Richard Dial | American Idols
April 10 @ 6:00 pm - June 27 @ 5:30 pm
Johnson Lowe Gallery is pleased to announce two new exhibitions opening April 10th, 2026.
The gallery will present American Idols, an exhibition of sculptures by Richard Dial spanning 2006–2025, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition with Johnson Lowe Gallery in Atlanta. Known for transforming metal furniture into anthropomorphic forms, Dial brings together his signature chair works alongside rarely exhibited freestanding figures. The exhibition takes its title from American Idol, one of two non-chair sculptures on view, referencing the early-2000s television competition where performance and public judgment shape outcome.
Across the exhibition, Dial’s sculptures articulate a shared language of posture, pressure, and presence. The chairs read as bodies, carrying histories of labor, family, and the cultural landscape of the American South, while the figurative works heighten themes of devotion, spectacle, and longing. Together, these works form a cohesive meditation on visibility and belief, where steel becomes a conduit for human experience and the conditions that shape it.
