Join us this First Friday, August 6th, for the opening reception of Cultivate, a solo exhibition by Toledo-based artist, Phybr, who has spent the last month of July here as an Artist-In-Residence. Throughout his time as a resident, Phybr has been sowing seeds of new growth, propagating new techniques, and grafting current and past styles together which culminate in this cohesive and captivating cultivation of new work.

Phybr’s recognizable style has grown out of his passions for design, illustration, and color theory. By blending these formal elements together with natural subjects such as various mixings of plant life and portraiture he harnesses not only the intimate and emotional connection shared between viewer and painting, but also the fleeting essence of life itself because of the predominant use of spray paint and street art influences. His paintings seem to emit a vitalness that strike ever deeper chords with anyone who encounters them

Goethe Pop Up Kansas City is excited to present the poster exhibition Shaping the Past. This exhibit will also highlight the many projects that we developed in 2020 as part of Shaping the Past (“Gestaltung der Vergangenheit”).

Shaping the Past builds connections and showcases patterns that constitute a transnational memory culture at work to address systemic racism and sexism, social and economic exclusion, and legacies of colonial and state violence. Featuring works by artists, activists, and collectives from North America and Germany — all part of the Monument Lab Fellows Program — this exhibition broadens understandings and illuminates ongoing memory interventions that reimagine civil society.

The spotlighted projects offer innovative and reparative models that highlight creative changemakers who are actively shaping the past and our paths forward.

At Goethe Pop Up Kansas City we took part in this project in 2020, inviting Monument Lab fellows Alisha B. Wormsley and Patrick Weems to collaborate with artists, activists, and intellectuals from Kansas City and beyond on themes that are relevant to our community and the process of (re-)connecting with the past. You can learn more about these various projects by visiting the Shaping the Pastexhibition presented at the Goethe Pop Up as a concluding project.

Beggars Table is honored to host Spiritual Rendering, a collaborative exhibition by Ben Parks and Kyle Selley.

Ben Parks works with large-scale canvas paintings to capture the essence of a soul. Each step and layer of paint mirrors a life experience and though not all layers of paint are visible, they affect the outcome of the whole just as the subconscious mind affects our outer lives.

Kyle Selley uses fireworks to create his current body of work. He is studying to understand why we are drawn to spectacles of light by approaching the composition in an exploratory way. The results simulate abstracted cosmic explosions, frozen in time.

Together their artwork is united through color, scale, and motivation. The deep and vibrant shades of blue allow for a cohesive curation of visual intrigue. These monolithic paintings are first recognized from across the room and progressively provoke engagement on an intimate level. The viewer begins to study the minute details within the vast amount of visual information provided and one begins to notice a subtle revealing of the artist’s process.

Please join us for a spirited and thought-provoking exhibition filled with large, colorful paintings. Brilliant portraits and fiery abstractions meld together gracefully and provide viewers with a transcendental space of contemplation.

In recent years there has been an increase in the creation and acceptance of figurative art and that includes, promisingly, the acceptance of such work in the high-end market. But why do artist and collectors like art of the Human Form? Simply put it is because art is a means of communicating human experiences, therefore human bodies are naturally depicted. The figurative form can be used as the ideal medium to convey a spectrum of ideas with which the viewer can resonate. The human figure has always been a common subject of visual art, “it forces the viewer to engage the artwork and enables the artist to express an entire range of ideas from the subtle to the intense”. In the history of art the human figure bears, in different ways and through different periods in time, a huge significance, being the most direct means by which art can address the human condition. We take pride in the fact that we are champions of figurative art and as this 13th annual exhibition shows we are not alone in this belief.

The Contemporary Figurative show seeks to showcase the best artwork, selected Nationally and Internationally.