The Bakery Atlanta invites you a one-night gallery exhibition featuring the work of Benjamin Rouse, Arianna Khmelnuik and Danielle Brutto.
Boka investigates the rituals we are initiated into and participate in, in our collective attempts at accessing the mysteries in the cycle life and death. These rituals may take form in how our physical bodies are used intimately in creation and destruction, in how the subconscious manifests our taboos and desires in our shared dreams, and in our ability to transcend sense and reason through beauty.
Admission is donation based.
Stay for House Plants, a dance party post show: https://www.facebook.com/events/259700091664439/
Benjamin Rouse:
“Silo” is a collection of seven figures privately confronting their own mortality. Each individual is eternally stuck within this heightened state and fundamentally getting what they really want. To best explore this concept, I drew from the symbolic imagery of my Mormon upbringing and reengaged with the confusing emotions surrounding my earliest memories.
Throughout my youth, I participated in rituals within the Atlanta temple and came to understand our actions as attempts by the living to overcome death and hopefully be granted eternal life. Although I have been damaged by the faith and no longer accept the validity of these rituals, there are still aspects of this struggle against death that I find undeniably heroic and universal. Collectively overdosing on hope, these repetitive rituals have the side effect of making one feel physically intoxicated as well.
Similar to the identical temple garments adorned by all participants in our groups, each figure within the series is covered in a layer of white body paint. This has a democratizing effect visually and is essential to the loss of self necessary to transcend.
Each subject can also be seen in a dialog with structures composed of live flowers which, for me, have always represented the shared line between life and death. On the one hand, what could be more synonymous with life than a mass of blooming flowers? On the other, flowers have a funerary aspect and it is unknowable from the photographs if they are giving life to the figures or gradually decomposing their host.
In short, "Silo" acknowledges the seductive power of being initiated into a mystery.”
Arianna Khmelnuik:
Haya constellation altar, floating sculpture contains delicate scent of spermidine, explores and reflect the inaccessibility of intimacy beyond taboos.
Haya (Arabic: هيا) is an Arabic word derived from the word hayat, which means life. Haya Constellation Altar as a visualization of hermaphroditic harmony between feminine and masculine elements, the fragile plaster petals of an abstract anthropomorphic shape of the lotus (Padma (Sk., पद्म; lat. Nelumbo nucifera), which personifies the creative (feminine) womb, covered with soft silicone were formed from various parts of artist’s body, like shoulder, wrist, chest, waist bend.
The scent inside the lotus passing through the hose as a masculine symbol is spermidine, originally isolated from semen, which is assemble polycationic aliphatic amine to exhibit multifunctional vital roles in cell survival. Spermidine is broadly a longevity agent in mammals due to various mechanisms of action, which are just beginning to be understood. It enhances memory recovery through the improvement of sense of smell and vice versa, improves tolerance against drought and salinity in plants and regulates their growth. Variety of dietary sources of spermidine can be found in aged cheese, mushrooms, soy products, legumes, corn, and whole grains. Its character of odor is ichtyal, ammoniacal.
The listed aspects and symbolism erotically merging in a body of work Haya Constellation Altar. Taboo desires and fears expressed themselves in dreams or in myths. Guilt and innocence exist simultaneously. The idea that there can be innocence without a sense of guilt is an illusion.
Anyone who interacts and perceives an Altar can find their own narrative based on various aspects of sensory stimulation.
Danielle Brutto:
"My paintings explore creation/destruction and life/death cycles through abstraction. Paint and paper are applied and removed in layers until a scene begins to reveal itself. By abandoning control over the material, I engage it in dialogue. The work unfolds like a meditation or a dream. Images emerge from the natural tendencies of the material, the resulting artwork moves beyond the idyllic serenity of representational landscape painting and arrives at a more wild, fragmented, and agitated image, capturing the allusive vividness of the subconscious and dream worlds: one that lives in the past, present, and future simultaneously."
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Most of our event spaces are readily accessible and all can be made so. A primary venue entrance is via a ramp and we have an accessible restroom.
If you have any accessibility questions or needs, feel free to email us at hello@thebakeryatlanta.com
The Bakery is a Safer space. We do not tolerate discrimination, hateful speech, disrespect, or violation of personal boundaries. We do our best to maintain these policies in all aspects of our operation but if you experience or witness behavior that makes you uncomfortable please do not hesitate to inform a staff person. We are here for you, we will listen, and will do our best to address any situations that may arise.
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