Dr. Dax’s evolution is reflected in companion exhibitions ‘Love Is …’ and ‘Love Was …’, now extended one week

Atlanta’s legendary graffiti pioneer Dr. Dax has been making street murals and guerilla-style art since he was 9 years old. He got his start back in the mid-1980s, trespassing onto railroad yards to tag freight trains. Now, more than four decades later, he’s attained international acclaim and is celebrating one of his boldest, biggest and most personal shows yet: two companion exhibitions, Love Is… and Love Was….

“Back in ’94, it was extremely rough,” recalled Dax about the early days of the graffiti scene. “I was always sneaking around and doing these things illegally. For it to turn into what it has turned into, it fucks with my head; it seems surreal. It shows how open-minded the city has become, putting graffiti artists in a space like this.”

Indeed, the two shows opened on June 12 right in the heart of Atlanta, at the brand-new Gallery FC and the South Lobby of The CTR (formerly the CNN Center) next door. Although a pop-up, Gallery FC is currently the only street-facing storefront at the CTR putting Dax’s cool-toned, street-inspired works on full display for passersby.

Mixing some of Dax’s newer works — including several from his last big Atlanta show, The Other Side of Paradise at ABV Gallery in East Atlanta Village — Love Was … creates an energetic yet emotional interplay between canvases and time and place. Still present are the funky vibes and bright, tasty colors, but now with harder edges, sharper outlines and contrasts, hearkening back to Dax’s early days of graffiti tagging. Displayed against the gallery’s signature black walls, the Doctor’s work has never popped so much or looked so authentically “from the streets,” while being displayed in a sleek, new gallery. It’s all part of Dax’s tradition of subverting the traditional (in traditional spaces, no less).

“We’re breaking all the rules of graffiti, which is a genre that breaks all the rules anyway,” said the artist. “I mean, 100,000 people walk by there in a day, you know, for this World Cup. So my work being in there kind of like still serves the same purpose as graffiti for me. It’s in public view, and people see it whether they want to see it or not, and I really get off on that.” 

Gallery FC opened just six weeks ago with Dax’s paintings as its first exhibition. In addition to being a nod to Atlanta’s soccer team (Atlanta United FC), “FC” also stands for “For Community,” trying to take the art world off its pedestal and make it more accessible to a broader, hipper audience. “It’s not an add-on to the CTR experience — it’s the greeting,” said Neda Abghari, founder of The Creatives Project and ASHA Advisory, who co-leads Gallery FC with A.R. “Coop” Cooper, a fellow cultural architect and one of her ASHA partners. “Having a dedicated art and gallery space right where the street meets the food hall tells people immediately that this is a cultural destination, ‘For Community,’ and art is the first thing you meet when you walk in.”

To that point, a few steps away from Gallery FC in CTR’s south lobby, visitors will immediately be greeted by Dax’s most recent and ambitious paintings at Love Is …, a mini co-exhibition of four new paintings displayed right by The CTR’s Food Works (an upscale, non-chain food court). This show includes the local artist’s largest stretched-canvas work to date, titled All We’re. The enormous centerpiece, which is on a canvas the size of a school bus (10 feet by  27.5 feet), took Dax a week to paint on location. In signature Dax style, All We’re contains a (slightly) subliminal message in organic, shape-shifty letters spilling, stretching and overlapping each other across the whole canvas. After giving the eyes time to adjust, the letters spell, according to Dax: “Time is all we’re allotted in this life. Make it count.”

Displayed under a black ceiling with starry pinhole lights, the four new paintings in Love Is … are some of Dax’s funkiest and boldest yet. Whereas Love Was … comes from a place of emotion, liberation and collecting — evoking a nocturnal cityscape — Love Is … embraces calmness and thoughtfulness and an almost tropical color scheme with hints of birds, flowers and eyes. In their own ways, the four paintings in Love Is … subtly pay tribute to recently lost Atlanta legends, including revered local artist Radcliffe Bailey and his signature sharp blue that moves through the centerpiece and cultural trendsetter and ATL icon B-Boy Joy Phrasavath. Dax says the line spelled out in All We’re (designed as an ode to B-Boy) comes from one of B-Boy’s journal entries, shared by Abghari for the project, that he read after the icon’s passing. 

The currency of time is a theme that Dax has been exploring for more than a decade through pieces such as “The value of time depends on how you spend it” and “Take your time and keep it.” It’s a message that was relevant to the graffiti giant as he designed All We’re while staying with a close friend, another missed Atlanta fixture and racing enthusiast, Wheelchair Matt, who passed away from cancer on Easter night this year. “We were just going to make this huge, grandiose piece. All this stuff is Neda’s ideas to expand it into a whole exhibition,” said Dax about The Creatives Project founder. “None of this would’ve happened without her.”

Taken together, there isn’t another gallery experience quite like Love Is … and Love Was …, marrying location, cultural memory and art in a commercial space like The CTR. It’s all part of a bigger vision of turning the former CNN headquarters into a multi-use commercial hub similar to Ponce City Market. Central to this vision is the push for more commissioned works from local artists, led by Abghari since February 2024.

“Art in public and commercial spaces, especially at this scale, does something retail alone can’t,” said Abghari. “It turns a place people pass through into a place where people are inspired to connect more deeply.”

Abghari’s been on a roll. In addition to Dax, she’s commissioned original works for The CTR (and now Gallery FC) by famed Atlanta artists including Fabian, Mr. Fangs and John Tindel.

“There’s something special about being in a space full of original art and thoughtful storytelling,” said Abghari. “That’s been the through line of everything curated through CTR Culture: Art isn’t tucked away. It’s made visible in the shared spaces and the everyday life of the building.”

After receiving a one-week extension, the two companion exhibitions will now close on July 30. But the closing celebration comes first: On Thursday, July 23, Dax will headline A Celebration, With Love, a closing night event alongside Abghari, Cooper and others who helped bring the show to life. It might seem like a far cry from where Dr. Dax started more than four decades ago, painting parked train cars, but it’s not far at all. At least not geographically.  

Recently, while taking photos of these newly installed paintings, a local approached Dax and told him he’d discovered one of the artist’s earliest works — and it was just a 10-minute walk from The CTR. So Dax and several others walked down backstreets, past old fencing, down into a gulch where, sure enough, one of the graffiti legend’s oldest tags still remained from 1994.

“I’m taken aback by it all,” said Dax. “This whole situation has made me cry a couple of times. I’m turning 50 soon, and I painted that thing down there when I was 17.”

To commemorate the moment, the Doctor made a small addition to the old tag: “Done by Dr. Daks 1994 — Revisited 2026.” 

If you go

A Celebration, With Love, the exhibiton’s closing event, will take place Thursday, July 23, from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the CTR (formerly CNN Center) south lobby (102 Centennial Olympic Park Drive NW, Atlanta). RSVP is required. The exhibitions, however, will now be on view for one extra week through July 30.

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Jeff Dingler is an Atlanta-based author and entertainer. A graduate of Skidmore College with an MFA in creative writing from Hollins University, he’s written for New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Tiny Love, Newsweek, WIRED, Salmagundi and Flash Fiction Magazine. More information at jeffdingler.org.