Jones Gallery October Art Show!
First Friday come meet the Artists from 5 till 9pm.
All welcome and always free.
Showing over 150 pieces, from both Local and National Artists.
Show runs thru October 26th.
Regular Gallery hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Closed Sunday
Jones Gallery 1717 Walnut, KCMO. 64108
816 – 421‑2111
https://jonesgallerykc.com/

Studios Inc is pleased to present Lilly McElroy’s solo exhibition titled, “I Will Destroy You.” on view September 8th through October 21st, 2023.

The artistic projects Lilly McElroy pursues are a reflection of her complex relationship with the American West. They explore what it means to be an American in a time of diminished expectations. Working as a lens-based artist, she utilizes the landscape symbolically to address issues of power, gender, and eco-anxiety.

Exhibition hours: Wednesday through Friday from 10 – 4pm and Saturday from 12 – 4pm and by appointment

Location: 1708 Campbell Street, Kansas City, MO, 64108

Featured image: 

The artist in front of her work “The Monolith”.

An opening reception will be hosted on Friday, September 8th from 5 – 8 pm.

Lilly McElroy will host an artist talk on Saturday, September 9th from 12 – 1 pm.

I Will Destroy You will be on view thru October 21st.

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“You are standing in a landscape. Maybe it is a pasture, or maybe it is the lakeshore on a summer evening, or maybe it is the top of a mountain, the wilderness past the end of the trail, but whatever this place is, in this moment, it feels safe. It feels stable. Then it doesn’t. All at once, there is dread and melancholy. You are here, waiting for an inevitable end. It is coming, you are grieving, but at least this place is pretty.

I will destroy you.

It’s natural to make photographs while you wait for the inevitable. Photography captures light and freezes time. It is an attempt to preserve the fleeting. For this exhibition photographs of the setting sun were made by McElroy using a 4 x 5 film camera. She then irrevocably altered the negatives, using her fingernail to scratch away the image of the sun. This action is small yet devastating; the anxious picking at a scab that leaves you with a lifelong scar. The sun, the very thing whose light makes the photograph possible, has been gouged out of the negative, the printed picture rendering this absence not as erasure revealing blank paper, but as the ominous birth of an angry black void. McElroy’s hand is directly linked to this destruction as the sun becomes a meteor, dark and crackling in the sky, a malevolent yellow nimbus dancing around it as it hurtles toward the surface of the earth, toward you.

In her monolithic works the sun is a dark orb that hovers over a bucolic field. It no longer emits energy or light; it only absorbs and you are standing in front of it. The innate silence of the photograph now presses down on the landscape. The rustling of the grass in the wind, the susurration of the insects in the field are cut off, and you can only hear the sounds of your own breath. McElroy made these images in the darkroom, laying negatives directly on top of light sensitive paper. With the press of a button, light flashed through the negative and struck the paper, chemically altering its structure. This transformation signals a shift, an irrevocable change, a violence that has been enacted and can’t be taken back.”

I Will Destroy You. will be on view thru October 21st.

In Nest: A Collection, we invite you to witness selections of artist Jenna Bauer’s work from 1999 — present. The exhibition includes several distinct styles that have emerged in her work over the years, such as meditative landscapes, abstract process paintings, color grid explorations, and conceptual works. The exhibit also includes reflections of the artist’s daily life, such as a poignant checkerboard installation of to-do lists from the period of time when she was a caregiver for her father. Nest offers an intimate glimpse of the evolution of an artist’s life and work as she has moved through time, and the results range from restrained and thoughtful to joyful and energetic, creating spaces of respite for all who engage them.