Saturday, November 8th, 2008 from Saturday, January 10th, 2009
Urban Culture Project is excited to present two new exhibitions together featuring recent work by nearly twenty Austin-based
artists never before seen in Kansas City. The result of a collaboration with Okay Mountain, an artist collective and artist-run
gallery in Austin, Texas, the shows open Saturday, November 22, 6 pm at Paragraph Gallery and Project Space, 21-
23 East 12th Street in downtown KC.
TEXPOSÉ: NEW ART FROM AUSTIN at Paragraph gallery, curated by Kansas City-based painter Grant Miller and Charlotte Street Foundation Associate Director Kate Hackman, features the work of six Austin artists selected through image reviews and studio visits conducted in Austin this summer. Featured artworks, which include drawings, paintings, mixed media works on paper, videos, and a live performance on opening night, were selected by the curators with an eye toward complementing work being made and seen in Kansas City. Specifically, the show highlights experimental performance-based video work, while also including works that demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and labor-intensive process. Interests in pop culture/subculture, consumerism, the built environment, and utopia/dystopia are woven throughout the exhibition.
IT’S GONNA BE REVERYTHING at Project Space is a group exhibition of artworks and site-specific installations by the Okay Mountain collective, who will spend more than a week in Kansas City prior to the opening. This new series of works seeks to highlight the collaborative way in which the group maintains its gallery and wealth of duties. Works featured are as diverse as the members themselves and include drawing, video, sound, and large-scale sculptural installation. To produce these elements, the collective draws on both their aesthetic and conceptual similarities as well as their differences to find new ways of working together. The result of these experiments often reflects the group’s hard work and initiative paired with an equal passion for the light-hearted and whimsical.
The other component of this exchange project, SLOW COOKED: NEW ART FROM KANSAS CITY, runs November 8-December 13 at Okay Mountain, 1312 E Cesar Chavez Ste B, Austin, Texas.
Curated by Okay Mountain co-director Sterling Allen from image reviews and studio visits conducted in Kansas City this summer, the exhibition features work by Marcus Cain, Michael Converse, Colin Leipelt, Kacy Maddux, and James Woodfill. Though the formal and conceptual aspects of the five artists chosen for Slow Cooked are very different, Allen views “a solid commitment to an idea and the patience necessary to carry that work into fruition,” as a unifying characteristic of the work. Carnal Torpor, a collective comprised of Colin Leipelt, Ashley Miller and Seth Johnson, perform live at the opening. This collaboration is Urban Culture Project’s second exhibition exchange project, following TRUCK, a St. Louis exchange/collaboration with White Flag Projects in 2007, which culminated in an exhibition of St. Louis artists presented at UCP’s la Esquina venue, curated by Kansas City-based artist Barry Anderson, and an exhibition of Kansas City artists presented by White Flag, a non-profit space in St. Louis, curated by director Matt Strauss. This Austin-Kansas City exchange was instigated by Grant Miller and Sterling Allen, who met as artists in residence at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Upstate New York.
For the photos of this event, check out our flickr.
ABOUT URBAN CULTURE PROJECT:
An initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, Urban Culture Project creates new opportunities for artists of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming. The concept for Urban Culture Project emerged through extensive conversations with and support from individuals in the arts and business communities oriented toward furthering Kansas City’s development as a dynamic center for artists and contemporary art. For more information, visit charlottestreet.org and urbancultureproject.org or e-mail [email protected].
ABOUT OKAY MOUNTAIN:
Founded in 2006 in Austin, Texas, Okay Mountain is an artist-run gallery committed to enhancing Austin’s appreciation of global contemporary art by showing diverse works, partnering with cultural and social institutions, and providing a place for artists to work and exhibit. Okay Mountain believes this is possible by drawing on diversity, hard work and the support of friends who share our goal. As a group they have hosted over 25 exhibitions, many live music events, worked with over 100 different artists, opened a studio workspace for local artists, and continue to show their own work individually and as a collective. Rarely presenting their own work at the gallery, Okay Mountain has presented collaborative exhibitions elsewhere, including at the Creative Research Lab, Austin, TX.
ABOUT THE CO-CURATORS:
Grant Miller earned his MFA in Printmaking and Drawing from Washington University, St. Louis, in 2003. Represented by Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City, he has exhibited internationally, with solo exhibitions at Byron Cohen, Kansas City; Black and White Gallery/Chelsea, New York, NY; Pele Prints, St. Louis; COCA Millstone Gallery, St. Louis; and Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, IL. His work has also been featured in group exhibitions at Byblos Art Gallery, Verona, Italy, curated by Tatiana Flores; Museum of Fine Arts, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL; Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; AR Contemporary Gallery, Milan, Italy; Urban Culture Project’s The Bank Gallery, Kansas City, MO; Studio 107, Austin, TX, and elsewhere. Miller has completed artist in residency programs at Cite Internationale des Arts Residency, Paris, France; Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY; Djerassi Resident Artist Program, Woodside, CA; Artists’ Enclave at I-Park, East Haddam, CT; Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT; and Urban Culture Project’s Studio Residency Program at the Bank, Kansas City, MO.
Kate Hackman earned her BA in Art History from Williams College in 1995, then worked as Assistant Director of Exit Art, a non-profit, multi-disciplinary contemporary art space in New York City, 1995-1998. After relocating to Kansas City, she served as Founding Editor of Review magazine 1999-2003, and has contributed art reviews and art-related writings to publications including Review, the Kansas City Star, New Art Examiner, Ceramics Monthly, and Sculpture, as well as to exhibition catalogs for museums and galleries including the Daum Museum, Belger Art Center, and H&R Block Artspace. She has curated programs and exhibitions for Exit Art; Leedy-Voulkos Art Center; Greenlease Gallery, Rockhurst University; H&R Block Artspace at KCAI; and Urban Culture Project’s la Esquina, Paragraph, and Project Space galleries. In addition, Kate has taught at Kansas City Art Institute and frequently lectures and serves on panels about artists and the arts community in Kansas City. Kate has worked at the Charlotte Street Foundation since 2003 and chairs its Urban Culture Project Curatorial Committee.
Sterling Allen received his BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin in 2003. He was a co-director of Camp Fig gallery from 2004 until the gallery closed its doors in 2006. Together with 8 other Austin artists, he founded and currently co-directs Okay Mountain gallery. He has shown at the Austin Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and various galleries across Texas including Art Palace in Austin and Road Agent in Dallas, and received residencies in Nebraska, New York, and Vermont. Upcoming events include the Artpace International Artist-In-Residence Program in San Antonio, Texas (Jan. 2009) and a summer residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, Nebraska in 2009.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS FEATURED IN TEXPOSÉ:
Erin Curtis received her BA from Williams College in 1999. In May 2007, she received her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Curtis’ large-scale paintings and collages explore our relationship to modern architecture and interior spaces. Her work was exhibited at Unit B in San Antonio, at Lawndale Art Center in Houston, as well as in the 2007 Texas Biennial. In 2007, Curtis is a Fulbright scholar and will be traveling to India in 2009. Upcoming exhibitions include a solo show at Women and Their Work Gallery, Austin, in October of 2009.
Ryan Lauderdale was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and earned a B.F.A. in Studio Art and B.A. in Art History from the University of Texas at Austin in 2005. His work has been exhibited throughout the U.S. and Texas, and his video works have screened with the Austin Museum of Digital Art, Cinematexas, and Current Space in Baltimore. In recent work, Lauderdale has applied the art-nouveau-inspired stylization of the late-1960s poster and album-cover art to drawings based on photographs of individuals and groups, including youth church camp portraits. Intensive patterning overtakes each figure, melding them into a total design that may allude to losing oneself in music, religion, sport, etc.
Erick Michaud received an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture during the summer of 2006, and recently curated an exhibition of video art presented by Okay Mountain. Michaud moves between painting and performance, video and drawing in his work, to create narratives that are intimately tied to memories of his hometown, a dying paper mill town called Madawaska, Maine. Dark and psychologically charged, Michaud’s projects center on fictional characters inspired by memories of Madawaska, giving visceral form to their imagined interior lives.
Jill Pangallo is a video and performance artist born in Baltimore and raised in Southern California. At age 17 she headed to New York City and in 1993 received a BFA in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design and a BA in Psychology from Eugene Lang College. For the next 12 years, she spent her days working at a major advertising firm in New York City and her nights performing on the downtown club and cabaret circuit. In the Fall of 2005, Jill relocated to Austin to pursue an MFA at the University of Texas, where she currently teaches. Pangallo’s work has been featured in exhibitions including “Reality Show” at Women and their Work, Austin; “20 to Watch”, Austin Museum of Art; “TRANS,” Atlantic Works Gallery, Boston, MA (curated by Leonie Bradbury); “Few, Some, Many More,” Creative Research Lab, Austin, TX (curated by Jade Walker);and “Impossible Exchange,” Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX (curated by Lynne McCabe), to name a few. She has performed live at venues including Joe’s Pub, New York, NY; the Knitting Factory, New York, NY; and Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY.
Joseph Phillips earned his B.S in Art and Art History from Skidmore College, Saratoga, NY, in 2000. He has presented solo exhibitions at venues including d berman Gallery, Austin, TX; University of the South Art Gallery,Sewanee University, Tennessee; Robot Gallery, San Antonio, TX; and Plan B Gallery, Austin, Texas; and been featured in group exhibitions at venues including Austin Museum of Art, Austin, TX; Gabriel Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; Highland Gallery, Marfa, TX; and Dunn & Brown, Dallas, TX. He is co-organizer of the Texas Biennial and co-director of Bolm Studios & Gallery. Phillips’ work explores the intersection of nature and culture, specifically the idea of utopian natural environments as architectural and infrastructural constuctions.
A Virginia native and recent transplant to Texas, Virginia Yount takes inspiration from diverse aspects of the Texas landscape, such as the hills, deserts, greenbelts, and natural caverns. An avid camper, Yount is interested in the Texan terrain as well as the architectural structures that humans have imposed on the land in order to best enjoy it. Her paintings combine references to the American landscape with man-made objects and structures, creating a dialogue between the organic and the synthetic. Yount’s work has been exhibited at venues including Creative Research Lab, Austin, TX; Mass Gallery, Austin, TX; Else Madsen Gallery, Austin, TX; and UTSA Satellite Space, San Antonio, TX.
