Organized by Charlotte Street Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy with special guest curator Lee Foley.
Composite Structures brings together artists who combine architectonics drawn from a range of art and architectural sources to create singular works of art. The exhibition comprises two subtitled parts: Mending Fences, curated by Charlotte Street Curator-In-Residence Jamilee Polson Lacy, which showcases Midwestern artists who apply multiple layers and manipulations—some conceptual, some formal—to the ideas of Modernist architects which feature prominently within the Midwestern urban landscape; and Low Accumulations, curated by Lee Foley, which includes Los Angeles-based artists who use assemblage and design to reflect a post-structural viewpoint and an urban sensibility unique to Southern California. Composite Structures additionally features Open Plan, a library and workspace offering another platform for exploring interchanges between art and architecture across localities and communities.
Date: Opening Reception, Jan. 18, 6-9 p.m., FREE
Location: la Esquina / 1000 W 25th St. KCMO 64108
Exhibition Runs: Jan. 18 – March 2, 2013
Exhibition Website: www.compositestructures.virb.com
Public programs: for event details visit www.compositestructures.virb.com; all events are FREE and open to the public
– Jan. 18, 6-9 p.m. – Opening Reception
– Jan. 19, 2 p.m. – Collaborative curators’ tour of exhibition
– Feb. 23, 2 p.m. – “To Scale,” an investigation of model making
– February, 26, 6-8 p.m. – “Making with Architecture” panel discussion
Featuring artists from the Midwest and Los Angeles:
Kansas City – Elvis Achelpohl, Leandra Burnett, and Sarah Murphy; Barry Anderson; and Jaclyn Senne
Chicago – Jeff Carter and Susan Giles
Cincinnati – Chris Vorhees
Detroit – Scott Hocking
Los Angeles – Eduardo Consuegra, Sonja Gerdes, Marina Pinsky, and J Patrick Walsh III
Composite Structures: Mending Fences
Mending Fences operates from this distinctly Bauhaus dialectical thought: Discord is necessary to the pursuit of harmony. The Midwestern artists featured show a multiplicity of differing, conflicting, even contradictory currents on what can be salvaged from the Midwestern Modernist utopia. Referencing the likes of European Bauhaus transplants Walter Gropius and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, each artwork recalls Modernist environments built for maximum productivity—creative, social or otherwise—and infuses them with 21st-century Midwestern notions of pleasure, pragmatism and the ability to make do. In turn, Mending Fences reveals where the Midwestern artist’s sense of recent art and architectural history intersects with the capacity to create something new.
Composite Structures: Low Accumulations
Low Accumulations explores and deconstructs the tropes of an idealized Southern California lifestyle as defined by mid-century modernist architects. Artists Eduardo Consuegra, Sonja Gerdes, Marina Pinsky, and J Patrick Walsh III use assemblage tactics to build contextual grounding for a more adaptive approach to Los Angeles. In these works, appreciation for streamlined aesthetics merges with acceptance of smoggy skylines, strip malls, late nights in east L.A., traffic. Self-reflective compositions of aggregated material evoke the inefficiencies of life in L.A. and everywhere else. Low Accumulations suggests that one must synthesize a personal methodology or lifestyle with materials at hand.
Composite Structures: Open Plan
At the entrance of Composite Structures, the curators have commissioned the design and construction of Open Plan, a custom-designed library and workspace by Kansas City-based artists Elvis Achelpohl, Leandra Burnett and Sarah Murphy. This functional structure provides yet another site within the exhibition for reflection on history, innovative thought and critical dialogue across locations and communities. The library, curated by Lacy and Foley for public perusal, contains a selection of publications, documents and objects highlighting interchanges between art and architecture. Additionally showcasing the convergence of the two disciplines right here in Kansas City, Open Plan hosts a number of local practitioners to contribute to the trajectories presented with Composite Structures.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET’S CURATORIAL RESIDENCY PROGRAM
Through its new Curatorial Residency Program, Charlotte Street Foundation is creating opportunities for outstanding emerging curators from around the country to immerse themselves in the arts ecosystem of the Kansas City region. The program provides multi-faceted support for an annually selected curator-in-residence to develop and present original contemporary arts programming responsive to and inclusive of the work of Kansas City-area artists. Teaching partnerships with the Department of Art and University of Missouri-Kansas City and Kansas City Art Institute further connect the curator-in-residence with area art students.
ABOUT CHARLOTTE STREET CURATOR-IN-RESIDENCE JAMILEE POLSON LACY
Jamilee Polson Lacy of Chicago is the inaugural Curator-In-Residence for Charlotte Street Foundation. As the Curator-In-Residence, she will organize three exhibitions and publications for la Esquina over the course of one year. Lacy founded and directs Twelve Galleries Project, a transitory, collaborative exhibition experiment. Her independent curatorial projects focus on the visions, colors, histories and ideas shared between authors, architects and artists, while her artwork and writing searches for what is lost and gained between text, image, and object. She has engaged in solo and collaborative projects with numerous creatives and institutions, including A+D Gallery at Columbia College Chicago, The Black Visual Archive, Chicago Artists’ Coalition & Hatch Projects, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Quite Strong, among others. Publications include Color: Fully Engaged, EPIC SOMETHING and numerous exhibition essays, interviews and online articles. Lacy holds two undergraduate degrees in studio arts and art history and a Masters of Comparative Literature and Arts from Northwestern University.
SPECIAL GUEST CURATOR LEE FOLEY
Lee Foley is an artist, curator and writer living and working in Los Angeles. Foley is a founding member and co-director of Actual Size Los Angeles, an artist-run gallery that has curated over 25 exhibitions since April 2010. Actual Size collaborates with established and emerging artists alike to activate the exhibition space and engage the public in the culture of the artists’ work. Events range from solo and group exhibitions to performative projects that make use of the space as a multi-faceted resource for artists. Actual Size has been reviewed in the L.A. Weekly, Los Angeles Times, Mousse Magazine, Art Forum Critics’ Picks and Flash Art International.
Foley holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History, Theory and Criticism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She also works as an educator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her practice investigates curatorial methodology as an extension of studio practice. Recently, Foley was selected to participate in the Node Center for Curatorial Studies summer 2012 residency program in Berlin, Germany. She presented artwork at The Subterraneans: The artists behind LA’s artist-run spaces at the Torrance Art Museum in September 2012.
