Alfred Conteh: The Sweet Spot

Published by Clark Atlanta University Art Museum (CAUAM) and Kavi Gupta on the occasion of the exhibition The Sweet Spot at CAUAM, Atlanta, Georgia, September 23, 2018–June 30, 2019.

CAUAM's two-part exhibition of Alfred Conteh's works revisits his Two Fronts and Tetanus series inspired by daily life in areas of Atlanta where mostly African Americans reside. Taking its name from one of Conteh's landscape paintings, the exhibition highlights the tensions between the rhetoric of Atlanta's renaissance and the reality of many of its residents, and explores the notion of freedom in relation to living one's best life. This double-sided, two-part catalogue chronicles the exhibition and situates Conteh's oeuvre within the African American fine art tradition and expressive cultures of the American South.

Part one presents Conteh's landscapes inhabited by people and colossal, otherworldly beings. Part two features portraits of African Americans from the southside of Atlanta. Some individuals dream or reach for something better; others simply try to make the best of their circumstances. In the two parts together is the sense that the sweet spot is not only a specific place but a territory of the mind.

Texts by museum director and exhibition curator Maurita N. Poole, Tina Dunckley Fellow TK Smith, and Philip Barcio. Designed by Alex Kostiw.

Published by Clark Atlanta University Art Museum and Kavi Gupta, 2019, hardcover with jacket, 112 pages, 11 x 8.75 inches.