Artist Statement:

My art morphs different mediums into visual meditations and dream-like imageries. Creating is therapeutic, a form of alternative medicine for me. As an artist, I create forms of communication from the subconscious and conscious state of mind. I am constantly learning and listening to my personal visions. I have a strong need to create something that is healing for myself and possibly a connection for others. Drawing intricate line patterns compared to sand painting or the cracks in your hand is the way for me to have the introspection of self-like meditation. Which in turn, creates a positive impulse of calmness, intensity, or a balanced flow. I create because it stimulates an internal mind-bending effect of my center that takes me somewhere else. This kata (form) of expression is an escape from my current reality to release an honest and raw output of my existence through creativity: To visually twist a space with or without technology to amplify a human experience. With spontaneous and or controlled movements with patience and thought, I like to integrate the environment with unique visuals and collaborations with video and sound waves. This expanding language is interpreted with personal contemplation.

-Adrian Halpern

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Rich “JKR70” Lester is a music producer, audio engineer, and visual artist from Kansas City, Mo. He has over 25 years of experience in his art form.

Artist Statement:

I am formerly of the Hip Hop group Human CropCircles. I have worked with Ces Cru, Sage Francis, Young Rob, Romy of Macromantics, Red Dot Didactics, Rough Draft, Approach of Dat Gang/Datura Records, Milkdrop of Dat Gang/Datura Records, Lucid Flows, Lou Rip, Donald “Scribe” Ross, Anti Crew, Sike Style of Sike Style Industries, Flavor Pak, and Liz Suwandi to name a few.

I have happily worked with Adrian Halpern off and on for approximately 15 years on various art/ audio collaborations, most of which can be enjoyed at www.adrianhalpern.com. This current collaboration was a bit of a departure from our usual dynamic. This time I was asked to compose audio based on the overall vibe of seeing Adrian’s process. I took inspiration from conversations, text correspondence, and viewing his art at various stages during his process over a 45-day period.

The audio you’ll hear at this showing is the result of that inspiration. It was quite fun as well as a bit challenging at times, I do hope you enjoy it.

-Rich “JKR70” Lester

Why is when, and now is why, and we will ALWAYS want, AND all is “What the holy fuck!”

Never has this been an obstacle for lucid critical or crucial thought for whom the dumbbell tolls in the skies of material wantonness. Q: How did we even get here? The needs, creeds, and greed of all the wants are re-assembled in this body of work. Faux luxury facilitated by dead corporate machines like Sears, JC Penny, and Montgomery Wards with 1200-page catalogs is a good place to begin perhaps. Paper bricks printed on glossy non-archival paper layered to the sky for empire building. If aliens from outer space were to visit us right now (PLEASE help us now!), many of their questions could be answered in those catalogs.

Core samples have been gathered in these non-fine art things and born again from merely rummaging through the graveyards of consumable “goods” re-swapped for more $$ in the stores of thrift and performing fleas. By the process of cultural anthropology, many of these cheap consumer goods have been given a new life, again to adorn the walls and tables of mainstream America. The artist has found inspiration in the cheap stuff of yester-year, thusly re-arting the stuff that was mass-produced to give the façade of style and class. So hurry! We’re running out of stuff fast!

The white middle/upper/other classes examined have been recorded in both the good and bad books of history and consequently flushed out the birth canals of the unimaginative landfills (progress). Facsimiles with objective meanings defy our understanding in the rubbish now, yet provide proof-positive of who we were, who we are, and what we mostly still want to be. So uselessly useful in their time now become “utilitarian fine art” again for their utilitarian

purpose in the third place. Artistic alchemical license has freely given the artist a full-on-all-out-all-American stratagem with these junk store findings. America in its most peculiar vintage hour… American at its final artistic process…

So for now, we look to the past for where we went wrong, right, and/or left. Based on the hunting and gathering of antiquated pictorial evidence, allegorical signifiers, aggressive branding, and personal insider insights, observable clues are given in an absurdist, unflinching and often lowbrow way for your viewing entertainment. To laugh or to cry?… You decide…

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Who is Leon Richmond?

Leon Richmond was born in Defiance, Ohio. His father moved their large Catholic family from Lafayette, Indiana to Yakima, Washington to open a Burger Chef restaurant in 1967. The subsequent years in the 1970’s spent over a hamburger grille and deep fryer, serving an eager and hungry public Happy Meals, cheap collectibles, high-fructose corn syrup and grease would in-due help inform his artwork tremendously.

Richmond worked for 17 years at three different Alberstons grocery stores around Washington State. In hindsight, the time spent in the grocery store business would be as equally informative on his art as was his time working at his father’s Burger Chef. The grocery stores provided a museum of pop culture and capitalism to critique and absorb. Plugging along with his life, he began attending art walks in downtown Seattle around the late-1980’s. It was around this time when he developed a curiosity for contemporary art. At first, it was a distraction to his monotonous life. But it would eventually develop into a full-blown passion. In the years that followed, he would spend countless hours in art museums, galleries, watching documentaries and reading at the Seattle library.

After years of working soul-sucking jobs, married and divorced twice by now, he unenthusiastically took a job as an accountant in 1999. In 2006, Richmond came to Norman, Oklahoma to visit an old high school friend. Wanting a new start, he applied for and eventually accepted a Staff Accounting II position at The University of Oklahoma.

Continuing his passion for art anywhere he could find it, he didn’t start making any until fairly recently. It wasn’t until he befriended Prof. Bob Dohrmann at the University of Oklahoma School of Visual Arts in 2016, who ultimately encouraged Richmond to, “Start making stuff, why not?” Dohrmann suggested that Richmond turn his decades long hobby of thrift store, antique and LP record collecting into an art practice. After he completed approx. 30 pieces, Prof. Dohrmann insisted that Richmond exhibit his work and offered to assist him in finding venues. Richmond was very reluctant, but eventually agreed. Completely self-taught, the work presented in this exhibition is the product of Richmond’s obsessive work ethic since 2018. Introverted and humble by nature, he has no plans to stop “making stuff” anytime soon.

Who is Robert Dohrmann?

Robert Dohrmann received his MFA in Painting and Drawing in 1992 at Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington. In 1999 he took a position in the department in the Foundations area. Over the years he has taught a variety of Studio courses, but currently the bulk of his teaching duties have been in the Core area and an online comic book theory course.

In 2018, Dohrmann took the pseudonym: Leon Richmond. In combination with traditional 2D materials and collage techniques, the objects used to construct his body of work are mostly large romantic cardboard print paintings, shadow box clocks, unlistenable LP records and a variety of found objects. The process of cultural anthropology (picking though thrift stores) is conducted anywhere he happens to find junk stores. He likens these stores to museums (also consumer graveyards) where affordable consumer goods go to die and hopefully be reborn. When he finds something that piques his curiosity, he “re-arts” the object and gives it a new life through remix and mash-up strategies. The antiquated appearance in the found pieces are crucial, as each vintage object comes with a ready-made veneer of age. It signifies American consumer history and points directly to our current relationship to many concerning topics of today, such as middle/upper class consumerism, low-cost mass production, religious intolerance, unmonitored capitalistic greed, climate concerns, patriarchal power systems and White American hierarchies.

Cerbera Gallery is excited to announce its latest exhibition titled “Bluey”, which showcases a collection of artworks on paper including, photography, limited editions prints, drawings as well as paintings and more. This exhibition features an impressive lineup of both emerging and established artists from around the world.

“Bluey” highlights the works of Louise Marler, David Morris, Joachim Czichon, Fred Alfred Theophil Fathwinter, Tim Trantenroth, Christo & Jeanne Claude, Andreas Amrhein, Josef Albers, Roland Martin, Hans Hartung, Shepard Fairey, Jean Dewasne, Max Bill, Hajo Hangen, Lothar Gunther Buchheim, Antje Sträter, Stephan Küthe, PTE, Michael Mardikes, Wolff Buchholz, Irving Penn, Genevieve Hamel, Matthew Fredericks, Anne K Smith, and Greg Miller.

The exhibition will run from April 7 to May 27, 2023, at Cerbera Gallery, located at 2011 Baltimore Ave, Kansas City, MO 64108. The opening reception will be held on April 8th, from 6 PM to 8 PM, and is open to the public.

My approach to painting merely dovetails off those emotions of nostalgia and of home. Not only my dwelling, in which I live and work, but the familiar landscape of the Midwest. I owe this vast variety of nationally under-appreciated land much gratitude and thanks. Over the past 22+ years it’s helped define my unique style of painting. From big skies to rolling river plains to hidden lakes exposed by a retreating sun. I grew up in Kansas City so the Midwest has a special place in my heart. It’s hard to think that at one point in my life I couldn’t wait to leave it. I’m so glad I didn’t. It has just become one more silver lining in an incredible life.

Rich Bowman