In Ian Davis’s paintings, masses of men—all identically dressed in business suits—stand in ambiguous formations. These mysterious narratives painted on canvas place them variously beside a dam, waiting in a packed auditorium or milling about a gallery. The multitudes of human figures are dwarfed by their surroundings: mountains of audio speakers, art crates or chairs are precariously arranged in towers that seem just about to lose their balance.  The viewers of Davis’s scenarios are left to wonder, "Do we wait in anticipation or have we come upon something that has just transpired?" This is the first solo museum exhibition for the New York-based artist.

Above: Ian Davis, Comeuppance, 2009; acrylic on canvas, 60 x 65 inches

For this exhibition, volunteers at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art were asked to select “that’s my favorite work” from the Museum’s collection. The result, Volunteer Voices: Selections from the Collection of the Kemper Museum, draws together sculptures, paintings, drawings, and more by a variety of artists, including Leslie Dill, Wayne Thiebaud, and Bruce Nauman.

Watch Kemper ARTcasts related to the exhibition.

Above: Michael Lucero, Anthropomorphic Form with Hen, 1997, from Reclamation; white earthenware, glazes, pre-Columbian head, 15 x 13 x 7.5 inches

At some point, the organic curves of nature invariably run up against the hard edges of humanity. Whether seen as progress or destruction, that encounter becomes a signpost of the pioneer spirit in humankind and marks a contrast between the manufactured and the natural. The seven artists whose works come together in Settlement have chosen this point of overlap, the transition point between natural and manufactured, as their subject. As the title suggests, these images do not portray a perfect cohabitation with nature, but rather reveal the intention to adapt the environment to one more suitable for human habitation.

Listen to a Kemper ARTcast related to the exhibition.

Above: Greg Rose, Tropicalia, 2003; oil and alkyd on canvas on wood panel, 47.5 x 47.5 inches; Museum purchase, Barbara Uhlmann Memorial Fund 2003.15

Drawn from the Kemper Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition comprises works by a handful of artists who shaped the postwar American aesthetic of the 20th century. Early modernists such as Hans Hofmann and John Marin were pivotal in the development of the dominant artistic style of the postwar period in America, Abstract Expressionism. Central to this painting style was the artist’s physical gesture expressed through rapid, dynamic brushstrokes or marks on the canvas. Evident in works by Willem de Kooning, Friedel Dzubas, Grace Hartigan, Franz Kline, and Joan Mitchell, the powerful gesture was regarded as the ultimate signifier of personal expression and the gateway to emotional and psychological content. By the early 1950s, artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski challenged the grand gesture of Abstract Expressionism by eliminating brushwork altogether and staining or pouring wide “fields” of thinned paint directly onto unprimed canvas. Color Field painting reduced painting to its intrinsic formal elements—paint and the two-dimensional picture plane— eliminating extraneous associations. Through their bold, innovative investigations of color, form, and pure expression, these artists were the dawn of a new generation of artists in postwar America and, in many respects, continue to illuminate and inform artistic practices today.
 
Above: Hans Hofmann, Rising Sun, 1958; oil on canvas, 60 x 72 inches; Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation 2002.12

Inspired by French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s book La poétique de l’espace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), this exhibition features photographs from the Kemper Museum’s permanent collection that focus on the spatial dynamics of our architectural and natural surroundings. Through photographs by William Christenberry, Lynn Davis, Walker Evans, Todd Hido, and Aaron Siskind, among others, the exhibition reveals the mysterious and poetic worlds dwelling within domestic, urban, and natural spaces.

Above: Todd Hido, Untitled #1975-a, 1996; chromogenic color print mounted on aluminum, 38 x 30 inches; Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum Purchase, Barbara Uhlmann Memorial Fund, 2005.21