ATHICA: Athens Institute for Contemporary Art, Inc. presents “Southern”

Sam Seawright, The Poet's House (Moth), 2001

ATHICA is showing its 44th exhibition, “Southern,” beginning this Saturday, Jan. 21, and running through Sunday, March 4. The exhibition features many new works exploring the emotional depth and aesthetic diversity of nine artists across four generations.

Through photography, video and sculpture, the artists present a visually rich installation that tests the boundaries between art and religion, aesthetic and documentary practice and folk and fine art.

Exhibition highlights include documentary photographs of the interior and exterior grounds of the St. Paul Spiritual Holy Temple in Memphis, Tenn.; a multimedia work addressing the relationship between the Hope Scholarship and the Georgia Lottery; and a controversial painting referencing the Ku Klux Klan that was once removed from a faculty exhibition at Gainesville College by its president.

Participating artists are Stanley Bermudez; Drék Davis; Hope Hilton; Ted Kuhn; Michael Lachowski; Judy Rushin; Sam Seawright; John Seawright; Steven Thompson; and James Perry Walker and the family of Washington Harris of the Saint Paul Spiritual Holy Temple.

The exhibition’s opening reception will be held on Saturday, Jan. 21, from 7 to 9 p.m. The curator and assistant curator of “Southern” are Judith McWillie and Lauren Williamson.

Work Sparks Heated Reaction

According to Art Daily, Kalispell, Mont., resident Kathleen Folden, 56, entered the Loveland Museum Gallery in Loveland, Colo., and used a crowbar to break the glass guarding a 12-panel lithograph titled “The Misadventures of the Roman Cannibals.”

The exhibition, which opened in mid-September and features the work of 10 artists, has garnered protests and been decried as obscene.

The target panel of the print, by professor Enrique Chagoya of Stanford University, portrays Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act. The work also includes comic book characters, Mexican pornography, Mayan symbols and ethnic stereotypes.

Folden reportedly was seen breaking the glass and grabbing the print, which tore the panel featuring Jesus Christ. As she broke the glass, she was heard screaming, “How can you desecrate my Lord?”

Though the exhibition has been protested all week and there have been suggestions to remove Chagoya’s work, he maintains he never meant to offend anyone with his work.

He says, "I critique the institutions and my disagreements with the way the church corrupts the spiritual. People might disagree with my views, my art, but I'm not trying to offend anybody."

The Loveland City Council decided on Tuesday to leave the art on display. Folden was arrested on Wednesday on a charge of criminal mischief.

[Image courtesy of nzherald.co.nz]