The Atlanta Contemporary Displays Southeast Art In Biennial Exhibit

March 7th, 2019

The exhibit is called “A thousand tomorrows” and it is running through April 21.

Myke Johns / WABE

What is happening in visual art in the South? The Atlanta Contemporary can probably tell you better than almost anyone right now.

They are hosting their 2019 Atlanta Biennial exhibition now which features the work of 21 artists from 10 states, and it paints a picture, if you will, of the deep complexities and diversity of the region.

The exhibit is called “A thousand tomorrows” and it is running through April 21.

The Contemporary’s Daniel Fuller co-curated the show with Phillip March Jones, founder of Institute 193 in Lexington, Kentucky. The two traveled around the region visiting hundreds of artists to select work for the Biennial.

“The mission was to just get out,” Fuller tells “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes, “get in the car and go see all of these people, to drive around 10 states. To take dirt roads to dirt roads to drive to artist-run spaces, just to see as much as humanly possible, as much art as we can that’s being made in the South right now.”

“Collectively, the thing that we really focused on,” he says, “you know, a lot of biennials skew younger… we always think of the Whitney Biennial as ‘these are the hot new artists, this is what you’re going to be looking at in the near future.’ For us, we wanted to go back to a few people that we felt might have been a little overlooked that have been working in the South for a long while. We wanted to bring them back into the fold.”