16 Nov 2007 to 4 Jan 2008
Hours: Thursday & Saturday, 12-5 pm
Opening Reception: Friday November 16, 6-9 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
As Loud as the Sky and Pasture/* is a site specific exhibition of new work by emerging Kansas City artists Brendan Meara and Jules Hearne.
Meara, a 2004 Kansas City Art Institute graduate, employs a wide range of media to construct an environment in the gallery where, as he describes it, “moments of brightness and audacity co-exist with a sense of quiet meditation.” His “Inspirational Themes” is a new installation of short music videos, featuring music composed by the artist, installed/presented within an all encompassing grouping or “grotto” of audio, video, and light equipment. The installation, which incorporates rudimentary speakers, amplifiers, monitors, projectors, and light fixtures that flicker in concert with the music, “is an attempt to produce a gesamtkunstwerk of light, video and sound; and consequently a feeling that is brimming with unbridled optimism,” he writes. In addition, Meara presents a window-like sculpture constructed of wood, plexiglass and fluorescent fixtures fitted with ultra violet Gro Lux bulbs, and a series of drawings referencing illustrations from psychology textbooks to address aspects of mental instability.
Jules Hearne, also a 2004 KCAI graduate and a former Urban Culture Project Studio Resident, presents a series of “gestural” artworks combining electronics and assorted other media. Functioning as stand-alone pieces, yet also looped together on a common circuit responsive to viewer interaction, these works include kinetic sound sculptures, video, and other sculptural elements. Hearne’s work seeks to elaborate on the moment of communication breakdown: “to consider what it is to make a connection and then find oneself back in the folds of isolation; or to start from an isolated perspective and superimpose this over a communicative context.” As a whole, his installation at Paragraph will explore conditions of disconnection, while “attempting to reconnect to the viewer by presenting these conditions in an exciting way.”
