KCAI Painting Blog

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KCAI would like to introduce our Painting Department Curatorial Assistants

London Williams 

1st year Curatorial Assistant 

Originally from Milwaukee, WI, Williams is a 2020-21 Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellow at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. In his work he explores identity through painting and collage.  Next is, 

Morgan Reiker 

2nd year Curatorial Assistant 

Originally from Union, MO, Morgan is a senior in the painting department at the Kansas City Art Institute. She experiments with layers of various materials and imagery, fatiguing the canvas and discussing presence and absence through the depiction of esoteric experiences.

Finally we have our newest member to the curatorial team, 

Givet Calzada

1st year Curotorial Assistant 

Originally coming from Deltona, FL, Givet is a senior in the painting department at the Kansas City Art Insitute. She uses an assortment of mixed media, animation, and collage into her work, with a focus on world building. She explores ideas of ecapsim through a satirical lens, testing the limits on “How far will you go in order to escape?”

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Check out our alumni Peter Granados virtual exhibition!! 

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Congratulations to our outstanding senior Nehemiah Cisneros!! Check out the two part exhibition Violent By Design between March 12 - April 29, 2021 at Habitat Contemporary and Leedy-Voulkas Arts Center

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Juxtapoz Magazine - Violent By Design: Nehemiah Cisneros @ Habitat Contemporary, Kansas City

Nehemiah Cisneros has an immediate gut-punch in his artwork. It seems apt that is new solo show is titled Violent By Design. We first saw his wor...

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2/25/2021

Current Perspectives Presents Mark Thomas Gibson: The Work of Mark Thomas Gibson Over The Last Five Years

KCAI Painting and Current Perspectives was pleased to welcome Mark Thomas Gibson with his artist talk, The Work of Mark Thomas Gibson Over The Last Five Years.

“Mark Thomas Gibson’s personal lens on American culture stems from his multipartite viewpoint as an artist—as a black male, a professor, and an American history buff. These myriad and often colliding perspectives fuel his exploration of contemporary culture through languages of painting and drawing, revealing a vision of a dystopic America where every viewer is implicated as a potential character within the story.”

Hearing Mark speak about his work gives us a view into the ongoing thoughts he has surrounding the subject of his work and the way these thoughts inform the work he is currently on and inspires where he goes next in his work. To hear him speak on his journey as an artist is inspiring to graduating and graduated artists alike.

Watch the artist talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl9OWBZmX1g

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 Hello 2020. In this unprecedented time, there’s still a lot for us to appreciate. Our students and staff are still putting forth everything that we can and pushing ourselves to thrive. One good thing that came out of this was The Kansas City Artists Coalition’s(KCAC) Undergrad Student Exhibition. A juried Virtual Exhibition by Garry Noland who picked many amazing artists. Check this Exhibition out, it will be up from April 3-24th. Congratulations to all KCAI Students and the Painting Department’s own Katherine Suchan, Cullen Curtis, Andre Melchor, Erich Humphres, Sienna Henson,  and Jolea Dillon

https://kansascityartistscoalition.org/tour/april-3-24-2020-2/

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 9/3/19 - 9/13/19

Commemorate the Rest

Curated by painting senior Kyrsten Prock and professor Jonah Criswell, Commemorate the Rest ‘explores “remnants” as preserved, celebrated, or shared objects. The works curated will the viewer to explore the concepts of remnants; the physical attributes of remains or remnants of material, of concept, the psychological spectrum of remains that touch on loss, vague rememberance, and past emotional or memory based experiences. Not just “forgotten,” “old”, or “ruined”, but potentially positive and thriving.’

Prock accepted submissions following this prompt from all different departments on campus in this multimedia exhibition. The students featured in this exhibition are: Madison Bender, Nehemiah Cisneros, Erin Conyers, Carolina Cuevas, Marybeth Drabiszczak, Eleanor Foy, Adrian Manzo, Elinore Noyes, Jinblossom Plati, Katie Powell, Katherine Suchan, and Kenley Turner

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9/16/19 - 9/27/19

End of the Beginning

This exhibition features works by students that express a clarity of vision or drive in their studio practice. 

The students featured in End of the Beginning include: Autumn Andrews, Givett Calzada, Alessandra Chavez, Avrey Bachmann Fetzer,  Annie Harte, Frank Huerter,  Jada Jacobs, Hannah Kelly, Hannah Lane, Bella Martinez, Katie Powell, Kyrsten Prock, Anna Schuetz, Jordan Sears, Bec Sommer, Sophie Spoo, Katharine Suchan, and Kira Sullivan.

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9/30/19 - 10/11/19

Secondhand

This exhibition features work concerning mediation and distanciation: the process in these works leads to a mediation between the artist and subject, or the subject and the viewer. 

Curated by professor Corey Antis, Secondhand features these students: Autumn Andrews, Jill Baer, Alessandra Chavez, Sade Coffman, Cullen Curtis, Sienna Henson, Frank Huerter, Riley Hohman, Jordan Horton, M. Keller, Hannah Lane, Morgan Leady, André Melchor, Hannah Rosenthal, Taylor Roy, Bec Sommer, Sophie Spoo, Katherine Suchan, Lee Steiner, Pamela Willhite,  and London Williams

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10/14/19 - 10/25/19

Everyone Loves Creamsicles

To express a gentle, happy mood in a time of chaos, these students’ artwork were featured in  Everyone Loves Creamsicles: Evan Barclay, Givett Calzada, Nehemiah Cisneros, Josepha Costelloe, Jolea Dillon, Jackob Graves, Erich Humphres, Miranda Hursman, Claire Lathrop, Gwen Murphy, Sophia Nangle, Katie Powell, Kyrsten Prock, Morgan Reiker, Anna Schuetz, Hunter Silvey, Yarana, Rashard Smith, Vincent Weston, and Jasmine Ye

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10/28/19 - 11/08/19

Home-maker

Home-maker, an exhibition curated by sophomore professor Lacey Dickerson, explores themes of domesticity, the space of the home, intimacy and home-making. The students featured in this exhibition are: Josepha Costelloe, Jolea Dillon, Jackob Graves, Ben Hill, Ivy Hinton, Miranda Hursman, Sayaka Iida, Hannah Lane, Morgan Leady, Gwen Murphy, Bernadette Negrete, Kati Perik, Alexander Pioske, Josie Russo, Sophie Spoo, Katherine Suchan, and Pamela Willhite

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11/11/19 - 11/22/19

4NIM4L MIN3R4L V3G3T4BLE

Curated by painting professor Tim Brown, the students featured in this exhibition are: Autumn Andrews, Avery Beck, Morgan Brady, Givett Calzada, Alessandra Chavez, Cullen Curtis, Grant Friesen, Alana Givens, Jackob Graves, Annie Harter, Ben Hill, Riley Hohman, Jordan Horton, Robert Huerter, Erich Humphres, Hannah Lane, Bella Martinez, Madison Sanchez-Martin, Andre Melchor, Sophia Nangle, Kati Perik, Alexandra Pioske, Morgan Reiker, Krystina Riley, Jordan Sears, Bec Sommer, Katherine Suchan, Vincent Weston, London Williams, Yarana

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Erica Mahinay, Sensing on the Blind Path (Formation), 2019, Acrylic medium on fabric, poplar, 96 x 72 inches (244 x 183 cm)

Vivian Greven, Erica Mahinay, Lauren Seiden: Touch Knows You Before Language

May 23 - July 12, 2019

Congratulations again to alumna Erica Mahinay for her participation in the group exhibition Touch Knows You Before Language this past summer at Lyles & King in New York:

What does it mean to let one’s gaze play over the surface of an artwork? What is the distinction between physical touch and vision? Increasingly we are reminded that the eye and the hand are irrevocably intertwined—that seeing is a kind of touching. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, writing in the late 1960s, suggested that a viewer “who sees cannot possess the visible unless he is possessed by it, unless he is of it.”* The intertwining of all the senses—borne out by contemporary neuroscience—suggests that the initial visual experience of an artwork actually results in more expansive, bodily sensations. The artists in Touch Knows You Before Language** conjure visual encounters out of physical experience. Their works bear evidence of this intimacy, a hands-on investment; they beg for the eye’s inquisitive touch.

Erica Mahinay approaches her tactile process with conceptual and psychological verve. Often incorporating stretches of translucent fabric that show the skeleton of stretcher bars beneath, she conceives of her paintings as portals or windows. Finger holes interrupting the surface suggest a residue of the artist’s own hand, or compel the viewer herself to metaphorically penetrate the painting’s fraught liminal zone. Nude (In Free Fall) uses an enigmatic visual language to communicate an abstracted narrative—a figure plummeting in space. A second painting, Sensing on the Blind Path (Formation), bears almost desperate, vicious traces of hands and fingers across a muddy, semi-transparent scrim. Across her oeuvre, Mahinay builds tension by contrast: a muted palette crashing into violent gesture, or foreboding tones staining delicate, whisper-thin fabrics. Her deconstructions of the basic mechanics of a painting—its surface and support—arrive at a place that is both fragile and fierce. Erica Mahinay (b. 1986, Santa Fe, NM) lives in Los Angeles. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Contingent at T293, Rome and Sun Seekers at Euclid, Santa Monica, CA. She will have her second solo exhibition at Lyles & King in September 2019. Previous exhibitions also include Thin Skins, Infinity Pools and Sand Slumps at Fused Space/Jessica Silverman, San Francisco (solo); Dead Eden at Lyles & King, New York; Miranda at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; and The Go Between: A Selection of Emerging International Artists from the Ernesto Esposito Collection at Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Mahinay is represented by Lyles & King, New York and T293, Rome. *Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "The Intertwining - The Chiasm" in The Visible and the Invisible, 1968. **The exhibition title is from Adrienne Rich's poem, "The Images," 1976-1978. "My hand half-sleeping reaches, finds / some part of you, touch knows you before language"

For more information and images, write to [email protected]

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2/4/19 - 2/22/19 Thank you to all who attended this spring’s sophomore exhibition, The Owls Are Not What They Seem, curated by painting professor Jessie Fisher.

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1/21/19 -1/26/19

Thank you to all who were involved in and attended the annual Drawing Marathon! 

The Drawing Marathon Exhibition is a wonderful way to kick start the Sophomores’ second semester. As upperclassmen and faculty are always invited to participate, several took the opportunity and their works from the marathon were displayed as well. 

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11/30/18 - 12/7/18

Curated by the painting department professors, the End of Semester Exhibition was aptly titled The World’s Tallest Feelings. This show featured work by the juniors and seniors to conclude the fall semester. 

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10/8/18 - 10/26/18

Thank you to all who attended Primary Structures, curated by professor Corey Antis. 

This exhibition featured “the work before the work”: pieces of research, sketches, and studies from the studios that help develop the work. The students whose work was featured in the show are listed above.