Nashville, Tennessee
Contemporary Art Gallery237 Rep. John Lewis Way N. 37219
Tuesday—Saturday
10 a — 5 p
615.255.7816
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EXHIBITIONS
UPCOMING:
Caitlin Blomstrom, Morgan Ogilvie, & Ripley Whiteside | Suspect Terrain
RECENT:
Paloma Wall & Hannah Rose Dumes | Shell Game
TINNEY/20
Wendy Walker Silverman | A brief pause between two mysteries
Upcoming Exhibitions
04.11.2026—05.30.2026
Suspect Terrain
Caitlin Blomstrom, Morgan Ogilvie, & Ripley Whiteside
05.13.2026—05.16.2026
Future Fair—New York City, NY
Megan Greene & Kimia Ferdowsi Kline
06.06.2026—07.04.2026
TINNEY x whitespace
07.11.2026—08.22.2026
Devin Balara & Nick Fagan
08.29.2026—10.10.2026
TINNEY x New Hat
10.01.2026—10.04.2026
Atlanta Art Fair
10.17.2026—12.05.2026
Tiffany Calvert
Past Exhibitions
TINNEY is proud to present Shell Game, a two-person exhibition featuring works by Hannah Rose Dumes and Paloma Wall. The exhibition will be on display from February 21 through April 4, 2026. The opening reception will be Saturday, February 21, from 6 to 9 PM, followed by an additional reception in conjunction with the Second Saturday Art Crawl on March 14 from 6 to 9 PM.
Hannah Rose Dumes’ abstract oil paintings feature an ecstatic use of intense hues, each piece its own celebration of color, a carnival of intersecting shapes and vibrational color relationships. Dumes paints in oil on top of a foundational layer of acrylic washes. It’s an open and exploratory process that embraces personal symbolism and ambiguity. The forms are familiar, bearing subtle reference to the body or to nature, but remain implacable. Dumes’ universal, unassuming set of symbols—flowers, spirals, eggs, shells, breasts, suns—melt into one another like overripe produce on an impossibly hot summer afternoon. The works elicit a giddy sort of headrush, like bees drawn to flowers, color-drunk.
Paloma Wall’s totemic ceramic vessels are bent, pierced, horned; some even seem to weep large ceramic tears, like surrealist memorial urns. Form and function seem to wrestle for prominence in Wall’s expertly hand-crafted works, which sprout appendages from their alien-like abdomens, some of which sport large cavities where the stems of flowers might rest in a more traditional vase. It’s as if the vessels have adapted like plants over millennia to survive in their unique environments: with camouflage, vestigial limbs, predator-deterring thorns, and bright poison-warning coloration. This sense of animism, deftly imbued in such a delicate medium, is the magic of Wall’s works.
In these intermingled bodies of work, some immediate meaning lies hidden; concealment emerges as a method of preservation. The personal is abstracted, a form of encryption—ambiguity as defense. Like a shell game, odds are one-in-three, place your bets! Eye on the ball, watch closely! But the game is rigged, and the ball, spirited away by sleight-of-hand, is nowhere to be found.
︎︎︎ Exhibition List
Tinney Contemporary is proud to present A Brief Pause Between Two Mysteries, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by local artist Wendy Walker Silverman. The exhibition will be on display from November 21, 2025 through January 3, 2026. The reception will be on Saturday, December 13, from 6 to 9 PM.
Silverman’s paintings feature hard-edge forms that shift and tessellate across the surface of the canvas. The artist repeats, reflects, and transforms shapes in dynamic compositions that reference architecture and environment. This process is guided by intuition, an exploratory approach to abstraction inextricable from the artist’s personal meditative practice. Through this carefully-ordered geometry, traces of the artist’s hand remain by virtue of her fluid, responsive approach to composition.
Carried out in her own always-evolving color palette, the forms seem to vibrate by virtue of an Albersian color interaction. By exploiting various acrylic mediums and varied opacities, Silverman further complicates these color relations through transparent top layers which allow the history of paint to shine through. This pentimento deepens the shifting composition and color interaction, yielding an inviting sense of depth—distinct from the flatness that is emphasized in much geometric painting.
This dynamism invites the viewer to play at pareidolia. What do you see? Vague impressions at first—but the longer you look, things begin to take shape: structures, landscapes, figures. Eyes, ears, arms. The sun setting over the sea, afterimage burned into your retinas, still there when you shut your eyes.
︎︎︎ EXHIBITION LIST
TINNEY celebrates its twentieth year by showcasing an expansive group exhibition, kicking off its 2026 program. The exhibition will be on display from January 10 through February 14, 2026. The opening reception will be on Saturday, January 10, from 2 to 9 PM in conjunction with the Downtown Arts District’s Second Saturday Art Crawl. There will be a public closing reception on February 14, 2026.
TINNEY/20 features the works of over 50 painters, sculptors, and photographers living and working in Tennessee who have exhibited works with the gallery, in its various incarnations, over the past two decades. The exhibition will be a moment to reflect on the gallery’s enduring legacy as a reliable institution whose voice has helped define the vibrant visual arts community in Nashville.
TINNEY has occupied its current space since 2006, when Susan Tinney sought a permanent location for her habitual pop-up exhibitions, which had hitherto taken place in her living room and in friends' homes. Since then, an engaged coterie of makers, collectors enthusiasts have propagated in and around the gallery. This “recollection” is a celebration of the joys of making and sharing work, of survival, and of what we continue to cultivate together.
︎︎︎ View comprehensive exhibition list
Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Space Scape, a solo exhibition featuring multidisciplinary works by Houston-based artist Lovie Olivia. The exhibition will be on display from Saturday, October 11 through November 15, 2025. The opening reception will be on Saturday, November 11, from 6 to 9 PM.
Space Scape showcases Olivia’s interdisciplinary works in collage, assemblage, painting and installation, engaging multiple archives of historically marginalized communities. Her luminous processes explore modalities of retreat, resistance, rebellion and liberation. She employs distinct multilayered collage strategies by mining records, remixing archival documents and manila folders into quilt-like works with flowing forms that transgress the rigid structure of the file folder. Displayed alongside the collage works, Olivia’s vivid, multilayered “nu-fresco” paintings grapple with memory and history by excavating cumulative layers of image, disrupting pictorial space by carving away plaster.
Both methods visually consider the complexities of identity, place-keeping and record-keeping; challenging systems of forced categorization, disrupting attempted erasure, and prioritizing restoration. The works have a transcendental bent—the artist literally cuts portals into her material containers, rupturing the picture plane, unveiling networks of data and imagery—leading the viewer beyond the frame: out of facile, reductive categories and into an engagement with history, with the cosmos, and with their own place in it. Space Scape is a record of this act of remembering, of strategizing, of improvisation, ingenuity and futurity.
Women of Abstraction
Artists: Mary Long, Martica Griffin, Carol Mode, Sisavanh Phouthavong, Mildred Jarrett and Jeanie Gooden
September 1st - September 26th, 2019
Opening Reception: September 7, 2019 6-9 PM
Tinney Contemporary is pleased to present, “Women of Abstraction”, a group exhibition of new works by artists Mary Long, Martica Griffin, Carol Mode, Sisavanh Phouthavong, Mildred Jarrett, and Jeanie Gooden. In their latest exhibition, Tinney Contemporary aims to celebrate the complexities of abstraction. In not only its physical manifestation; but through its meaning, history, and energy, as well as, the artists who create it through their own unique lenses.
As a result of the lasting appeal of the Abstraction Movement, there is now an increased desire to uncover and recognize the women of the many periods of Abstraction throughout history. Vanguards like Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler — who's groundbreaking work was largely misunderstood — have paved the way for the abstract artists of the past century. In 2019, being an abstract painter holds a highly dynamic and diverse set of meanings— especially when compared to the pioneers in the previous century. Each artist approaches material, shape, color, and space in ways that uniquely reflect their own cultivated experiences and ideas.
Street Cred
Artists: Mr. Brainwash, Seen, Blek Le Rat, Risk, and Chris Zidek
July 6 - August 23rd
Opening Reception: July 6, 2019 6-9 PM
Tinney Contemporary is thrilled to share our latest exhibition, ‘Street Cred’ featuring world-renowned street artists Blek Le Rat, Mr. Brainwash, Seen, Risk and Chris Zidek. ‘Street Cred’ is curated in collaboration with Brian Greif, co-founder of the Nashville Walls Project. Each of the artists featured began their careers through graffiti, developing their own signature styles across walls, subways, billboards --anywhere they could leave their mark. The artists featured have accreditations such as the ‘Godfather of Graffiti’ or ‘The Father of Stencil Graffiti’ and paved the way for the largest art movement of the 20th century.Blek Le Rat began his career in the streets of Paris in the 1980s. He is renowned as ‘The Father of Stencil Graffiti’ and has inspired countless modern street artists through his pioneering of stencil-work. He has left his mark on walls across the world and continues to work on walls both inside and outside the confines of a traditional gallery. His large stencils can be found in Nashville as well, including new work for Montgomery Bell Academy in 2018.
Mr. Brainwash uses elements of pop art and pop culture in the language of street art. His fame grew through his influence in the critically-acclaimed film “Exit Through the Gift Shop” in which Mr. Brainwash captures the street art movement alongside Banksy and others. His work has continued to attract the attention of critics, celebrities, and art fans alike with appearances in film, music and the art world.
Seen, or Richard Mirando, began his career on the East Coast when street art was still in its infancy. Infiltrating NYC subways in the 1970s, Seen’s use of bold colors quickly stood out through his push beyond tags with imagery of comic book superheroes. This skyrocketed his work to fame in the 1980s. Seen began to show across the United States through solo shows and group exhibitions with artists such as Keith Haring, Andy Warhol, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
Kelly Risk Graval is widely revered as ‘The Godfather of West Coast Graffiti.’ Risk’s graffiti tag is reflective of his painting style. He is known as the first artist to set the benchmark for ‘Going to the Heavens’ or painting highly dangerous yet extremely visible spots such as overpasses or billboards. Risk has exhibited in major museums including LA MoMa, California Museum of Art, and numerous galleries across Toronto, Paris, and New York. Multi-dimensionally inclined, Risk has collaborated with Aerosmith, Michael Jackson, and the Rolling Stones.
Chris Zidek is a Nashville based street artist, whose work uses complex geometric forms to reference a history of pattern throughout human history. His recognizable murals can be found around Nashville in Midtown and the Gulch.
Jane Braddock | Ashes to Snow
May 4 - June 29
Opening Reception: May 4, 6-9 PM
Artist Discussion: May 4, 3-4 PM
Tinney Contemporary is proud to present new work by Jane Braddock. Her abstract paintings, based on a grid format, explore pattern and color. She considers these to be fundamental expressions of light. Like light, their juxtaposition creates vibration or energy, which is one of the original expressions of creation itself. Many of her current pieces include text culled from various sources spanning over 1000 years. These range from Du Fu, an ancient Chinese poet, to Muktananda, an esteemed holy man, to John Prine, singer songwriter. These in one way or another reflect her spiritual journey, which she considers the essence of her life and work. Braddock has a BFA from Syracuse University. After a stint of 16 years in NY designing and coloring fabrics for the decorative trade, she moved to Nashville to pursue a full time career as a painter. Though she has traveled widely, the places and cultures that have most informed her work are Asian- from India to Japan.
“I am getting older. I am softer. I am moving inside the walls of my studio and pushing out the walls of my consciousness. I am comfortable with quiet and what is still. I have never been more home. These works reflect this time of my life.
My ongoing themes remain- color, pattern, process, text, and the omnipresent grid. Because all my work is square even when the grid slips off the canvas its presence is felt.
The energy of these pieces, in spite of some bold color, is introspective and the effect suggests space. Open space. Open except for beauty. Only beauty remains. I follow. Ashes to Snow.“
–Jane Braddock
Jason Craighead | Invisible Audience
Tinney Contemporary is pleased to present Invisible Audience, new work by Jason Craighead, on display March 16 through April 27, 2019.
This body of work is the first that Craighead has painted in his new Brooklyn studio. This is significant, as the recent transition from his long-time studio in Raleigh, NC, to this new studio in the robust, artistic community of Williamsburg led Craighead to think about where he would be doing his work from this point forward, and if the audience would change along with his altered physical location. As a painter, Craighead asks who is it that we paint for each day? What “place” does it come from? What “place” does it eventually land? The simple answer for him is himself, but not in an artistically egotistical sense. The audience that drives his work each day is a mirror of sorts– a reflection of how he aligns himself to the world, moment by moment. He addresses what he gives power to, what he lets go of, what he sees in himself within, and far beyond the walls of his studio, just as each of us draws the pathway of our own lives by following in the simplest sense what we believe being human is really all about. The audience for an artist, then, is truly invisible as it is all things; it is the vastness of the human condition and all of its elements played out daily throughout generations of art and artists. Craighead believes his greatest artistic achievement would be for the viewer to be able to find his or her own reflection, or “invisible audience” within his work, whether it’s today or one hundred years from now. He addresses the powerful, timelessness of the thread of emotion that is shared by all of us.
Jason Craighead’s work is, at its core, a continuation of the artist’s exploration of the human condition, both personal and collective. Craighead’s work encompasses his recent experiences, preoccupations, and raw emotions. Our modern lives are entangled in a complicated world that is joyful, tragic, confusing, dark, wild, and brilliant. This is an experience to be shared; it is yours, mine, and ours.
Most everything starts on the studio floor to allow for what the artist refers to as “proper seasoning”, meaning while working on pieces that are on the wall, he is walking, dripping, spilling on the canvases and paper in the floor. Jason says this process, “allows for accident and mishap to become a natural collaborator” and, “is, in itself, evidence of process, of action…of me”. When a piece moves to the wall it is then shaped and formed with layers of drawing and painting until the pieces fall into a striking composition of gravity and space. The artist’s work echoes the well-known words of Edward Hopper, “If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint”. When prompted for significance and inspiration, Craighead is known to provide literary references, various lyrics from songs and snippets of poetry to communicate what feeds his creative process. The effect of his work envelopes the viewer, inciting emotional reaction and engagement with his narrative.
Represented by Cheryl Hazan Gallery in NYC and Tinney Contemporary in Nashville, TN, Craighead is developing a strong collector base, both nationally and internationally. Craighead recently had his first major solo museum exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh, NC in July 2018.
Carla Ciuffo | Portals
January 19, 2019 - March 9, 2019
Opening Reception: February 2, 6-9 PM
Second Reception: March 2, 6-9 PM
Tinney Contemporary is pleased to present Portals, a continuation of Carla Ciuffo’s exploration of integrating two dimensional artwork with moving video art and augmented reality. An exploration of alternative modes of artwork, Portals moves beyond the physical space of the gallery. Two dimensional art will become a gateway to view hidden stories. Changing the perception of space, augmented reality will release motion and energy that invites a different way of thinking about the virtual world and what a modern gallery might be. A selection of Ciuffo's animated short films will play in the back gallery, The Human Kind, with music by Tim Langford, MUSE, a collaboration with poet Avijeet Rabindranath Das and A Magic Lantern, honoring one of the original mediums of moving art.
Carla’s work lies somewhere between illustrative narrative, photography, and collage. Imagery is stripped down to its most basic elements, light and texture. Forever analyzing the enigma of being human, she continuously constructs and deconstructs the boundaries of her photographic world.
