Belger Arts Center presents {not} Quiet on the Western Front, opening Friday, June 4, 6 pm – 9 pm at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.

{not} Quiet on the Western Front includes work by west coast artists from the Belger Collection who helped define the Funk Art movement. Funk came onto the art scene like a car wreck with its anti-formalist aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek commentary, irreverent character, and humor. Invoking a sense of cathartic release to the violent times of the 1960s, it was an alternative to mainstream art that made political commentary on war, gender, racial tension, and other social threats palatable. While its point of origin can be traced to 1950s northern California, the attitudes and approaches of Funk artists spread to other parts of the country and lives on in work by contemporary artists today.

Artists in the exhibition include Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Robert Hudson, Ed Kienholz, Ed Massey, Ron Nagle, H.C. Westermann, and William T. Wiley.

This exhibition is dedicated to William T. Wiley, a founder of the Funk Art movement, and a core artist of the Belger Collection. After a long and successful career, which included teaching at the University of California – Davis, he died on April 25, 2021, at the age of 83. He will be missed.Belger Arts Center presents {not} Quiet on the Western Front, opening Friday, June 4, 6 pm – 9 pm at 2100 Walnut Street, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through January 8, 2022.

{not} Quiet on the Western Front includes work by west coast artists from the Belger Collection who helped define the Funk Art movement. Funk came onto the art scene like a car wreck with its anti-formalist aesthetic, tongue-in-cheek commentary, irreverent character, and humor. Invoking a sense of cathartic release to the violent times of the 1960s, it was an alternative to mainstream art that made political commentary on war, gender, racial tension, and other social threats palatable. While its point of origin can be traced to 1950s northern California, the attitudes and approaches of Funk artists spread to other parts of the country and lives on in work by contemporary artists today.

Artists in the exhibition include Robert Arneson, Clayton Bailey, Viola Frey, David Gilhooly, Robert Hudson, Ed Kienholz, Ed Massey, Ron Nagle, H.C. Westermann, and William T. Wiley.

This exhibition is dedicated to William T. Wiley, a founder of the Funk Art movement, and a core artist of the Belger Collection. After a long and successful career, which included teaching at the University of California – Davis, he died on April 25, 2021, at the age of 83. He will be missed.

In this exhibition, Kelly Porter introduces more than 25 large-scale oil on canvas paintings and nearly 20 monotypes and mixed media works on paper. The work is organic, transcendent and presciently timely, born out of Porter’s decades-long fascination with the basic, essential forms of pathogens, such as bacteria and viruses, their shapes imbued with an inherent beauty that reveals itself under a microscope. That some of the most deadly pathogens look like beautiful flowers at the microscopic level has long intrigued Porter, and inspired her to translate them into ‘atomic flowers.’ The energy of these living forms radiate a powerful vibrancy that is simultaneously constrained and explosive. In Porter’s body of work, atomic flowers are abundant, vivacious and powerful subjects that are brought forward through the medium of art.

Inspired by German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who argued that it is our faculty of judgement that enables us to experience beauty and we grasp those experiences as part of an ordered, natural world with purpose, Porter, too, finds the physical world to be unified, functional, compatible and purposeful. But she delves deeper into unseen worlds, unavailable to the naked eye, and through her exploration offers viewers perspective and appreciation for these natural forms that, indeed, are beautiful.

Porter’s immersion in her fine art deeply influences her commercial work as co-founder of Porter Teleo, a line of hand printed, hand painted wallcovering and fabric that is highly sought after by many of the world’s leading interior designers. The very focused approach she takes to her studio work often leads to new discoveries for her design work, resulting in wallpaper and textile patterns that are entirely new – the intersection where art meets design.

Porter is from Dallas, TX. She received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO in 1997, where she studied printmaking and philosophy. Upon receiving a full scholarship, she continued her education at the State University of New York in Buffalo, NY, where she received an MFA in 1999. Porter returned to Kansas City for a teaching position at the Kansas City Art Institute and began showing her work in galleries across the country. Kelly Porter’s work has been described by critics as “unique, composed and calming, with layered and labor intensive surfaces.”

Her honors include being named as one of the “21 Under 30 Top Artists to Watch” in 2004 by Southwest-Art Magazine, “Top Visual Artist” in 2006 by Kansas City Magazine, a “Merit Award for Best Product Design” from Interior Design Magazine, 2008, and a number of editorials in Architectural Digest, Elle Décor, Vogue, Town and Country, Women’s Wear Daily, Veranda, Metropolitan Home, House Beautiful, Spaces Kansas City and IN Kansas City Magazine for her surface design work for Porter Teleo.

Help us celebrate First Friday in October as we head into cooler months! Artistry KC Apartments will host an outdoor sip and shop pop-up event with a live DJ, food truck (Sugar Skull Grill), drinks, and plenty of vendors to shop from, just in time to start holiday shopping!

We hope you stop by to support our local KC small business owners and artists!

“B.S.U.I.X.”

Black Student Union Inaugural Exhibition

Selected Works by:

Izsys Archer
Logan Crompton
Kevin Hopkins
Dante Moore
Abigail Oyesam
Kel Randle
Tajere Terry
Aleah Washington

September – October 2021

COVID-19 PROTOCOL: STARTING SEPTEMBER 10, 2021, ALL VISITORS WILL BE REQUIRED TO SHOW PROOF OF VACCINATION UPON ENTRY. 

2011 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO 64108
+1 – 844-202‑9303 | info@cerberagallery.com

EXHIBITION THESIS:

The Black Student Union Inaugural Exhibition will introduce the founding members of the collective by exploring the self-portrait. The work in the exhibition examines how identity is portrayed through anecdotes, visual vocabularies, and explorations of material. Viewers will be permitted to witness the artists’ experiences, not as spectators peering into their lives, but as listeners to their testimonies — — untethered from the white gaze.

Izsys Archer

The presence of the Black female body summons truth. The inherently intimate spaces our vessels inhabit sustain the weight of our most vulnerable inner thoughts, emotions and ways of being. I constantly engage in the act of image making through photography to wander on a journey of self possession and representation that emphasizes the fragile, tangible experience of Black womanhood, femininity, and matrilineal power. The perpetual use of self-portraiture becomes a performance of identity as I interrogate notions of domesticity, memory, and Black iconography.

Logan Crompton

Logan Crompton constructs narratives through painting, printmaking, and collage. Their work focuses on portraiture, patterns, and pop symbols to create these narratives. Crompton is currently pursuing their undergrad at the Kansas City Art Institute and is a double major in Painting and Art History. Their work formarly deconstructs elements of pop culture and iconography through its pairing with portraiture and text-based works. Through saturated colors, gestural mark-making, and digital collage Crompton’s work elicits a facade of happiness.

Kevin Hopkins

Kevin Hopkins is an artist born in Beaufort, South Carolina. However, because of his father’s service in the United States military, he lived in Texas and Germany for most of his childhood. After returning to South Carolina with his mother and siblings, Hopkins developed a passion for fine arts, which led to his acceptance into the Kansas City Art Institute. Double-majoring in Painting and Art History, Hopkins has focused his studies on contemporary art through painting, drawing, art history, and curation. Hopkins plans to pursue a career as an independent artist and curator and has begun working towards this goal by designing or curating for multiple Gullah Geechee people and institutions including, Harvard Gullah Professor Sunn m’Cheaux and The Beaufort Black Chamber of Commerce.

Dante Moore

Dante Moore is a research driven artist that combines digital artwork and installation processes to discuss ideas of cultural overlap and power structures. Moore utilizes digital programs and interfaces as spaces to make work based in communication, interacting with how ideas and information spreads. Memes, Digital Collages, Augmented Reality Filters, Screen Shots, prints on paper, social media, and installations are mediums Moore uses to produce his collections of work. Moore’s subject matter dives into layered and intersectional ideas of race and culture from a nihilistic and provocative stand point. Moore draws inspiration from art theory, meme culture, and the early 2000’s revival movement. As a mixed race artist, Moore’s work reassesses and confronts his complicated proximity to whiteness, blackness, and indigenous culture.

Abigail Oyesam

“Creating art is a way for me to investigate my thoughts and experiences. I find painting and drawing to be reflective processes that allow me to transform introspective moments into visual art. Making portraits has been a consistent part of my art practice, I am drawn to the unique beauty that each person possesses. Portraits are more than just an image, everybody has their own aura or story that I like to convey through my work. Lately, I’ve been interested in the way aspects of black cultures such as fashion and music are appropriated into the mainstream.”

Kel Randle

Kel Randle is an image maker based in Kansas City. He utilizes his camera to further understand the complexities that formed him which tend to draw him into documenting black and brown societies as well as exploring outside of the familiar by also creating images from the stories of others. His process involving developing his own negatives and making silver gelatin prints by hand.

Tajere Terry

Confidence, self-love, freedom of expression, spirituality and meditativeness from the broad culture of Black Hair. 
Our Crown
Our DNA
Our Creative Practice to Protect our Tight Curls
Our Nurturing Way of ‘Catching Up’ with our Loved Ones

Dreadlocks & Faux locs
Box Braids & Micro’s
Wigs, Sew Ins, & Crochet 
Cornrows & Pony Tails
Low Cuts
Box Cuts
And small to large Afro’s
The historic hair versatility passed down from generations.

These four images represent four different years of my life.
Four different hairstyles for four different moments of learning more about myself.
Each year progressively and unapologetically expressing my personality through hair textures, colors, and style

Aleah Washington

About the work: Keen with identity, Good Saturday presents a moment of leisure. This vibrant division of color bridges parts creating inclusion. I represent my vulnerability with family photos symbolizing a decaying memory as these young guys grow up. Neighborhoods and local businesses have a history before gentrification erases what once was there into a congested city. Five guys still find time to take a dip in the pool before their proximity changes with each season.

Please join Cerbera Gallery in celebrating “B.S.U.I.X.”: September – October 2021

Great eats and good times abound at City Barrel. Plenty of artisan craft beers in cans to go. Brewery on site. See where the magic happens.