17 Apr 2009 to 4 June 2009
Hours: Thursday & Saturday, 12-5 pm
Urban Culture Project at PARAGRAPH
23 E 12TH STREET
MO 64108
Kansas City, MO
Missouri
North America
p: 1 816 221 5115
m:
f:
w: www.urbancultureproject.org
PARAGRAPH | 23 EAST 12th Street | KANSAS CITY, MO 64108 | 816.221.5115
APRIL 17-JUNE 4, 2009 Opening reception: April 17, 6-9pm
Third Friday May reception: May 15, 6-9pm; talk with curator & artists at 6pm
Hours: Thursdays + Saturdays, 12-5pm and by appointment
Curated by Kate Hackman, Associate Director, Charlotte Street Foundation, Happy Tree Friends (Part II) is the second component of a two-part exhibition project featuring artworks that depict, reference, incorporate, document, and otherwise derive or draw inspiration from trees. The project has been organized in partnership with the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, which is concurrently presenting Trees and other Ramifications: Branches in Nature & Culture, on view through May 25, 2009. Happy Tree Friends Part I remains on view at Urban Culture Project’s la Esquina venue through April 18.
Happy Tree Friends (Part II) at la Paragraph, April 17-June 4, features work by Kurt Flecksing (Kansas City), Ke-Sook Lee (Kansas City), Hmh Services (Kansas City), Sarah Vandersall (Kansas City), BJ Vogt (St. Louis, MO), and Chris Wildrick (Syracuse, NY). Artists were selected through a mix of invitations and a call for proposals distributed in late 2008.
Happy Tree Friends (Part II) focuses primarily on exhibition-specific installation-based works, creating an immersive, interactive, multi-sensorial experience for viewers. Works include Root, a new installation by St. Louis based artist (and KCAI alumni) B.J. Vogt, which incorporates motion sensors and tree limbs to form a connection between the synaptic connections in the brain and the branching structures of trees; and a new multi-media wall installation by Sarah Vandersall relating to organic growth and “psychic tree energy.”
Tree Woman and Tree Woman Leaf, two new related installations by Ke-Sook Lee, explore personal and cultural memory and lived experiences in nature, employing leaves and bark gathered by the artist as sculptural elements and surfaces for drawings. These pieces reference Lee’s recollections of growing up in Korea, including memories of “the Mudang (female shaman) shaking her body under the big tree to connect to spirit world,” and of “Sig-Mok-Il” Holiday (National Tree Planting Day), after the Korean War. Kurt Flecksing is interested in storytelling as well; his installation of seating made from raw wood will serve as the gathering space for a series of tree-related lectures and conversations hosted by area arborists on Saturday afternoons in May (exact dates to be announced.)
Also featured will be an installation by Hmh Services (Neal Wilson and Lacy Wozny), who employ an associative process to connect a network of tree-related histories and references, blurring fact and fiction. And Syracuse, NY-based artist Chris Wildrick presents several works from an ongoing, multi-faceted project titled The Best Tree in the World, through which he has developed a range of measures, means of documentation, and systems of analysis toward determining exactly that.
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. For more information, visit CSF’s NEW website at www.charlottestreet.org.
