"Pure / Surrender" New work by BORN & MICHI July 10, 2010

Beep Beep Gallery is proud to present "Pure / Surrender" a joint exhibition of new work by Atlanta artists Born and Michi Meko. While both artists come from more of a painting background, "Pure Surrender" continues each artist's recent work with assemblage. They've both expressed a love of old discarded wood because of the varieties of tones and textures available, as well as the challenge working with such materials presents. After being asked to exhibit in this show, Born and Michi worked toward collaboration, and seeing as how they had a shared love of trash finds and street art, the combination seemed well fitted. However in discussing their ideas about creating these found works, the artists discovered that their similar processes didn't necessarily belie similar intents. Michi's employs this bricolage purely as a stream of consciousness approach to creating work, allowing him to imbue meaning into objects that have been broken down and stripped of any. His art addresses themes both personal and worldly: racism, the African Diaspora, Southernism, and the functions of the brain as they relate to contemporary social interactions. Born on the other hand views assemblage as completely visual, extracting and assembling elements of found objects based on their shape and color. He works out the visual alignment of his work from these pieces through combination with minimal alteration, surrendering as much to their inherent visual aesthetics as their former functions. Together these artists promise to create an interesting exhibit.

Michi and Born have both exhibited with Beep Beep Gallery in the past: Michi in a collaborative show "Brer" with Dosa Kim in 2008, as well as his solo exhibition "Fear Kills Pursuit" in 2009; Born in a collaborative show "Hense/Born"with Hense in 2007, and his solo exhibition "Relief" in 2009. Prior to the opening, we'll be posting preview images on our Facebook page, so please check in there for more of their work.

MICHI MEKO – A multi-disciplined and colorful personality that has established himself as a pre-eminent creative, with an uncanny ability to inspire an urbanized aesthetic that is innovative, challenging and thoughtful. Graffiti influenced, expressionist paintings, often including coded text and images from popular culture. Many of the works are assembled from neglected objects, old boards, and furniture. The works allude to conditions both physical and psychological. His work is a proclamation of strength, perseverance and remembrance. Michi is one half of the painting collaborative TindelMichi. He is a member of the painting collective Sunday Southern Art Revival better known as SSAR and member of S.O.S Sons of the South collective.

BORN - Like many kids growing up in the city, the artist known as BORN spray-painted his pseudonym around town. But it was less an adolescent marking his territory than an artist creating designs. He discovered M.C. Escher and marveled at Leonardo's blend of fine art, science, invention and mechanics, at which point his letter-forms ”the basis of graffiti” began to change. His style became more gridded and mathematical; more abstract; more art than text. The abandoned buildings and polluted underpasses, places where graffiti thrives, still inform the aesthetics of BORN's fine art, as does his career as an auto mechanic. He incorporates the grime and trash of those derelict spaces with the grease and rust of the auto shop to compose images of beauty from castoffs and found objects, allowing the materials to guide his creative process. BORN's influences range from Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Vladimir Tatlin and Kurt Schwitters to his parents, who restored and decorated their 1910 family home in Atlanta's historic Inman Park neighborhood.

BORN has exhibited in Atlanta at Foundation One, Young Blood and Mint galleries; at The Rabbit Hole, Defoor Centre, Eastside Lounge and Aurora Coffee Little 5 Points; at Mason Murer Gallery (with Hense and Sever) and in a solo show at Beep Beep Gallery. BORN has also exhibited works at DB5K Gallery in Baltimore and has executed commissions for Scion Autos and International Hits Records.