Curator Tour

William J. O’Brien art is born out of an improvised and intuitive studio practice, rich in material experimentation. Through drawing, painting, sculpture, and ceramics, O’Brien explores the traditional and historical application of materials, but also employs play to refute such definitive uses. He has exhibited internationally; major exhibitions include shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville; the Renaissance Society, Chicago; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin. He is an Associate Professor of Ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Erin Jane Nelson (b. 1989, Neenah, WI; lives in Atlanta, GA) received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art in 2011. Her work has recently been exhibited in “Between the Waters” at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and “Photography Today: Public Private Relations” at Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich. She has had solo shows at Document Gallery, Chicago (2015, 2017) and Hester, New York (2015) and was included in ATLBNL: The Atlanta Biennial at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2016) among numerous group exhibitions at Downs & Ross, New York (2017), Honor Fraser, Los Angeles (2016), Galerie Division, Montreal (2016), and Ellis King, Dublin (2015). She has contributed to publications including BURNAWAY, The Creative Independent, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, and Art Papers, and has curated exhibitions at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta Contemporary, and elsewhere. In 2016-17, while she and her husband, artist Jason Benson, were studio residents at Atlanta Contemporary, they operated the artist-run space Species out of their shared studio. Species continues to occasionally produce exhibitions itinerantly, most recently presenting the work of Rhode Island-based artist Harry Gould Harvey IV at Atlanta Contemporary earlier this year.

Daniel Fuller was the curator at Atlanta Contemporary from December 2014 to June 2019. Prior to this he had been the Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Maine College of Art. He has curated exhibitions at ice fishing shacks, a swap meet, the JumboTron of a minor-league hockey stadium, on public access television, and in several closets. Fuller received his MA in Museum Studies from Syracuse University. He has written for Art in America, Afterall, Art Asia Pacific, and Art Papers, Frieze, among numerous artist catalogs. He has previous curatorial experience with the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage in Philadelphia and Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in Peekskill, NY.

Tony Cokes lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he serves as Professor in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. Recent exhibitions include the 10th Berlin Biennale, Berlin; Hessel Museum, Annandale-on-Hudson; Whitechapel Gallery, London; ZKM, Karlsruhe; REDCAT, Los Angeles; SFMOMA, San Francisco; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Pera Museum, Istanbul; and the Louvre, Paris. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre George Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthallen, Copenhagen; Wexner Center for the Visual Arts, Columbus; and Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, among many others. Work courtesy of Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, and Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).

Y. Malik Jalal was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in the Atlanta area. He received a B.A. from Oglethorpe University in 2016, He is currently an MFA candidate in Sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Jalal is a metalworker by trade. His work engages with the black family and legacy, it is concerned with a material discourse of resistance, labor, and refuge, Jalal had a solo exhibition in 2019 at the Alabama Contemporary Art Center, and at MARCH gallery in Manhattan, among others. He has also curated exhibitions at the Hi-Lo Press, and the Alabama Contemporary and recently had an essay published in Art Papers.