Get This! Gallery: The Blue Flame

The Blue Flame, Ben Roosevelt’s conversion of the normally white walled Get This! Gallery into a dimly lit, wood paneled dive bar closes with a much-anticipated rock-art bash this upcoming Friday, May 11, 2012.

This exhibit is an impressive visual interpretation of a dream had by the artist in where he recalls memories in amazing detail of a night at The Blue Flame, a dirty rock bar that exists only in his sleep space. While visiting The Blue Flame, the artist conversed with well-known rockers, poets and artists on topics that Roosevelt was consciously and (clearly) sub-consciously struggling with. Along with a few other characters such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Dante, it is rocker Iggy Pop’s pink aura and the deep pensive eyes of Joseph Beuys looking on that would become a basis for sketch work exhibited within the installation.

Framed appropriately to the dive setting, the delicate works speak to conversations had by the apparitions and the artist on topics of career crisis, self-doubt and the wrenching anxiety that lives deep in the guts of most artists – and often ends them at a bar to swill it over. The particular ambiance, only hosted in vague memories of one’s night at a gritty bar is successfully reconstructed within the 800 square foot gallery space while the delicate sketches of the character inspired subject matter hang on the walls like they have been there for ages.

The installation and exhibit gracefully bridge the worlds of stinky rock and uppity art in the most perfect of loose, smart and intuitive moods. All that was before the magical The Blue Flame has vanished and viewers are invited into the psyche of the artist to experience a communal space that will never exist exactly like this again in actuality.

Watch a video of Ben Roosevelt on the exhibit here: BLUE FLAME VIDEO

Get This! Gallery exhibits emerging and established contemporary artists that collectively boast a wide range of mediums. Over the past seven years, owner Lloyd Benjamin has gathered an impressive lot of artists under his umbrella of representation, three of which were featured in the 2012 edition of Oxford American Magazine’s 100 Under 100: The New Superstars of Southern Art article (Fahamu Pecou, Guyen Hur and Heather Mcpherson).

GET THIS! is located at 662 11th Street NW, Atlanta. Hours are 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday, and by appointment. For more information, call 678.596.4451 or visit their website.