Atlanta artist takes a jaundiced view of how the internet’s eye is on you

The artist’s drawings, done in graphite, pen, acrylic, gouache, marker and colored pencil, are often broken up into two or three visual sections piled on top of each other like the endless vertical scroll of the internet.

Dietz, 38, often places himself in his drawings: as a character in the art house film “Ex Machina,” or an Italian soccer player or Dua Lipa in lingerie and razor stubble. That ironic, pop culture infused self-portraiture speaks to the way technology has insinuated itself into every nook and cranny of our psyche, often knowing us — because of our digital habits — with a disconcerting accuracy.

“Being online makes you crazy, because you’re seeing all these things and it knows everything about you: All your data is being sold, and so then all the ads you’re seeing are specific to what category they think you fit into,” Dietz said.

His drawings often poke fun at the ever-changing zeitgeist, which currently seems fixated on men and masculinity. Headlines in Dietz’s manic collages scream “Men: the new bimbo?” “Dadcels: meet the divorced dads struggling to find love” and “Ditch the dad bod.”

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

“The works in ‘SlopWorld’ feel like Dietz is pushing back against the digital noise invasion plaguing modern life,” said New York-based curator Phillip March Jones, who has known the artist since 2019, when Jones co-curated the Atlanta Biennial at Atlanta Contemporary while Dietz worked as a preparator there.

It’s hard not to identify with the unsettling chaos and anxiety in Dietz’s drawings, Wolfgang Gallery’s founder and director Benjamin Deaton said.

“The fact that we’re all so digitally connected is still a new concept of coexistence. Our lives are divided between real-life relationships and the artificial ones we digitally create,” Deaton said.

The buzzing, frantic nature of the work feels like both a reflection of our unrelenting media feed but also a translation of Dietz’s particular hardwiring.

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

Growing up in Duluth, where he was homeschooled, Dietz has always had hustle. At age 15, he started working in the daycare at his family’s church. Deep into punk and hardcore music growing up, Dietz was also a sneakerhead who flipped Nikes for spending money. Later, while attending Georgia State University, he often worked two or three jobs.

Along with the hustle comes a streak of perfectionism. When he’s not happy with his work, Dietz takes it into the backyard and sets it on fire.

“Truett’s approach to artmaking mimics his general approach to life: disciplined and unrelenting, honest but not without humor,” Jones said.

Dietz has done almost every job available in the art world and has worked for both individual artists, including Joe Minter, Radcliffe Bailey, Scott Ingram and Joe Peragine, and institutions including former Los Angeles gallery Blum & Poe. He is currently a studio assistant for self-taught art phenomenon and musician Lonnie Holley.

Dietz said the internet’s relentless, goading algorithms targeting his taste and habits felt especially intense after his divorce in 2023. He was suddenly hyperaware — in the navel-gazing, self-scrutiny that can follow a breakup — of his tech fingerprint.

Online, he was typecast as a sober, soccer-loving millennial runner and single dad who the internet believed needed to get on some dating apps, stat. His drawings are a tsunami of G-strings, lonely Asian women, hair, lips and bikinis.

“It’s like it knows all your deepest, darkest secrets,” Dietz said.

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

Credit: (Courtesy of Wolfgang Gallery)

Dietz began the series that would become “SlopWorld” in his 900-square-foot Ormewood Park home, where he works at the kitchen counter. “I can’t work at a huge scale because I don’t have space,” Dietz said.

He decided working on a smaller scale made practical sense. He used to work in collage but the accumulation and storage of physical material — books and magazines — that art form required didn’t make sense in a small space, so he transitioned to his current 20-by-16-inch format of drawings done on mat board he buys on Amazon.

Dietz said his 15-year interest in collage hasn’t changed, just the execution: “I think I’m just drawing collages, basically. But now I’m assembling the collages on my phone.” Dietz builds the layouts for his collages in Instagram Stories, a process he discovered through relentless tinkering with the app.

The internet has gotten some things right about Dietz. As the adoring father of an 8-year-old daughter, he has ordered his life around spending as much quality time as possible with Ellery while working as much as he can.

Dietz is nothing if not practical. He knows the value of a dollar, and sources the markers he uses in his art at Ross instead of at the more expensive art supply shop Blick.

Like a Depression-era farmer, he wrings as much out of a day as he possibly can. “I was never a big sleeper,” he said.

“Truett has a truly impressive work ethic and dedication to the projects and people he engages with. He is the first one to call in a bad situation,” Jones said.

“It’s very hard for me to relax,” said Dietz, who usually eases into each day with an 8-mile run.

He has often taken his cue from the relentless output of the artists he’s assisted such as Holley and Minter.

“They are constantly making art,” Dietz said, but never resting on their laurels. Game recognizes game.

“It’s like, what am I doing next?”

ART EXHIBIT

“Truett Dietz: SlopWorld”

Through July 2. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays-Thursdays, 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays. Free. Wolfgang Gallery, 1240 Old Chattahoochee Ave. NW, Suite H, Atlanta. 404-549-3297, wolfganggallery.com.