Kansas City, MO, October 28, 2022: The Law for Falling Bodies: A Queer Print Media Exhibition will open at the Charlotte Street Gallery Friday, November 18, with an opening reception from 6:00 – 9:00 PM. The exhibit features six nationally recognized queer artists whose work overlays multi-disciplinarity print processes and queer realities.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT FROM SHAWN BITTERS AND MATTHEW WILLIE GARCIA
The Law for Falling Bodies references Galileo’s law defining how gravity affects earthbound entities and celestial orbits. For us, as queer people, the Law for Falling Bodies is an analogy for the pull toward true self, desire, family/community and for creating the spaces/realities/ universes of our own.
As queer artists, we are building on a history of LGBTQ+ artists who use print media (Warhol, The Guerilla Girls, Wojnarowicz, etc.) Print media occupies a marginalized place in the art world. Prints are both originals and multiples, undercutting traditional assumptions of rarity.
They are most often made in collaboration, refuting the myth of singular genius. As it has sprung from technological innovations created to sell merch or publish pulp literature print media tends to be dismissed as uncritical and/or frivolous. For queer artists print media easily feels like home.
As the LGBTQ+ community continues to fight to gain and maintain equality, print media is a perfect vehicle for political engagement. From T-shirts, to street art, to political prints from the Civil Rights Era, 19th century Europe, Japan, and Latin American, printmaking has a long history of provoking social change. Multiplicity and the ease with which prints can be distributed, (a perceived weakness in other artwork) is a print superpower.
This exhibition is meant to extrapolate on these ideas and more. It features a diverse group of artists who idiosyncratically employ print media to address queer realities.
Featuring: Ash Armenta, Shawn Bitters, Ruben Bryan Castillo, Matthew Willie Garcia, Kat Richards, Erin Zona
Artist talk
Friday, November 18 from 5:00-6:00 PM | Charlotte Street Campus
Exhibition Opening Reception
Friday, November 18 from 6:00-9:00 PM | Charlotte Street Gallery
Please join us for the opening reception for The Law for Falling Bodies: A Queer Print Media Exhibition RSVP Here
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET
Charlotte Street centers Kansas City’s most forward-thinking visual artists, writers, and performers—acting as the primary incubator, provocateur, and connector for the region’s contemporary arts community, and its leading advocate on the national stage. Since 1997, Charlotte Street has distributed over $2 million in awards and grants to artists and their innovative projects, and connected individual artists to each other and to the greater Kansas City community. For more information about Charlotte Street, its awards, programs, and initiatives, visit www.charlottestreet.org.
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