Review: Technical chops show at Marcia Wood, Spalding Nix, Wolfgang galleries

At Marcia Wood Gallery, “New Work by Featured Artists” (through May 3) sounds like an innocuous exhibition, a simple roundup of gallery artists, but it is alive with some unexpected surprises.

One of the good surprises was Timothy McDowell, who is represented with two oil paintings on dibond aluminum. As conveyed in the artist’s biography, “McDowell states that he feels his new paintings also serve as documents to the life-forms that are quickly vanishing from our environment; in a way, his painting becomes an epitaph.”

In one of them, “Frizzante” (2025), a globular lime green figure, seen from the torso up, floats in a barely discernible landscape. In the foreground, a large bouquet of flowers casts a deep shadow. In the mid-ground, stripes of green and pink paint describe a low wall within which the partial figure is cradled. In the background, dark trees under a smoky sky shield an out-of-view wildfire. Drizzling this umbrous scene is a kind of pink acid burn which speckles the image, giving the impression that it’s bubbling. The composition roils with near-putrid chemical colors and textures. It was almost too gross to look at, in the best way possible.

But the real showstoppers of the exhibition were Kim Ouellette’s abstract sumi ink and acrylic paintings. In “03251″ (2025), short dashes and strokes cover the large canvas. Marks of cerulean, ocher, sienna, peach, emerald and brick red roughly link together to create a scene reminiscent of Claude Monet’s water lily and garden paintings. The sheer density of small strokes causes the composition to overflow with energy, a vivacity that is uncanny for a static object such as a painting.

Despite their vast differences in materials and surfaces, these two artists show that Marcia Wood Gallery’s roster remains committed to adept exploration of the physical possibilities of a medium. Which is to say, this is an exhibition that must be seen in person.

Credit: Photo courtesy of Marcia Wood Gallery and Kim Ouellette

Credit: Photo courtesy of Marcia Wood Gallery and Kim Ouellette

‘Echoes’ at Spalding Nix Fine Art

At Spalding Nix Fine Art, “Echoes” (through May 9) is a collection of solo exhibitions presenting Caroline Bullock, Sachi Rome, Blair Hobbs and Lizzy Storm, with each artist, according to the exhibition text, presenting artworks relating to the idea of an echo.

Rome’s artwork “In Starlight Rest” (2024) embodies this theme most powerfully. A human head, devoid of any facial features or hair, bobs on an ocean of deepest blue. Above the horizon line, which rests on the lower third of the composition, a night sky of charcoal gray broods, barren save for scumbling, which creates soft changes in color.

The head’s innards are filled with transparent swirls of powder blue, ocher and black, applied in gestural strokes. The raucous mark making animates the empty visage. This is a portrait, but it is of no one recognizable. Much like how an echo loses power and definition with each reverberation, fading ultimately into nothingness, so too does this portrait. Which begs the question, is this a portrait of an echo?

‘Narcissus Pagoda’ at Wolfgang Gallery

Credit: Photo courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery and Aineki Traverso

Credit: Photo courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery and Aineki Traverso

Wolfgang Gallery presents “Narcissus’ Pagoda,” a solo exhibition of a dozen paintings and one installation by Aineki Traverso (through April 26). As stated in the news release, the exhibit “offers an intimate meditation on the intersections of myth, memory, and performance.”

I found the most successful artwork in the exhibition to be “Omphalos” (2025). A sage-toned ground is untouched save for a few scraped lines that seem to loosely describe a landscape, complete with a date scratched in the lower right corner. The power of this work lies in its starkness, for what is memory but an incomplete recollection?

Elsewhere, the exhibition feels off the mark. “Beach Day” (2025) is a massive triptych, measuring 132 inches on its longest side. Within it, a sandstone ground brushes up against dark green pockets of dense mark making — sandy shores pushed up against a lagoon.

On this beach, fragments and outlines of figures float. It appears to be a scene still in formation, rather than a fully formed one that has been partially recalled. But, if not a memory, then what myth is being explored here?

The presence of water and a swan ― potentially a reference to Narcissus moschatus or “swan’s neck daffodil,” a flower said to represent Narcissus — leads me to believe it is exploring the exhibition’s namesake, the myth of Narcissus. But the artwork fails to meaningfully explore the myth beyond some abstruse symbology.

Messy pockets of mark making pervade this exhibition. While this paint handling certainly is successful in connoting the abstract nature of memory, it leaves me wondering what could be accomplished with less, as in “Omphalos.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Kim Ouellette.

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Leia Genis is a trans artist and writer based in Atlanta. Her writing has been published in Hyperallergic, Frieze, Burnaway, Art Papers and Number: Inc. magazine. Genis is a graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design and is also an avid cyclist with a competition history at the national level.

Credit: ArtsATL

Credit: ArtsATL

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