Current Project Wall
Audra Brandt: I Cannot Help Eating This
Audra Brandt has created a new work for the Artspace Project Wall, I Cannot Help Eating This, a parody of David Shrigley’s, previous Project Wall, You Cannot Help Looking at This. Born in Shawnee Mission, Kansas in 1983, artist Audra Brandt is a candidate for a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in digital filmmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute. She has performed in England and staged improvisational street performances in Prague, Germany and France. Brandt’s performances and exhibitions in Kansas City include participating in the collective, Whoop Dee Doo in March 2007, the Silent Cinema Series: Trip at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in 2004 and at the Boley building and Arts Incubator. In addition, she draws, writes and decorates cakes.
About the Project Wall
The Artspace Project Wall, situated on the western façade of the Artspace and facing the intersection of 43rd and Main Streets, is an ongoing site for temporary public art projects that features selected and commissioned works by national and regional artists. Since its inauguration, the Artspace Project Wall has received important support from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
Past Project Walls
DAVID SHRIGLEY: YOU CANNOT HELP LOOKING AT THIS
October 2006 - May 2007
Born in Macclesfield, England in 1968, artist David Shrigley currently lives and works in Glasgow, where he attended Glasgow School of Art from 1988-1991. Shrigleyís work follows a long history of surreal cartooning from artists like Edward Lear, James Thurber, Spike Milligan and Gary Larson. His awkward, intentionally messy hand-drawings are alternatives for slick, retouched digital prints. Shrigley’s work has been shown internationally in venues including: UCLA Hammer Gallery, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, New York, Serpentine Gallery, London, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, Kunsthaus, Zurich, and many others. For more information on the artist, please visit his website at www.davidshrigley.com.
ARCHIE SCOTT GOBBER: IT'S A FREE COUNTRY
May 2004 - September 2006
Kansas City artist, Archie Scott Gobber, is known for his wry political commentary achieved by way of re-contextualizing standard catch-phrases, quotes, sound-bytes and slogans drawn from popular culture, political campaigns and mass media. Commissioned by the Artspace as the sixth project wall, installed in conjunction with the 2004 Presidential election, It’s A Free Country, is a declarative slogan that crosses beyond political ideology and party lines. Easily understood and recognized, It’s A Free Country, also means different things to different people, thus resounds a multifaceted public message.
ALEXIS ROCKMAN: PET STORE
October 2003 – April 2004
New York based artist, Alexis Rockman, is recognized for his extraordinary paintings that image a future affected by pollution, global warming, and genetic mutation. For the fifth Project Wall, the Artspace featured Rockman’s narrative work, Pet Store. The work envisions a futuristic pet store window with various anomalous creatures, including a bioengineered white tiger with red racing stripes, a robotic dog and a unicorn, displayed upon a spiraling shelf resembling a strand of DNA.
DEANNA DIKEMAN: LEAVING AND WAVING
September 2002 – October 2003
Leaving and Waving, by Missouri photographer, Deanna Dikeman, is the fourth Artspace Project Wall. As part of Dikeman’s on-going series, Relative Moments, picturing casual, candid portraits of her aging parents and other family members, Leaving and Waving depicts the artist’s aging parents standing in the driveway and waving goodbye as her car is pulling away. Both sentimental and grounded in the everyday, Leaving and Waving reveals a sense of timeless nostalgia and longing, a defining quality within much of Dikeman’s imagery.
JENNY HOLZER: PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT
May 2001– August, 2002
Protect Me From What I Want, a work from the Survival Series (1983-1985) by internationally acclaimed artist, Jenny Holzer, was the third Artspace Project Wall, installed in June, 2001. The phrase Protect Me From What I Want by Holzer is one of her many truisms – punchy one-liners that are packed with profound, conflicting ideas and imperatives that reflect much about contemporary life around the world. This particular Project Wall drew in many new visitors who were struck by its clear, universally meaningful language that applies, at some level, to everyone.
MICHAEL SINCLAIR: OCEANSIDE
October 2000 – May, 2001
Oceanside, by Kansas City artist, Mike Sinclair, was the second Project Wall commissioned by the Artspace, and was installed in November, 2000. Sinclair, who began his career as a commercial photographer, has pushed his photography into a conceptual direction through narrative-based images of crowds engaged in various types of leisure, or everyday activities. Oceanside presents a view of a baptism taking place in the ocean at Oceanside, California, in the summer of 2000. As is his typical approach, Sinclair photographed the onlookers and participants from behind, presents an unconventional, slightly ambiguous view that infuses his images with an element of surreal mystery.
VIC MUNIZ : TWO COWS
November 1999 – September 2000
Two Cows, by Vic Muniz, was installed as the inaugural Project Wall upon the opening of the Artspace in November, 1999. Muniz, a Brazilian-born artist now living and working in New York, explores ideas of illusion and perception in a range of work and conceptual photographic studies. Two Cows contains the double photographic image of a cow within a cow, transforming what initially appears as a mundane farm picture into a curious and playful work of art that challenges one’s initial perceptions. The image also made witty reference to Kansas City as an atypical cow town.