Crawl Space: June 2022

Downtown 

Chauvet Arts opened We Are Nashville: Act One in May, and the exhibition will stay up through July. That’s a long run for a Nashville gallery show, but photojournalist Philip Holsinger’s deep and immersive community portrait captures the stories of everyday Nashvillians in journal entries, photography, short films and audio interviews archived over the past five years. There’s a lot to take in here, and it’s the kind of show that rewards multiple visits. This extended, slow scheduling makes for an especially inviting environment for spending some time meeting new neighbors this summer.  

 Amber Robles-Gordon’s SoveREIGNty: Acts, Forms, & Measures of Protest & Resistance opened at Tinney Contemporary on May 28, and the gallery will be holding a reception for the show on Saturday from 2 until 8 p.m., making this stop ideal for all you early art crawlers. The exhibition of large-scale mixed-media quilts investigates U.S. policy and governance of populated territories and the District of Columbia. Robles-Gordon’s paint, textile and hand-stitched assemblages avoid the clichés of most political protest art by embracing the mysterious messaging of striking abstract compositions in place of sloganeering and pure propaganda pushing. The two-sided designs are suspended like banners, displaying a postmodern mix of elements from national flags, Doppler radar aesthetics, Indigenous art, domestic ritual and references to the midcentury Abstract Expressionist art movement known as the Washington Color School.  

East Nashville  

At Red Arrow Gallery this month, the talented Ashanté Kindle’s Gesturing Joy engages in a complex and nuanced exploration of joy as expressed through Black women’s hair culture that any fan of painterly abstraction will be able to engage with and relate to. Kindle uses acrylic paints, hair accessory materials and other found objects to create paintings ranging from monochrome works in shades of black to vibrantly colored pieces exploring various textures expressing everything from, as Kindle’s artist statement puts it, “that 1995 Easter Sunday press & curl kinda joy” to “that braids and beads kinda joy.” Red Arrow has always focused its diverse roster on strong abstract painters, and Kindle’s new exhibition is emblematic of what the gallery does best. Red Arrow will open the exhibition with a reception this Saturday at 6 p.m.

Wedgewood-Houston

 I mentioned Greely Myatt’s new sculpture exhibition at David Lusk Gallery in last month’s column. Pointing Fingers and Flinging Bricks is a whimsical examination of personal responsibility in a time of social-media-fueled culture conflict. The show continues through June 11, and the gallery will be open from noon until 7 p.m. on Saturday. Myatt will be attending the event, and he’ll give a gallery talk at 1 p.m. Myatt is one of those Memphis-based artists who is emblematic of David Lusk’s strong artist roster, and this talk will illuminate this exhibition’s timely themes as well as Myatt’s signature penchant for transforming found objects.   

I love John Huston’s 1956 adaptation of Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. One of the most iconic scenes in that movie is the church sermon delivered by Father Mapple, played by Orson Welles. In the book and in the film, Mapple relates the story of Jonah and the whale to a group of sailors about to set sea, addressing his maritime parishioners as “shipmates.” The new Shipmates exhibition at Zeigeist takes Moby Dick as a jumping-off point to address communal toil, featuring painting and sculpture by Daniel Reidy and Greg Pond, with musical contributions from César Leal.   

Coop’s only a few months into its new, bigger space at The Packing Plant, but it’s already beginning to pay off with larger-scale programming like this month’s video installation. Abracadabra is a collaboration between the gallery and the Vanderbilt University Department of Art’s 2022-2023 initiative, titled Vanderbilt, Arts, and the Middle East: Building Bridges to the Global and the Local. The exhibition includes work by three Middle Eastern women artists: Saudi Arabia-based movement artist Sarah Brahim, the Israeli media artist Ronnie Karfiol, and the Iranian artist Laleh Mehran. As the Vanderbilt initiative’s titling suggests, Abracadabra is meant to illuminate viewers’ understanding of a part of the world that America is both tied to and in conflict with. It also aims to reflect a greater understanding of the Middle Eastern diaspora that includes our own neighbors in Nashville. Brahim is a trained dancer whose performances mix live music and vocals with percussive footwork that recalls styles from folk to tap to hip-hop, and it’s refreshing to see a “movement artist” who can really hoof.  

I wrote about Unrequited Leisure’s May exhibition, Raheleh Filsoofi: Artifacting, last week, and it continues through June. It’s an intense and affecting video-and-sculpture installation that offers a great example of how performance artists can and should do more with video than just the bare bones of documenting their work. Unrequited Leisure has really been knocking it out of the park this year, with displays by women video artists including this show and Mary Addison Hackett’s Anonymous Was a Vlog, which ran back in February and March. I love it when galleries change up their programming, but it can also be important for a space to be clear and consistent in their mission, and Unrequited Leisure’s focus on striking screen-based art displays makes them one of the most uniquely excellent art venues in the city. The gallery will also be welcoming Jodi Minnis to their AIR_(space) flagpole display on Saturday. Minnis’ recent work focuses on reclaiming and rejecting stereotypes of Black women in Bahamian culture, asking why a community that trades in tourism has to represent itself with outdated racist imagery. Unrequited Leisure will be open from 1 until 8 p.m. on Saturday, and will have a proper flag-raising for Minnis during its official reception from from 5 until 8 p.m.