Art Capsule Reviews
The Chicano Experience This is the third-annual group exhibition organized by the Mattie Rhodes center celebrating the Chicano (Mexican-American) experience. Israel Garcia’s mixed-media installation includes two large photographs — a white-haired woman working in the kitchen, and a male worker in a cowboy hat and a denim jacket — placed next to an abstract sculpture of a disembodied face, with hands clasping a rosary. Adolfo Martinez’s painting “Orale, We Come in Peace” is as brilliant as it is sly: Playing on the word alien, he makes a Mexican migrant look like an extraterrestrial. With photographs, paintings and poetry by 14 artists from Kansas City, Los Angeles and Chicago, the show captures the wide range of symbols and stories that make up Chicano life. Through May 25 at the Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery, 919 W. 17th St., 816-221-2349. (Santiago Ramos)
KCAI Senior Show The future is now at the H&R Block Artspace, where more than 100 of the Kansas City Art Institute’s graduating seniors display their work. Assistant Curator Heather Lustfeldt put together this invitational, which assembles paintings, sculptures, films, interactive pieces, prints, mobiles and sound installations. Among the best: Heather Bell’s colorful portrayal of two dreamers staring up at the sky in the acrylic painting “Only Assumptions”; Celia Butler’s abstract, double-weave fiber work “Orange and Grey,” which balances large planes of red, orange and blue; and Graham Akins’ two abstract prints “Carl Sagan: It Would Really Look Like This” and “Philip K. Dick: Does Anything Really Look Like Something?” Akins’ titles will pique the interest of sci-fi geeks. Through May 19 at the H&R Block Artspace, 16 E. 43rd St., 816-561-5563. (Santiago Ramos)
The Last Illustration Show Here’s the work of the last nine graduating seniors of the Kansas City Art Institute’s late, lamented illustration department. Brandon Pretz’s hip and thoughtful, impressively detailed pen-and-ink portraits and figure studies capture his subjects with subtlety and liveliness in an unforgiving medium. Cassandra Kelley exhibits mixed-media greeting-card designs that display deft watercolor strokes and a luminous color pallet. Joey Schumacher’s acrylic paintings appear to be renderings of photographs; his minimal brush work reduces his figures’ faces to spare strokes of white against surrounding darkness. Some of his pieces depict wartime imagery; one, “Cylena Raefyll,” is an incongruous pencil drawing of an elf with a sword (one might elect to believe that the artist presents it ironically). Brandi Jones depicts archetypal figures — “Gladiator,” “Hit Woman,” “Concubine” among them — in dynamic poses, isolated against a spare white background. Jim Sweet combines brush work with a digital coloring technique to produce powerful wartime images and actually manages to find original expression in the largely played-out category of “Dark Lewis Carroll illustration.” His shadowy Mad Hatter portrait is a highlight of his portfolio. Through May 19 at the KCAI Crossroads Gallery, 1908 Main, 816-802-3423. (Chris Packham)
Armin Mühsam Armin Mühsam’s charcoal “Box Drawing” series has a mysterious, unfinished quality, thanks to roughed-in elements that are selectively completed. It’s as though portions of the page have been brought into focus by a lens. Lacking backgrounds or true perspective, the bold lines and simple compositions intrigue without satisfying. Elsewhere, Mühsam’s paintings include imagined landscapes built up from simple architectural forms. His stylized and deliberately architectural topologies, precisely rendered, contrast with the twitchy brush work of exciting, impressionistic backgrounds — rolling plains and big, Midwestern skies dominate the machined smoothness of seemingly abandoned architectural forms. “Composition 5,” an acrylic painting of a rectilinear industrial structure, and “Composition 7,” a delicately rendered highway overpass, are outstanding variations on this theme. Mühsam’s style also finds expression in the translucence of watercolor; indeed, with his “Watercolor on Grid Paper Series,” ghostly penciled graphs (of precipitation per day over a crop year, apparently) are visible through characteristic juxtapositions of organic brush work and fabricated precision. Through June 15 at the Mallin Gallery, 201 Wyandotte, 816-421-5222. (Chris Packham)
Matthew Peake: American Dream Who are we trying to keep out of our country with that fence along the Mexican border? Matthew Peake, an Iowan and a promising young photographer who finishes his B.F.A. at the Kansas City Art Institute this month, decided to find out. Immersing himself in the local Hispanic community, he assembled photographs illustrating the daily lives of three immigrant families: one that arrived in the United States last year, one that’s lived here for 10 years, and another that’s enjoying its third generation in America. Peake’s pigment-based inkjet prints reveal that the “aliens” frame their diplomas, enjoy TV, like to cook, value family dinnertime and love America. He puts a human face on an issue drowning in words and abstractions. Through May 25 at the Mattie Rhodes Art Gallery, 919 W. 17th St., 816-221-2349. (Santiago Ramos)
Jennifer Vanderpoole: Yum! Yum! A small slide show, featuring selected pages from a cookbook, and a few tasty cupcakes indicate that this show celebrates food and eating. Los Angeles installation artist Jennifer Vanderpoole uses various “domestic landscaping materials” to create a half-edible landscape within the small Project Space gallery. Cut-outs of Jell-O boxes, color-enhanced candies and beauty products are strewn amid the garden of colors and shapes scattered across the floor. More than 30 colorful ropes hang from the ceiling, adding a vertical dimension to an installation that takes place mostly on the floor, boxed in by walls bearing painted green leaves. For all its flair, however, there’s little to sink one’s teeth into. Through June 2 at the Project Space of the Urban Culture Project, 21 E. 12th St. 816-221-5115. (Santiago Ramos)
