Author: Davin Watne

Stream

February 13^th – March 24^th

Reception: Tuesday, February 14^th, 11 AM – 12:30 PM

 Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 6

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce Stream. This exhibition highlights a selection of experimental videos and animations from the Media, Art and Design Studio Art program in 2022. In these short works the students showcase a variety of techniques and concepts explored in their classes.

Please join us for this exciting exhibition and support our students.

Participating Artists:

Rebekah Branson, Adriana Colina, Ashley Davis, James Devero, Seth Dunfield, Curtis Franklin, Carter Galloway, Estrella Hernandez, Zarifa Imanli, Kirsten Markley, Andra Okoye, Angela Ramirez, Mary Reust, Emma Taylor, Angela Vetaw-Brinkley, and Gabe Wisniewski

Viral Currency

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 8th, 5 – 7PM

 The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce Viral Currency, an exhibition of student works from the Fall 2022 Installation and Interactivity course in the Studio Art program at UMKC, taught by professor and media artist Barry Anderson. The course culminates in this exhibition in which students engage in material and spatial experiments in the gallery environment. These multimedia installations range thematically from comments on current social and environmental issues to sensory explorations. Please join us for this exciting exhibition and support our students.

Participating Artists:

Madison Bittner, James Devero, Lewa French, Nathan Gano, Thecla Okwara, Reid Peterson, Eric Quinones, Emily Sellers, Naifu Shi, Kevin Tran, Emerald Westley, Leigh Woody

Please note that the UMKC Gallery of Art will be closed over the winter break from Dec. 16^th to Jan 17^th.

Covid-19: Labor Camp Report

Piotr Szyhalski

September 8^th  – November 18^th

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 15, 5-7 PM

Artist Lecture: Thursday, September 22, 7-8:30 PM

The UMKC Gallery of Art, in partnership with the Kansas City Art Institute, are pleased to announce Piotr Szyhalski’s Covid-19: Labor Camp Report. 225 black and white propaganda-style posters, wheat pasted across the gallery walls, each correspond to a day between March 24^th and November 3^rd of 2020. They chronicle the historical, social, and political crises of the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, and speak to the universality and the urgency of that moment.  

Szyhalski posted a new black and white ink drawing to social media (@laborcamp) each day of the project. What began as an individual witness of his thoughts and feelings in lockdown quickly grew into a continuing dialogue with audiences. Some of the text and images drip with sarcasm and rage, others inspire hope and solidarity, still more connect Szyhalski’s Polish heritage with higher philosophies about our limited time on Earth. The iconography of raised fists, soaring birds, money, police, coffins, resilient nature, is combined with poignant text pulled straight from headlines and protest slogans. The resulting compositions appropriate the form of propaganda to communicate dissent.

Born and trained in Poland, Piotr Szyhalski has worked in the United States since 1990, and began his ongoing project “Labor Camp” in 1998, guided by the motto, “We Are Working All The Time!” His wide-ranging multimedia practice explores extreme phenomena, communication/exchange, and the relationships between the individual, society, history, and time. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and he is a professor of media arts at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The artist will present a lecture in the UMKC Gallery of Art on Thursday, September 22, from 7 – 8:30 PM.

Updated Fall Gallery hours: Monday-Thursday 10 AM – 3 PM

from left to right, works by: Angela Ramirez, Mattie Peter, Trey Banning, Abigail Wendlandt

2022 UMKC Student Art Exhibition

April 28 – May 13

Opening Reception: Thursday April 28, 5-7PM

Awards presented at 6pm

 Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 6

Participating Artists: Trey Banning, Deborah Baxter, Jessica Cordle, Danielle Camerlinck, Maria Baez-Cupul, Ashley Davis, Devon Dewey, Gabrielle Depew, Lindsay Marie Doyle, Mai Nhu Duong, Vincent Fallis, Aliah Fisher, Curtis Franklin, Daniel Garcia-Roman, Austen Gerlt, Nathan Gano, Vic Kepner, Kirsten Markley, Lauren Markley, George Vegeta Mendez, Jason Nalley, Thecla Okwara, Mattie Peter, Angela Ramirez, Mary Beth Reust, Stephanie Romero, Patricia Searing, Emily Sellers, Mollie Stanek, Sara Unrein, Sam Ventrillo, and Abigail Wendlandt.

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to announce the 2022 UMKC Student Art Exhibition. The exhibition features the work of 32 UMKC students in a wide variety of media, including painting, photography, video, animation, printmaking, graphic design and augmented reality. The opening reception will be 5 – 7 p.m., Thursday, April 28^th. Scholarships and Awards will be presented during the opening reception at 6 p.m.

Andrew Mcilvaine served as the juror for the exhibition. Mcilvaine is a Mexican American interdisciplinary artist, born in San Antonio, Texas. Mcilvaine creates work about displacement and replacement and how these issues affect cultural and personal memory, identity, and sense of self. Mcilvaine earned his BA in studio art from the University of Missouri – Kansas City and attained his MFA from Washington University in St. Louis in painting and drawing. Currently, Mcilvaine lives and works in Kansas City and holds a visiting lecturer position in the foundation program at KCAI.

GRAYSCALE

WILLIAM TONEY

February 10 – March 25

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 3, 5-7pm

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to present Grayscale, recent work by William Toney. The exhibition includes street photography, Still Lifes, and installations that explore urban landscapes, detritus, and assemblage to contemplate contemporary Black culture.   While commenting on larger currents of race relations and socio-economics, Toney’s work also represents and normalizes Black joy and intimate instances of everyday life in America. 

Toney’s work investigates facets of a Black American experience. He mixes fine art, pop culture, and advertising aesthetics, to highlight art’s limitations in representing his entire culture. His Still Lifes couple found and personal objects to mix socio-political and autobiographical elements. Toney is looking at the contrasts between growing up black in Kansas City while consuming blackness as a part of popular culture. In his street photography, he uses devices such as typological photography to create narratives. A time-lapse of a midtown Kansas City business that was a part of his daily commute, Honk, explores themes of abandonment and urban revitalization that result in gentrification trends around the country. Toney’s work combines personal and political symbols to acknowledge the coded presence of these materials and objects in American culture.  

William Toney is from Raytown, Missouri. Toney earned a B.F.A. in photography from the University of Missouri – Columbia in 2012. He currently lives and works in Kansas City, MO. He is a recipient of the 2020 Charlotte Street Studio Residency.

Updated Spring hours: Monday/Wednesday: 9-11, 1-4. Tuesday/Thursday: 10-4, Friday: 12:30-4

Sweet Chariot: Chrome, Cruising & Community 

Lowrider Bikes in Kansas City

 Featuring works by: Diverse Ones Bike Club • Olathe Leadership Lowrider Bike Club • Envied KC Bike Club • Ray Vann

February 11th -April 3rd 

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 11th, 5-7 pm, RSVP required

Free Parking in the Cherry St. Garage, level 5

The UMKC Gallery of Art is pleased to introduce Sweet Chariot: Chrome, Cruising, & Community, Lowrider Bikes in Kansas City. Lowrider culture developed in the Southwest United States in the 1950s, as an expression of Latinx aesthetic style. Lowriders initially began with the restoration, renovation and adornment of cars, and eventually Latinx youth mirrored this art through bicycles. The production of lowrider bikes is a community effort where individuals pull together resources, technical skills and funding to build aesthetic objects that express community, cultural pride, material wealth and freedom.

Today this has blossomed into an art form practiced by young and old from different backgrounds and communities across the country. These bikes go through a rigorous process that starts with old steel framed Schwinn Bicycles obtained second-hand then modified, customized and accessorized to become glamorous, functional, moving sculptures. The UMKC Gallery of Art presents an exhibition of sculptures and documentation of the community that forms around the creation and presentation of these artistic and cultural objects here in Kansas City.