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Tag: Jurrell Cayetano

  • One Contemporary celebrates one year with “Inner Views: Artists at Home”

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    One Contemporary Gallery marked its first year in Atlanta with “Inner Views: Artists at Home,” a group exhibition that reimagines domestic spaces as sites of memory, reflection, and reinvention.

    On view inside the Edgewood Avenue gallery, the exhibition features work by 14 contemporary artists, many of them created specifically for the anniversary show. Together, the works explore how ideas of home, intimacy, and community are shaped by lived experience.

    Jurrell Cayetano, Jay at the Community Farm (2024), Oil, Gouache, Flashe, and color. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    The exhibition text describes Inner Views as a “collective musing on home, family and community,” using interior and lifestyle scenes to examine both everyday moments and deeper cultural histories.

    Gallery director and curator Faron Manuel said the exhibition reflects both the growth of the gallery and the willingness of artists to take creative risks.

    “It feels really good to be in the community in this way and to have people excited to come out to an anniversary exhibition,” Manuel said. “The artists really wanted to push themselves to the point where nearly half of the works in the show were created for this exhibition.”

    Michael Reese, The Notion Of Gravity (2023), Cynaotype & Mixed Media on paper. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    Manuel said the gallery is currently showing approximately 25 pieces, including a collaborative work by Petie Parker and Paper Frank that expanded the original artist list. One year in, he views the gallery’s progress as both measurable and personal.

    “We’ve clearly become one of the recognizable galleries in Atlanta,” Manuel said, noting that One Contemporary was recently named in Atlanta Magazine’s “Best of Atlanta” issue. “But personally, I feel humbled. There’s a lot of unseen work that goes into putting a show like this together, and it means a lot to have the approval of the artists and the community.”

    The exhibition’s focus on interiors allows artists to interpret home as both a physical and emotional space. Painter Ariel Danielle contributes The Morning After, a work centered on food as a shared experience.

    “I’m still thinking about food as a subject and how it brings people together,” Danielle said. The painting depicts an intimate morning scene of waffles, matcha and jam shared with an unseen companion. “It could be anybody,  a loved one, a friend, a family member. The viewer gets to decide.”

    Danielle, who also participated in the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, said the theme made the work a natural fit.

    “It’s intimate, it’s inside,” she said. “That really aligns with the idea of home.”

    Artist Jurrell Cayetano has three works on display: Jay at the Community Farm, Panther (Profile), and Paula (Asleep). Cayetano said Jay at the Community Farm was inspired by a photograph taken during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    “It was one of the first times being in contact with someone after a few months of quarantining,” Cayetano said. “Jay offered to give us some eggs from the chickens at their community farm.”

    Cayetano said participating in the anniversary exhibition feels both reflective and communal.

    “It feels great,  kind of like a class reunion in a sense,” he said.

    Petie Parker (featuring Paper Frank), Rent free (2026). Acrylic on canvas. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    For artist Petie Parker, the exhibition also became an opportunity for spontaneous collaboration. His acrylic-on-canvas work Rent Free was completed in roughly 24 hours and features contributions from Paper Frank, a longtime creative partner.

    “He was just in the studio, and he walked over and started drawing,” Parker said. “The imagery and the words were so powerful that I knew I had to build around it.”

    The piece depicts a young figure immersed in imagination, reflecting Parker’s belief that creativity often begins in isolation.

    “You might have minimal tools, but if you have your mind, you’re good,” Parker said. “There are no limits or rules to art.”

    Veteran curator Tina Dunkley, a mentor to Manuel and former director of Clark Atlanta University’s museum, attended the opening and praised the strength of the work on view.

    “I saw some really strong work by very accomplished artists,” Dunkley said. “The subjects and materials are engaging, and Faron Manuel is doing an awesome job.”

    Dunkley said the exhibition reflects a broader shift in contemporary art, where artists feel freer to experiment without institutional pressure.

    “It’s invigorating,” she said. “Learning about the artists and their materials without the stress of wondering if the work will end up in a major museum makes this a very pleasant time.”

    Manuel said the gallery is also investing in the future of the arts by welcoming student interns from Georgia State University and the Savannah College of Art and Design, offering hands-on exposure to the inner workings of galleries and the art market.

    For Manuel, the anniversary exhibition is less about marking time and more about momentum.

    “It means a lot to have the artists believe in the space and for the community to show up,” he said. “That’s how you know you’re building something that matters.”

    “Inner Views: Artists at Home” is on view at One Contemporary Gallery, 395 Edgewood Ave. 

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    Noah Washington

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  • Three Atlanta Artists Explore Identity and Memory in ‘Outside’ Exhibition

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    Jurrell Cayetano (above) standing in front of his piece, Backseat Driving, 2025. Oil on paper mounted on canvas.
    Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    Three artists with Atlanta roots are examining what it means to exist “outside” dominant narratives in a new exhibition that opened Wednesday at Hawkins Headquarters gallery.

    “Outside,” curated by Rosa Duffy, features works by Gerald Lovell, Taylor Simmons, and Jurell Cayetano. All three artists got their start in Atlanta, though two now live in New York.

    The show’s title carries multiple meanings, from literal outdoor spaces to cultural positioning within Black communities, said Simmons, who coined the name after the artists’ original concept fell through.

    “The word outside could mean ‘we outside,’ which in Black cultural consciousness we’re all aware of,” said Simmons, who moved to New York but returns regularly to Atlanta. “I love the idea of there being almost like a secret language for Black folks.”

    The exhibition emerged from years of planning. The three artists had attempted to mount a group show twice before, with previous iterations falling through. Duffy, an archivist and curator who has known all three artists for over a decade, connected them with Alexander Hawkins, who opened his gallery in August 2023 in a converted space on Old Hapeville Road.

    “They’re three of my favorite artists,” Duffy said. “They deserve to have a homecoming show.”

    Hawkins, a 2021 Savannah College of Art and Design graduate with degrees in sculpture and art history, identified a gap in Atlanta’s art scene that led to his gallery’s creation.

    “Atlanta largely lacked this middle gallery section,” said Hawkins, who began construction in March 2023. The city had “a lot of small nonprofit spaces and a bunch of larger galleries in Buckhead,” but needed something in between.

    The location choice was deliberate. “We kind of wanted to be far away from everyone else,” Hawkins said. Despite being on Old Hapeville Road, the gallery sits just outside Hapeville city limits in Fulton County.

    Taylor Simmons (above) with Shortstop in Red Clay, 2025. oil, acrylic, cast iron powder, canvas on panel.
    Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    Simmons’ four works blend personal memory with tactile experiences. His piece “Shortstop in Red Clay” incorporates cast iron powder to recreate the red Georgia clay he remembers from childhood baseball games in Douglasville.

    “There’s some things that have actual objects or tactile feelings that create a memory in your mind,” Simmons said. The painting includes a photograph of him at age 7, capturing what he calls a “cherished memory” of getting too muddy for his mother’s new Ford Explorer.

    Boots (94′ Bronco), 2025. Oil on panel. Photo by Noah Washington/The Atlanta Voice

    Lovell’s portraits, including “Lunatico”,  inspired by a Brooklyn jazz bar, and “Boots (94′ Bronco),” focus on intimate identity rather than trauma narratives often expected of Black artists. His works combine flat impressionistic techniques with thick impasto.

    “I don’t know when paintings come to me. They just kind of come to me,” Lovell said about his creative process.

    Cayetano’s five pieces chronicle nightlife through archival photographs spanning nearly a decade. Born in Brooklyn but raised in Atlanta since the mid-1990s, he describes himself as “really a homebody,” but his paintings capture “moments of zen,” “delirium and euphoria,” and morning-after reflections.

    “Every piece is kind of chronicling one stage of the night,” said Cayetano.

    The press release describes “Outside” as an assertion of presence and visibility, “an act of resistance during a time when Black folks face the counteract of being pushed underground.”

    Hawkins, a 2021 SCAD graduate who opened the gallery to fill what he saw as a gap in Atlanta’s art ecosystem, said the exhibition represents the quality programming he aims to provide.

    “It’s really nice finding exciting artists, whether they’re in Atlanta and accessible, or if they’re in Canada, New York, or wherever they may be,” Hawkins said.

    For Duffy, the exhibition demonstrates the possibilities of sustained artistic practice. Two of the artists are now represented by galleries in New York and London.

    “What I think is important about this show is to see that it’s possible to be a working artist,” she said. “They’re good representations of what rigor can get you as far as your art practice is concerned.”

     The exhibition runs through Nov. 24. Hawkins Headquarters is located at 2865 Old Hapeville Rd SW, Hapeville, GA 30354.

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    Noah Washington

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