Construct Gallery puts pedal to the metal with ‘Next Exit’

Atlanta gallerist Beau Allen Collins was just 20 years old when he accidentally jammed up Times Square with a truck full of paintings. Originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, Collins had moved to New York City to study art and quickly discovered his provincial roots granted unique access to the elite world of curators and collectors: Unlike most of his cosmopolitan peers, Collins had a drivers license. 

“My very first assignment was moving art to an apartment off Fifth Avenue during rush hour, and there was a specific entry point that I was supposed to hit, but I came out the wrong way. I’m in this huge box truck and everyone’s screaming at me,” recalled Collins. “It’s my first time driving a truck in the city, and I’m literally in the worst place possible.”

Ten years on, automobiles play another significant role in Collins’ career as founder of Construct Gallery. Launched in October 2025, the Blandtown space was previously a garage for classic cars, complete with oil stains and gas fumes that its new tenant worked countless late hours to remove. 

Renovations complete, Construct’s current exhibit adopts motor vehicles as its central focus. Next Exit, a group show comprising works from 11 artists — plus an actual Bentley — explores the emotional and practical function vehicles play in people’s lives. Mediums range from acrylic paintings to found objects to intricate porcelain casts — every piece reflecting the maker’s unique relationship to America’s dominant form of transportation.

For some, this association is straightforward. “I love cars,” said designer Logan Wayne White, whose gas station-inspired table, Nothing Good After Dark, is sanded to a glossy black automotive finish. White’s austere plywood furniture shares the same shape language as his personal vehicle, a hard-angled Ineos Grenadier. “The boxier the better,” he said.

For United Kingdom-based sculptor George Hinks, the motoring theme summons feelings of recent familial loss. “My mum got ill, so I was driving a lot,” said Hinks. “By the time she passed away, I drove 10,000 miles from London back and forth to Portsmouth.” 

On his final trip home to stay with his mother, Hinks’ Peugeot broke down, requiring a pricey tow trip and repair. Hinks demanded the garage give him the faulty clutch so he could incorporate it into his work, a small side table titled Waiting Room. “It cost me such a huge amount of money I was like, ‘I need to use it, because I still feel resentment for it.’”

A second Hinks piece, Still a Tender Age, elevates a chrome grill into a shrine for his mother with the addition of a single candle. Hinks acquired the vintage car part while relocating his father to a home previously owned by a Jaguar enthusiast. “With something that beautiful, the hard work is done by itself. It’s just finding a way to delicately and elegantly install it.” 

Emily Baker, an assistant professor of sculpture at Georgia State University, similarly repurposes found objects in her work. Sinews Underfoot is a series of four relief prints taken directly from a long haul truck tire she found on the side of the highway. The illustrated rubber sidewall, once used as the base of a road construction pylon, handily fit in the bed of Baker’s Toyota Tacoma. “I’m schlepping work all the time, so it’s nice to have a vehicle that I can load a bunch of stuff.”

Baker, who regularly visits industrial sites to collect donated materials for her students, is fascinated by the presumption of authority granted when driving specific vehicles. 

“It’s interesting how I can shape-shift in that truck. I can’t have too many bumper stickers because I need people to think I’m a contractor if I park somewhere weird. Showing up with a big red truck opens doors in a different way.”

To multidisciplinary artist Artemus Jenkins, cars are simply a tool for getting around town. Jenkins owns a pragmatic Ford Focus, but he admires other Atlantans’ automotive passions from a documentarian perspective. His mixed media collage, Simpson Rd., combines nature imagery with photographs from car shows and Ben Hill Day, a neighborhood celebration, where a motorcyclist is captured doing a burnout. 

“The work that I’ve created is centered in appreciation of the Southern aesthetic, which is very much ‘Build it up. No matter what it is. Make it into something,’” Jenkins explained. “In Atlanta, you could have a beat up box Chevy, but, as long as it’s got some rims or a nice system, it’s understood that you are building that car up to be something else.”

The ethic Jenkins described could easily apply to Construct Gallery itself — a greasy garage turned stylish gallery, re-imagined by an art handler and master framer who spends most of his time on the road in purely utilitarian vehicles. 

“You know, I find art is a necessity the same way I find a sprinter van is a necessity to transport things,” said Collins. “Everyone has a relationship to a vehicle being something, at the end of the day, that gets them from point A to point B. Physical transition from place to place is kind of similar to how art operates with ideas.”

Next Exit will remain on view at Construct Gallery through March 28.

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Dustin Timbrook is a creative generalist working in art, film and music. He volunteers on the board of directors for the Avondale Arts Alliance. Timbrook loves spending time with his family, playing with dogs and gardening.