Kemper at the Crossroads is the site of this year’s exhibit of works by winners of the prestigious Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards. Since 1997 the annual award has given more than $632,000 to 88 visual artists, including unrestricted $10,000 grants to this year’s recipients, Madeline Gallucci, Shawn Bitters and Rodolfo Marron III.
Gallucci’s resume has been steadily growing since she graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2012. She has been an artist in residence at the Hotel Phillips, the Charlotte Street Studio Residency (formerly known as the Urban Culture Project) and is also co-director of the Front/Space gallery.
At first glance, it’s easy to compare her paintings to the iconic drip paintings of Jackson Pollock, but Gallucci’s works also embed recent sources. At Kemper Crossroads, the artist painted directly onto the walls and columns of the gallery in a pattern reminiscent of the ever-present Solo Jazz Pattern that has adorned Solo cups, napkins and paper plates for over 20 years.
Gallucci compares her paintings to the Magic Eye book series, a staple of most ’90s childhoods, in which 2D patterns transform into 3D images if you look at them correctly. But perhaps the most magical thing that happens when looking at Gallucci’s enormous, unstretched canvases by also in the show, is when small gusts from the air conditioner cause the canvases to ripple, creating an optical effect that one could easily mistake for those old optical illusion books.
A 2005 Rhode Island School of Design graduate, Shawn Bitters currently teaches at the University of Kansas. Bitter’s enigmatic “Volcanic Exclamations” prints displayed in the show are based on rocks he found in Iceland. Each image shows volcanic rocks exploding out of clouds of smoke and each print also has map of Iceland and a map key of sorts in which each rock is given a letter. By matching the key to the rocks in the image, you can decode messages, often sexually suggestive, ranging from “Kiss Me” to more provocative commands.
In the exhibition catalog, writer Annie Raab notes Bitters’ lifelong fascination with geology and his upbringing in the Mormon faith, which teaches that mankind helped God create the earth. “Maybe I’m attracted to (the landscape) because I helped make it,” Bitters said, remembering this childhood lesson. While his sexualizing of the landscape may seem odd to some, other groups like the Australian artists Pony Express have been exploring eco-sexuality in projects such as “Ecosexual Bathhouse” at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne.
Rodolfo Marron III, also a Charlotte Street resident artist, is the youngest of this year’s winners, but he has quickly been gaining fans in the Kansas City art scene after exhibiting at the Kiosk Gallery, Garcia Squared and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.
For this exhibition, Marron chose to focus on his past and family, dedicating different portions of his installation to his parents, siblings and the family’s Mexican heritage. Marron’s installation feels like a religious shrine, built out of keepsakes, photographs, miniature cacti, wallpaper, religious icons, small drawings, books, jewelry, and his signature butterflies and beetles.
Many of the small drawings included in the installation relate to Marron’s personal mythology of animals and ghosts, and most of the drawings are created with natural pigments from locally harvested plants and berries. Being dependent on natural materials, Marron works almost like a gardener, keeping track of which seasons will provide particular plants and animals for his artwork.
While the gallery space is perhaps a bit too large for such a personal presentation, once you start examining the smallest details of Marron’s display, like a chain and pendant that dangles off a small shelf, or a tiny drawing of a ghost in barely visible ink, you begin to feel a sense of intimacy with the artwork.
Overall, the 2016 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards exhibition is a great presentation of three unrelated, but extremely talented artists. With grant money in hand, these artists are set to tackle even more ambitious projects in the year to come.
“The 2016 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Awards Exhibition” continues at Kemper at the Crossroads 33 W. 19th St., through Jan. 8. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday and 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. Friday. Free. For more information, 816.753.5784 or www.kemperart.org.
