This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
Looming over four areas in downtown Atlanta, digital billboards are hosting a monumental art intervention in the urban space.
“Extension of Nature,” produced by Arts & Entertainment Atlanta and organized by curator Birney Robert, features the 10 artists’ works that commandeer outdoor advertising space — not for commerce but for creative expression. The billboards, which will be up through July 31, allow the artists to reorient commercial spaces to contemplate the natural environment.
Each of the four locations is devoted to a theme drawn out by Robert: plants and seeds, imaginary environments, relationships, and plastics and waste. All the videos are short — most less than 30 seconds — and are sandwiched between much longer and generally glitzier advertisements.
Margaret Mitchell Square
The Square, at 140 Peachtree St. NE, is the site of the “plants and seeds” theme. Here, Peter Bahouth’s video in triptych, “Vent” (2016-2023), stands out. Typically working on the intimate scale of stereoscopic viewing contraptions (think high-end View Masters), Bahouth goes large, presenting gushers of what looks like smoke in saturated hues billowing through dense foliage.
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
The color combinations — purple, green, blue, fuchsia — are heightened and appear both seductive and dangerous. It’s as if an abused Earth has risen to seek revenge.
Mark Leibert’s “Bloom” (2005) similarly casts blooming flowers. Rotoscoped from a 1950s Monsanto Chemical ad in flat, bright colors, they both are alluring and slightly uncanny.
Iman Person’s “New Air” (2021) presents unassuming globes of wild, weedy plants in a desert, blowing stiffly in a breeze. You can imagine pollen spores, thistles, seeds and all manner of contingent life taking flight in a moment. According to Person, the flight is tied to notions of memory, global movement and diaspora.
Reverb by Hard Rock
The Reverb by Hard Rock hotel, at 89 Centennial Olympic Park Drive NW, houses the “imaginary environments” theme. “Prana” by Daniel Phelps (2023) engages movement by seeming to animate an entire segment of the north-facing facade of the hotel. In a stunning feat of digital trompe l’oeil — or highly realistic optical illusion — a rusted, disused cellphone tower appears to sway from within the building before being reclaimed by a relentless growth of vegetation.
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
The billboard also displays Inspired Action Design’s “Photosynthetic Diodes” (2023) and Chanell Angeli’s “Soul Mother” (2023). The Inspired Action Design work features a shimmering mosaic of animated blocks that flow and assemble into organic, plant-like shapes. The flowy, collage-like composition from Angeli depicts Black women in loving mutual attention, both embodying and engulfed in richly colored flora. Angeli’s practice of using tactile and sculptural elements is translated here to architectural scale.
Peachtree City MARTA station
At 235 Peachtree St NE, just outside the rail station, are Supratim Pait’s “Bread & Butter” (2023) and “Close” (2023). As part of the “relationships” rubric, they are in some ways the inverse of Phelps’ “Prana.”
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
Within the kaleidoscopic animation of “Bread & Butter’s” blooming 3D flowers, small vignettes of daily urban life erupt and retreat: people on the street, a lively discussion, joined hands. In “Close,” a couple dances in silhouetted outline, just as we humans figure out our relationships with each other and the wider world.
101 Marietta
A trio of works at the 101 Marietta St. NW skyscraper tackle the “plastics and waste” theme. Sculptor, installation artist and environmental activist Pam Longobardi has been shining a light on the issue of plastics in the Earth’s oceans since 2006.
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
Courtesy of Arts & Entertainment Atlanta
In “Drifter’s Project Sites” (2008-2013), Longobardi reveals the process of dredging plastics out of the ocean through documentary film stills.
The video closes with a rapid-fire montage of worn and discarded plastic trinkets retrieved from the sea: scarcely identifiable items such as combs or a spatula that have taken on the patina of an archaeological find. Longobardi imbues the artifacts with a timeless beauty, even as they signal disaster for the Earth.
Rounding out the theme, Bojana Ginn’s “Plastic Gene” (2022) sculptures explore the use of organic and synthetic polymers in abstract forms, and Kevin Beasley’s micro-documentary, “Bulk Amnesty” (2023), puts a spotlight on East Point garbage collectors as they retrieve the bulk refuse shunted off by residents.
At mostly under 30 seconds, the videos in “Extension of Nature” are too short to expect the kind of space required for extended contemplation. But for the alert viewer, they may be enough to punch a small hole in the thrum of daily existence. They provide a “wait, what was that?” moment as an unfamiliar image flashes across a screen and the creative voice rings out.
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Cinqué Hicks is a Warhol grant-winning art critic and writer who has written for Public Art Review, Art in America, Artforum.com, Artvoices and other national and international publications. He has served as senior contributing editor of the International Review of African American Art and as interim editor-in-chief of Art Papers. He was the founding creative director of Atlanta Art Now and producer of its landmark volume, i.
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