted by the North Nashville Arts Coalition, and the three-day event will feature more than 30 locations and activations that include food, live music and dance performances, creative classes and activities. And don’t miss Renaissance: The Rebirth of North Nashville, curated by Evan Roosevelt Brown for Elephant Gallery.
Margaret Thompson: Sky Mirror
Dec. 7-Jan. 18 at Red Arrow, 919 Gallatin Ave.
Margaret Thompson is a painter based in Santa Fe, N.M. Red Arrow has included Thompson’s work in a few group shows, including its recent Nashville Hot Summer display at The Arcade. Thompson unveils her first solo exhibition at Red Arrow’s East Nashville gallery space this fall, and the artist’s moody palettes, mysterious symbols and dense narrative scenes are a perfect match for a season of short days, long nights and naughty and nice tricks and treats of all kinds. Thompson’s oil-painting display includes figurative narratives, cosmic abstractions and fantastical landscapes in an overdue introduction to Nashville’s art scene.
María Magdalena Campos-Pons’ 'Behold' tops our list of the season’s most exciting art, music, book, theater, dance and film events
