Explosive energy dominates the work of Sarah Krepp and Olivia Petrides. Krepp locates a powerful gesture in found materials, in blown-out shredded tires which are gathered from highway debris. Blow-outs force the wires, embedded in the rubber, into writhing gesticulations of accumulated stress. Petrides utilizes simple tools and the basic element of drawing – the line – to enact roiling abstractions of overwhelming natural forces into baroque masses. Both artists see aggressive marking as an emblematic carrier of immense forces within urban and natural environments. Petrides and Krepp achieve a linear complexity, referencing turbulent atmospheres and tangled social workings, thus posing questions about the relationship between human actions and nature’s limitations.

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My drawings are immersive large-scale abstractions based on travels to magnificent natural phenomena such as volcanoes, icebergs, glaciers, caves, and the aurora borealis. I am interested in how nostalgic evocations of the transcendent resonate with contemporary social pressures on the environment: What is awe and wonder when saturated with guilt and regret? Me images utilize dramatic Romantic suggestions of the infinite and the sublime, which then collapse into shifting tensions that mirror our current uncertain engagement with nature. – Olivia Petrides

With these visually complex, sometimes compacted, sometimes expansive works, I strive for a different kind of communication where a poetic dynamic is felt before the content is understood. It becomes twofold. In some works, the bending and almost lyrical tire forms I couple with needlepoint stitches in the shadows and interstices. With this I look to set up an interplay between the brute/power of the road and the delicate/vulnerability of domestic handicraft. Retread blown-out tires are representative of the all-American landscape. I seek to question our indulgent contemporary society as well as present an aesthetically dynamic experience. – Sarah Krepp

Spectrum is a collection of artworks produced nearly entirely in Kansas City, Missouri over the last decade. This exhibition is intended as an immersion, a memoir, and a thank you to this place.

I have habitually brought the past into a contemporary context as an opportunity to reflect, to heal, and more often than not, as an American, to beg forgiveness. This thrilling moment we inhabit in history provides an opportunity for reconciliation with our collective story in order to imagine a future that functions more fully for every one of us. The newest work explores these same interactions in a more personal way. The pandemic forced a quiet space for deep reflection, forgiveness, and gratitude, as well as illuminating the path to an ongoing conversation around personal responsibility. – Christel Highland

Violent By Design is an arc of Los Angeles-based painter Nehemiah Cisneros’ own “Ghetto Mythologies” created from 2019 to 2021 during the artist’s residency in Kansas City, Missouri. The work merges the graphic aesthetics of 90’s skateboard graphics with the theatrical scale of the Baroque painting of the 1600s. The two-part show challenges American history with humor and satire. While living in the midwest, Cisneros draws connections to Los Angeles gang culture and the midwest’s embrace of confederate flags. Through these examples of communities functioning as tribes that show pride through gang symbols painted on buildings or Flags that nod to a racially segregated time, Cisneros summons stereotypical characters of each opposing side, having them do battle amongst one another, questioning the theories of nature and nurture. Are we Violent By Design? Or is there hope for a possible redemption to our species?

Violent By Design opens publicly on March 12th and will be on display until May 29th in the heart of the Kansas City arts community in the Crossroads. In conjunction with Habitat Contemporary Gallery and Leedy Voulkos Art Center

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Please go to our website to read our COVID Guidelines before arriving.
https://www.leedy-voulkos.com/

Fred Nelson’s paintings find their influence in Buddhist philosophy and the criticism of Baudelaire, both favoring a non-mimetic approach to art making. The sensibilities, both aesthetically and philosophically, expressed in these different cultural approaches is an interpretive, personal response to the visual world. The subject of Nelson’s work is based on non-specific landscape, and the element of improvisation.

Nelson has been a practicing artist since 1975 when he had his first professional exhibit. He has actively shown his work since that time participating in museum exhibitions, solo exhibits and group exhibits. He has had professional gallery representation for 42 years. Nelson received an M.F.A. degree in 1975 from Washington University School of Fine Arts, St. Louis, attended the Kansas City Art Institute in 1972, and received a B.A. degree in 1971 from Webster College.

Nelson’s museum exhibitions include The Nelson Atkins Museum, Kansas City; The Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia; The City of Springfield Museum, Springfield MO.; The Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst, Mt. Vernon, Il, The Fort Smith Regional Art Museum and The Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, Montgomery, Ala. He is a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Painting and Drawing and a residency at the Cite International des Arts in Paris. Nelson has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work is included in over 170 private collections and in the permanent collection of over 50 corporate and public institutions including the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington University School of Medicine, Bank of America, US Bank, Champion International, Cincinnati Bell, The Fort Smith Art Museum, the Four Seasons Hotel, Abu Dhabi and R.R. Donnelly International. He is represented by Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City and The Atrium Gallery in St. Louis.