Lil Yachty, Bowery, and a Room That Won’t Explain Itself

The Hole on Bowery radiates with the tact of a good host. Soft light falls that neither flatters nor scolds. Concrete steadies visitors’ steps; the walls drink in color, absorbing warm light and creating a mellow atmosphere through neutral-toned surfaces that minimize glare. The gallery exhibits a certain restraint, preparing the room for an exhibition that resists explanation. Canvases yield their small seductions: velvet fades where spray lines die to mist; a raised seam of paint catching the edge of a lip; red hashmarks tickle like heartbeats around the eyes and noses of the canvas subjects. At the height of the entrance wall sits “Slawn x Lil Yachty,” polite but uninterested in a grounded thesis. Visitors can observe the aerosol, breath, burst, and brief silence in the quiet room.

24 HOURS IN ATLANTA promises what its name implies: an accelerated rhythm of artwork saturated with the city’s culture. It includes 13 new paintings, two evenings for the public, a small constellation of printed tees, and for the early birds, the worm takes the form of collaborative sneakers, perhaps proof of taking part in an installation. These are quick paintings, but not sloppy ones. A mauve cowboy with sharp yet smudged razor teeth leads out of a chalky green field, hat brim drawn with an unrepentant gesture. In another, Patrick Star, rendered to a bruised pink against a sky blue background, sinks toward the lower edge as if gravity found him first. The visuals are uncomfortable, but that is the exhibit’s point. The paintings feel wrong. Faces stare almost too directly, characters tilt at awkward angles, and flashing colors pierce the pupils, the palette pressing rather than pleasing. They deny the viewer the myopic emotional closure that pop iconography is designed to provide, and thus, viewers must individually determine how to feel. In this sense, discomfort is invitational, creating a deliberate space where meaning is negotiated through personal creation rather than transformed from piece to mind.

Lil Yachty, an Atlanta rapper, has been defined by an embrace of color, play, and an emotional take on hip-hop. He positioned himself against rap’s seriousness, favoring a softer absurdity. His presence adds a hushed curatorial willingness to influence the vibe of the works with a pop of sweetness. The pop-up, with its halo of merch that attracts consumers rather than observers, reflects a larger ecosystem of The Hole—and other galleries—where images are destined for hoodies and t-shirts rather than the gallery’s original pop of charm. Though bare with hints of commerciality, details in the works suggest otherwise. Olaulu Slawn, the Nigerian graffiti artist, grants his figures oxygen; drips misbehave, ruining rough contoured lines of Elmo’s shoulder and chest; horizons sneak into rigid faces, looping over ears and hands; the mauve cowboy lingers as a complete portrait, ridiculous, and fanged with memory. 

The show respects observation. There are no proclamations, nor a didactic reef of wall text, nor choreography to instruct the viewer to stand in a certain position. Cold light from industrial LEDs is left unsoftened, and under it, aerosol sparkles. Slawn and Lil Yachty are content with that gamble. They know the pleasures of the gallery are as much tactile as iconic; the feathery edge of a pass, the full-bodied curve of a line that measures the exact reach of a wrist.

The pace, however, flattens the experiences. Many canvases share an almost passport-like composition; a frontal head and shoulders crop pressed flush to a picture plane, eyes forward, background over-saturated. The template is efficient, yet repetitive. Where Slawn and Yachty tilt a figure or allow more of the ground to remain unsettled, the paintings lengthen. When they do not, they resolve far too quickly, optimized for impact over reverie. The exhibition also draws heavily from a thinly selected archive: Sesame Street, SpongeBob, a touch of Major League Baseball, and images that arrive already loaded with affection. At their best, Slawn and Lil Yachty bend these images into inventions rather than mere citations. However, the paintings stop at caricature, an image simply borrowed for its instant recognizability rather than transformed through meaning. 

You’ll leave The Hole with a certain ambivalence, admiring the discipline of subtle decisions: the contained light, careful labels, and a willing silence from a crowd that unnervingly positions itself in front of certain paintings for an Instagram selfie. For now, the paint smell wafts down Bowery: dangerously bright, a half-kept promise.