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Three exhibitions confront the troubled present through reclamation of the past

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Paula Henderson’s ‘Structures and Strictures’ is on view now at Johnson Lowe Gallery. (Photo courtesy of Johnson Lowe Gallery)

Heartthrob music stars, the architecture of public schools and decaying store signage. An icon of rock ‘n’ roll, the structures backing education and a symbol of loss and decay. These three emblems, disparate though they may seem, serve as battlegrounds for reclamation — a struggle to recapture agency. 

At Hawkins Headquarters, Isaac Mehki grapples with the masculinity of Elvis Presley, dubbed the “King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.” At Johnson Lowe Gallery, Paula Henderson maps the shapes informing our schools and their inevitable collapse. At whitespace gallery, a group exhibition grasps for straws of hope in the face of capitalistic hell. These three exhibitions together offer a united effort, reaching across societal gaps and finding a way forward.

At Hawkins Headquarters, Mehki presents his solo exhibition The King & The Great Whitewasher (through August 25). A multimedia exhibition encompassing painting, sculpture, video and performance, the variety of mediums in this exhibition reflects an equally multifaceted subject: Elvis Presley. 

For the last year, Mehki has been living as the dead musician, embodying his mannerisms, charisma and aesthetics. This performance, an artwork on its own, serves as the basis for all other artworks in the exhibition. In The King & Our Confederate Dead (2025), Mehki-as-Elvis is seen dancing alone in front of a Confederate monument — a snapshot capturing a moment from the last year’s ongoing performance. 

In The Rockin’ Rebel & the Poppy Fields (2024), cans of hair gel, polaroids of the artist in costume and a leather jacket adorn a cradled canvas painted with crimson, fuchsia, periwinkle and black. The artifacts used to maintain the performance have now become part of another piece altogether. A certain messiness pervades this exhibition — paint is gobbed on in dollops; sculptural elements intersect, overlap and obstruct one another; text is almost never seen uncorrupted. This messiness complicates the clear presentation of any one thing, muddying the waters rather than clarifying them. 

In his performance, Mehki reclaims an iconic figurehead, but he also contests it. The King is not simply a swarthy singer. He is a white man from the South in a time of segregation; he is a makeup-donning performer; he is a womanizer. History isn’t always kind, and it especially isn’t in this case, but Mehki’s embodiment of it is so mesmerizing, it’s easy to get swept away.

At Johnson Lowe Gallery, Henderson presents her solo exhibition Structure and Stricture (through September 13). Using a variety of visual motifs — from the human body to basketball courts to construction sites — Henderson attempts to dissect the complex social constructs which underpin our society. 

Henderson achieves this through repetition. In Court[ed]BeMine[3] (2007), the lines of a basketball court serve as the foundation of the composition. A large central court is framed by a series of smaller courts around its perimeter, appearing almost like a decorative border. Using a color palette of grays and reds, this composition glowers with malevolence.

Much like saying a word continuously until it no longer seems real, so, too, do these courts lose their meaning. Alone, one court would communicate the language of sports and competition. Seen in a cascade, as in this work, the lines become divorced from their context, and the associations that are normally tethered to them melt away. This is the most powerful aspect of Henderson’s exhibition — complexity, no matter how intricate, can be reclaimed by something as simple as repeating oneself.

At whitespec gallery, Kate Burke curates the exhibition Rubberneckin’ (through August 30), featuring Antonio Darden, Reuben Bloom and Matthew Evans. As seen in the exhibition text, “As the world ends, we inevitably watch as things burn.” Despite the veritably gloomy introduction to the exhibition — one which portends catastrophe and destruction — this exhibition is contrarily whimsical. 

The exhibition opens with Matthew Evans’ Dark Side of the Moon (2025), a sculpture composed of a ball — featuring both a smiley and frowny face — floating and spinning above its dais. Seeing the ball spin, alternating between smiling and frowning, I am reminded of kinetic store signage, the kind found in front of restaurants that inexplicably remain open in a dead-end town. Simultaneously humorous and desolate, this artwork appropriately surmises the pathos of this exhibition. 

Further inward, the antics continue. In Fed (2025) by Antonio Darden, a monitor is hidden behind cheap venetian blinds. The monitor plays a video of a man heckling the viewer, goading them and pulling up his camera as if to take a photo of us. Undeniably creepy, this artwork is reminiscent of when a relative tells a questionably racist joke at Thanksgiving dinner. You want to look away but can’t, so you awkwardly laugh instead. It is precisely this awkward tension that imbues the exhibition with magnificence. 

Many times the world around us can feel like it’s on fire, and we are the dog sitting amidst it trying to console ourselves by saying “This is fine.” But this exhibition shows that even with the most catastrophic thinking, reclamation can be found by declaring our agency. Like the musicians on the Titanic who played a song while the boat sunk, we, too, can assert ourselves even in the most dire of circumstances.

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Leia Genis is a trans artist and writer currently based in Atlanta. Her writing has been published in HyperallergicFriezeBurnawayArt 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.





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