installation view (photo by E.G. Schempf)
From larger-than-life constructed objects to carefully chosen assemblage, works by Kansas City-based artists Leon Jones and Mark Cowardin in “The Weight of Light” prompt an underlying question. What is built to last?
Jones is a former student and friend of Cowardin, a JCCC fine arts professor and owner of the artist-run gallery 3West in the West Bottoms. Jones produced a sculptural installation out of Oriented Strand Board (OSB) for his 2024 solo show “Guess Who’s Invited to Dinner” at 3West. That show spawned the idea for a collaborative exhibition since both artists use building materials, said Cowardin.
The exhibition title refers in part to chandeliers, light fixtures that became ornate in design and associated with opulence. Historically, skilled artisans crafted chandeliers out of carved wood, gilded metal and eventually crystal, for nobility, prominent clergy and wealthy citizens. Collaboratively, Jones and Cowardin constructed massive chandeliers from common unfinished building materials like OSB. Their works dispense with the facade of luxury and alleged taste tied to the nouveau riche and generational wealth. The artists built these works for public consumption, less for functional visibility and more to illuminate an economic system worth challenging, where consequential individual and collective choices bear weight and strain limits.
A chain link fence established a border around a floor-bound wood chandelier. Gallery patrons slipped past gaps in the fence and accessed the art up close. How does perspective shift once inside? How effective are barriers in a broken social, economic and political system? People find a workaround, despite measures to protect property or keep people in or out. By design, lighting on the fence and chandelier casts shadows on walls. Intangible lingering reminders thrust implications onto reality.
Extensive use of wood harks to the nation’s abundant forests that enabled settlement and development. Wood is cheaper than concrete, Jones noted. Choices are made across industries to construct buildings, build automobiles and consumer goods with planned obsolescence. Durability is a facade compared to centuries-old structures, even chandeliers, in Europe.
The exhibit nudges without words. What is built to last, by whom and for what purpose? What might be repaired or planned for collapse and redevelopment? Who profits at whose expense?
Jones and Cowardin built a hefty table out of thick weathered wood beams salvaged from Belger Arts. Later they realized the estimated 200-year-old beams were mahogany, valued for its color and durability. The hardwood contrasted with material used in other woodworks. Potentially, the table itself could outlast its makers’ lives. Like the mechanically swinging chandelier from the gallery ceiling, “The Weight of Light” sways with unspoken tension between permanence and decay.
Adjacent walls showcase the bric-à-brac of Americana. Photographs, figurines and commemorative plates reference people and places associated with family keepsakes, pop culture and historical illustrations. The assemblage evokes vintage collectibles and signs installed on the walls of ’80s chain restaurants. Jones and Cowardin strip away warmth and cultivated nostalgia by painting faces white on displayed objects.
“It is the erasure of identity and autonomy to create sameness. It felt violent to paint these faces white,” said Jones.
The artists’ act alters the creative work of the portrait photographer and industrial output of the manufacturer of mementoes. The absence of identity and meaningful context is symbolic of late-stage capitalism, where people are mass markets, invoked feelings of nostalgia are marketable constructs, and objects are commodities sold back to us.
What happens when socioeconomic systemic failures are a feature, not a bug, in tandem with the diminishment of our own youth and vigor? With “The Weight of Light,” the looming costs of opulence and unchecked wealth, both real and symbolic, carry weight and impact across society.
“’The Weight of Light’: Leon Jones and Mark Cowardin” continues at the UMKC Gallery of Art, Fine Arts Building 203, 5015 Holmes St., through Nov. 13. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday and noon to 5 p.m. Friday. For more information, 816.235.1502 or info.umkc.edu/gallery/.
