Previous Exhibitions

Heather McPherson ~ shack, shanty, flat
(January 14 2012 - February 25 2012)

Opening reception: Saturday, January 14, 7-10pm
*Performance by Muleskinner MacQueen at the reception.*

Reviews of exhibition:
Artscriticatl.com
Burnaway.org

Click here to view work from exhibition.

Get This! Gallery is pleased to present Atlanta-based artist Heather McPherson’s solo exhibition, “shack, shanty, flat”. This is the McPherson’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The work featured in the exhibition, embodies the southern vernacular so comforting to us all, whether you’re from the South or not.

McPherson’s most recent body of work is a multidisciplinary look at houses – all hardscrabble and distinctly southern – and the possibility of learning something about their inhabitants through exterior clues. This is a continual focus in McPherson’s work. She writes of the work, “Each house has an attribute that becomes the focus and gives us clues about the houses’ inhabitants; sheets hanging on a porch, a pile of logs, a boarded up window, an old car parked in front. In these drawings, as in life, everything is not perfect. Time passes, erodes the paint on a wall, rots the wood on a porch, but there’s beauty and truth in these imperfections. These drawing are of the everyday, the beauty of the passage of time and of people living.”

McPherson lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. She received a B.F.A. from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005. Her work has been featured on MTV and she was the recipient of a 2010 Art on the Beltine Grant. She has had exhibitions in Atlanta, Alabama, Spain and Canada. This is her first solo exhibition at Get This! Gallery.

SYNTHESIZ // Ben “Bean” Worley
(November 11 2011 - January 07 2012)

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS/PERFORMANCES

All events were held at Get This! Gallery during the course of the exhibition.

*Opening reception: November 11

*Performance by Old King Cole Younger (Cole from Black Lips), Thursday, November 17

*Performance by CARNIVORES, Thursday, December 8

*Artist talk: Saturday, December 17

*Closing Reception: Performance by LYONNAIS, Saturday, January 7

Slideshow from this performance courtesy the Creative Loafing.

Video montage from Lyonnais performance (below)

SYNTHESIZ, Post-Abstract Expressionism in Action, 2011, 6min 1sec (below)

SYNTHESIZ by Atlanta based artist Ben “Bean” Worley. This wass Bean’s second solo exhibition with GT! The exhibition featured new video work and prints based on stills from the featured video, SYNTHESIZ: Post-Abstract Expressionism in Action. The exhibition included a series of evening performances throughout the duration of the show. These will included music performances in which Bean contributes live video mixing and projections to accompany the invited performers.

SYNTHESIZ fuses the binary roles of his personal and professional life with the historical precedent of film and art. Worley contextualizes his formal artistic training within a pop cultural experience that combines video, music and performance, transforming the analog materials he gathers into a contemporary digital medium. The transformative elements of Worley’s videos translate into the nature of the exhibit as a whole. The gallery will continually shift between both a formal viewing space and a music and events venue with every component synthesizing to create a unified visual experience giving the participant a view into the multifaceted nature of Worley’s work and background.

Michael M. Koehler // In Between
(September 16 2011 - October 29 2011)

Review of exhibition in the Creative Loafing.

Review of exhibition on Burnaway.org.

Artist section >>


Exhibition Statement

In Between is life.  This body of work focuses on humanity and how it interacts with the ever changing now. In looking at people and places In Between exposes a deeper truth to the moment, hinting to the past and documenting the constant changing of the present. 

I photograph because I need to - it is my way of life and how I connect with and understand the world around me. When we are authentically and naturally engaged with another human, we are at our most vulnerable state and mutual trust evolves. The experience is the true gift. For this exchange to occur we both must become open, a gentle process that sometimes is questioned and denied. When the shutter snaps there is a hope created between the outside world and me -we are nothing without each other.

Bio

Michael M. Koehler was raised in Philadelphia and started photographing on the streets where he learned that making photographs was based on the relationship that he shared with his subjects. Michael’s initial experience in Philadelphia and the relationship between nature and the urban environment is an on-going influence on his work. After receiving a B.F.A from New York University Tisch School of the Arts, he worked as a professorial photographer as a staff photographer for both the Philadelphia Tribune and Philadelphia City Paper. Yet, his passion has always been black and white photography and the process of the darkroom, which Michael embraces through his numerous documentary projects. He has traveled extensively across the US, Central America and Europe making pictures and collecting stories and he has lectured about his work at New York University, International Center for Photography and University of Pennsylvania Law School. Michael’s photographs have been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the Leica Gallery in New York, the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, Subliminal Projects Gallery in Los Angeles, Sandro Chia Studio in Rome and the Ricoh Cube Gallery in Tokyo. Michael is a recipient of the Philadelphia Museum of Art Purchase Award, as part of the Perkins Center for the Arts “Photography 29” juried show and was added to the museum’s permanent collection, and the “Artist Wanted” Top 50 portfolio competition. Michael lives in Philadelphia with his wife and son.

Paper Twins: Gone With the Twins
(May 21 2011 - July 02 2011)

Review of exhibition on Burnaway. 
Review of exhibition on ArtsCriticAtl.com.
Review of exhibition in the Creative Loafing.

Listen to Jeremy Abernathy’s interview with the Paper Twins on AM 1690.

Get This! Gallery presents the exhibition, Gone With the Twins by the Atlanta based female street art duo, Paper Twins. This was their first exhibition with Get This!

Edgar and Nica met in Atlanta when they started working in the same coffee shop.  Their friendship was sudden, influenced by their love of art and music and new things.  Having different backgrounds, they became infatuated with each other’s cultures, sharing music and films and spending long nights telling each other stories.  Little did they know that these stories were the stepping stones of a new body of work.

Their processes of making were influenced by their research, challenging them to work with new materials.  Wood, sand, sound, grain, grass… They used everything they could to coax these stories and memories to come alive again. But memories will never come alive again.  Don’t be fooled; experiences and stories are distorted with time and after the years you end up telling your stories the way you want to remember them, romanticizing hardship, chuckling at deep-rooted superstitions and seeing the past through affection-tinted eyes. Everyone has stories.  Edgar and Nica hope you will come away from this night thinking about your own past and that you may for a moment be attentive to the power of memories. Tomorrow this night will be a memory to you and who knows what you will make of it

Jill Storthz: Woodcuts
(March 18 2011 - April 30 2011)

Review of exhibition in Art Papers magazine in the July/August, 2011 issue.
(link opens in new window, click on image to enlarge)

Read Felicia Feaster’s review of Woodcuts for the Creative Loafing here.

This was San Francisco based artist Jill Storthz’s third solo exhibition with Get This! The exhibit focused exclusively on Storthz’s reductive woodblock prints. They are each carved from a single block of Shina, a Japanese basswood.  The method Storthz use to create these prints is reductive, also called “suicide method” because there is only one block of wood used and no “going back” in the event that a mistake is made. These prints are often unique or run in a very small edition of two or three.  When the print is finished, Storthz is left with a hollowed out piece of wood so that the same image could never be reprinted.

artist website>>

Life Iconic
(January 22 2011 - March 05 2011)

Print show curated by: Jiha Moon

Review of exhibition on ArtsCriticAtl.com

Get This! Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition Life Iconic, a group print exhibition curated by Atlanta based artist Jiha Moon. Life Iconic showcases exciting emerging/mid career artists whose works engage with the idea of iconography in life. Iconography is evident in all of these artists’ work, and is drawn from subjects as varied as everyday life, nature and pattern, minimalism and abstraction throughout the exhibition. For some of the artists it appears in a bold and graphic style, for others it is as their subject or an inventive device, and for yet others it may be a subtle undercurrent.

This exhibition explores the notion of printmaking as a point of departure, and also questions the relevance of the distinction between “original” vs. “multiple” art objects. As opposed to traditional painting or sculpture, prints have long been considered affordable types of original art work- this can be quite misleading in this exhibition. For many of the works in this show break from the traditional conventions of limited-edition art prints. Several monotypes and one unlimited edition are included. Printing has become a medium that artists experiment and explore all aspects of; conceptually, technically, and formally. It is no longer simply something that is done as a means to create multiple images- although obviously that is still part of it.

This show contains works that were not only generated as hand-pulled prints, but also painstakingly drawn digital prints, found prints as sculpture, moving images made out of hundreds of etching prints, meticulously hand paper-cut linoleum prints, spontaneously approached mono-prints, maximal approached screen prints with over 40 colors, and photo process based monotypes as well.

Artists in the show:
Mattew Craven
Terri Dilling
Tim Eads
Peter Feldstein
Peregrine Honig
Kakyoung Lee
Adam Palmer
Hannah Skoonberg
Christine Tillman
Jason Urban

Emanate Car Show
(November 20 2010 - January 15 2011)

Review of exhibition on Burnaway >>

Get This! Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition Emanate Car Show, by Veronica De Jesus. This is Veronica’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will consist of all new car drawings done in Veronica’s signature style of white artist ink on paper.

Emanate Car Show: to flow out, to come out from a source.

“The catalysts for my work are always rooted in the personal; I put faith in the deep history of reasons. Cars are beautiful monsters.  They are visionary machines, emblems of mobility and luxury, progress and nostalgia.  For over a century (the Model T went into production in 1908), they have been as integral to the American dream as liberty or the pursuit of happiness.  We have built our cities to accommodate them and structured our habits to suit their requirements.  I am fascinated by how elementally they have shaped our culture, how they have become vehicles not just for our bodies but our aspirations. 

I spent much of my childhood in cars, moving from place to place.  The freedom that cars represented was very important to my family.  No matter how difficult things became, we could always escape—all we needed was a car and the open highway.

The cars that I have focused on for this show are very inspiring to me.  They are Impalas and Chevelles and Firebirds from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, drawn from images that I find online.  I also look at cars that have been forgotten, but for a brief period had some gust of attention surrounding them.  They are cars that personally excite my heart, so beautifully made that when I see them they immediately give my imagination permission to fantasize and to dream.  It is interesting—and appalling—to me that something so beautiful, that I love so much, can have such a disastrous impact on our world.  Our planet is beginning to share the consequences of the excess of our needs.

My white gel pen and my patterns on paper act as a portal into a space where I can spend time focused on peace.  As I draw my lines and make up my designs, I search inside myself, and examine my own spirituality.  I have always relied on the act of drawing to invent a place where my mind can rest—a place where I can search for resolutions to those things in life that don’t make much sense to me:  Why do we have so much and why we are always adding more?  What is the relationship between beauty and waste?  I struggle not to be selfish and not to be caught up in my talents and myself.  I have to keep myself in check through prayer and through my always-deepening faith in God.  These drawing are the result of my attempt to come to terms with the difficulties that this content presents to me. 

My car show focuses on the balance between earth and technology, and also on the beauty of design, the beauty in patterns, and the beauty and majesty of our imagination.  I have used these beauties to fill my spirit through drawing.”

-Veronica De Jesus

Free People of Colour (and other pictures)
(September 25 2010 - November 06 2010)

Group photography exhibition curated by Santiago Mostyn

Review of exhibition in Art Papers Magazine

Exhibition included works by:
Craig Mammano
Michael Koehler
Santiago Mostyn
Dinah DiNova

Exhibition was in conjunction with Atlanta Celebrates Photography

Harrison Keys: Pressure Luck
(July 24 2010 - September 04 2010)

Review of exhibition on ArtsCriticATL.com.

Sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer

Harrison Keys’ second solo exhibition with the gallery.

Harrison Keys’ persona is imaginative, introspective, mysterious, and secretive. A deft draftsman in his own right, the drawings evoke the innocent coyness of classic children’s book illustrations. He is also a wordsmith, and the text that accompanies his drawings is injected with cryptic adult humor and wordplay. His drawings are nothing short of seductive, as the images have a pop surrealist sentiment that is largely playful, and at times cynical. 

Thousand Kisses, In My Living Room: A one-day peformance piece by Gyun Hur
(July 17 2010 - July 17 2010)

“With the absence of history or paradigms that speak to that which is feminine, Korean, American, and Other, I attempt to piece together a story lost in translation.  At the intersections of U.S. labor and immigration policy, minority discourse, and cultural production lay a story of Korean-American women whose shifting identities do not conform to feminist, minority, or nationalistic narratives. Recovering the past through piecework speaks to the need to open spaces where choosing history is not complicit with suppressing identity.”
- Helen Haejin Cho, Machine Dreams

I often find my father asleep on his couch.  I hear sermons on Truth by evangelical pastors on a Korean television channel.  My mother listens, too, while obsessively washing the dishes as if she is cleansing her own regrets.  The houseplants thrive with my mother and father’s daily care.  I feel as though a small section of my grandmother’s garden has been planted inside of my living room.

Why is it that I gravitate towards cutting garments?  The only way I know to redeem such destruction would be through a mere installation that I may call ‘sentimental’.  I cannot quite understand how this act of cutting might resolve itself.  Garments are obsessively cut in my hands with scissors for hours.  Perhaps I am trying to visualize the hours of rituals in remembering the past and acknowledging the present… mending something within myself.

I kiss the houseplants, emulating the adoring care they have received from the ones who bore and raised me.  I whisper the prayers my parents taught me, hoping for my own regrets to wash away.  I watch and I listen.  I fall asleep, savoring every word, sound, and image- allowing them all to converge as a poetic panorama, rather than an aching reality. -Gyun Hur