Crawl Space: Form Beats Content at January’s First Saturday Events

The first First Saturday shows of 2024 include subjects and stories, identities and other content. But the best exhibitions favor formalist explorations over amplifying activism or unpacking personal themes. The results are sharp and smart displays of paintings, sculpture and digital works that emphasize texture over text, palettes over politics, and sensual surfaces over subjects. 

Wedgewood-Houston

My avatar bounded into a sun-kissed outdoor space framed by thoughtful exterior architecture the first time I visited Decentraland’s Genesis Plaza in the fall of 2020. A black blimp floated in a blue sky dotted with candy-colored treetops. It winked at me with its blinking “The World Is Yours” sign. Just like Tony Montana arriving in Miami, I’d made the journey to one of the crypto capitals of the pandemic’s boffo digital art and culture boom. Damn, it feels good to be a gangster.

Decentraland’s collection of virtual worlds felt a little bit like Second Life, a little bit like a clunky video game, but it was populated by a creative community during a time when arts gatherings in the real world were limited or simply canceled. Strolling the gallery spaces in Decentraland actually reminded me of stumbling upon weird creative installations and pop-up displays in NYC’s Lower East Side, or like a vaster and brasher version of Nashville’s own First Saturday happenings. This was around that time when our events had been reduced to the still-underrated YouTube videos local galleries edited for their streaming version of the Art Crawl. Digital art, virtual galleries and the markets they cater to are for real, and they’re here to stay.

Future Folk: Superbia is a display of digital objects at Unrequited Leisure. Jessye McDowell sculpts pixels into goblets and chalices to be used in virtual rituals by virtual cultures in virtual worlds. McDowell embraces the unhinged aesthetics native to blockchain art platforms, marrying the Dutch Golden Age to Bored Ape avatars, heart emojis and digital animation. There’s also a sound component by Nashvillian Kelli Shay Hix. It’s gorgeous stuff, and a smart and sensual doorway into the virtual experiences and spaces that have become a part of our natural lives — especially since the pandemic. There’s an easy connection to be made here between the era of European colonialism and some notion of digital colonialism. But digital culture is about decentralized pioneering in a new frontier being created by the explorers themselves. There are no armadas. No kings. At its best, digital culture is more Stranger in a Strange Land than Heart of Darkness. Grok it for yourself at Unrequited Leisure this Saturday night. Opening reception 5-8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, at Unrequited Leisure, 507 Hagan St.

Hamlett Dobbins’ The Green of Friendship opened at David Lusk’s Nashville outpost on Jan. 2, but they saved their celebration for First Saturday. Dobbins’ abstract paintings are synonymous with the Memphis art scene. Like many painters, Dobbins mostly deals in big canvases, but the charm of this new display is its scale and substrates. The Green of Friendship is a works-on-paper show. The reduced size of the art means more separate pieces to ponder. It’s also a format that finds Dobbins indulging in improvisation and experimentation, which results in an intriguing variety of forms and colors, textures and tones. Dobbins uses splashes of vibrantly colored fluid inks to capture the dappled light the artist studied in the Old Forest Arboretum of Memphis’ Overton Park. The works’ lively palette is also a shout-out to Dobbins’ mentor David Dunlap — the pair’s creative connections also inspired the exhibition’s comradely title. Dobbins is one of the best-known artists in the region, but his formalist preoccupations also make him “a painter’s painter.” The Green of Friendship is another entry in Nashville’s January displays that include themes, subjects and narratives, but ultimately emphasize tones, textures, lines and compositions. Opening reception 3-6 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, at David Lusk Gallery, 516 Hagan St. 

East Nashville

Embodiment is a group show opening at Red Arrow on Saturday night. The exhibition’s roster is all women artists, and while there is feminist and feminine content here, Embodiment is primarily a formal exploration of textures and materials, boasting a winning variety of smart art about art. Albuquerque, N.M.-based painter Eleanor Aldrich’s “Nancy and the Bloody Handprint” is the show’s signature image. It’s a great example of Aldrich’s bewitching brushwork — she renders figures in narrative scenes with gluey gobs of paint, and leaves her surfaces tantalizingly sculptural and abstracted. Another highlight is Lauren Gregory’s iconic portrait of Red Arrow gallery director Ashley Layendecker. It’s painted in oils on fake fur. It’s part pop art, part velvet Elvis, and it’s the most must-touch-it-now artwork in this show about tantalizing surfaces. The show also includes work from Lilah Rose, Vadis Turner and Mia Weiner. Opening reception 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, at Red Arrow, 919 Gallatin Ave.

Downtown

Islamic art traditions are a treasure trove of nonrepresentational imagery and designs, evoking spiritual notions about the transcendent and ineffable. Artist Madiha Siraj’s art bridges sculpture, painting and installation, offering a contemporary take on Islamic aesthetics. Like Embodiment at Red Arrow, Siraj’s Bridging the Infinite display at Tinney Contemporary includes content about identity and religion, but it’s also another great example of a formal display about textures — both sculptural and visual. Siraj fabricates and paints countless floral forms before attaching them to circular panels where her little round gardens blossom into sculptural displays featuring eye-grabbing design gradients in popping color palettes. I always appreciate forward-looking artists, and this 21st-century take on age-old Islamic decorative art traditions is as fun and fab as it is faith-based. Opening reception 2-8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 6, at Tinney Contemporary, 237 Rep. John Lewis Way N.