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Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art’s seventh annual Atrium Project, Pepe Mar: Rising Sun, features a monumental fabric painting by Miami-based artist Pepe Mar (born Reynosa, Mexico, 1977). This installation highlights the signature fabric featured throughout Mar’s recent practice—a medium-weight textile printed with images sourced from his 15-year career archive—stretched across the expanse of the main atrium wall.

During site visits to Kemper Museum, Mar researched the Permanent Collection and encountered Rising Sun (1958), a work by modernist painter Hans Hofmann (German American, 1880–1966). An example of abstract expressionism, the painting is composed of swaths of bright colors—oranges, blues, yellows, and greens—applied gesturally upon the surface of the canvas, creating irregular shapes with defined and unblended boundaries. Hofmann’s juxtaposition of discrete colors in many ways mirrors collage practice, where elements are brought together but remain distinct. It can perhaps be said that Hofmann collaged paint, resonating with Mar’s collaging of his own archive across his fabric works. Taking inspiration from Hofmann’s technique and palette, Mar stained the fabric to approximate the colors of Rising Sun. In so doing, Mar creates a place for himself in the lineages of art history and addresses his own stylistic and material inheritances.

As part of the Atrium Project installation, Mar also created a new large-scale assemblage work depicting the newest iteration of the artist’s “Paprikas”: characters, or alter egos, that recur throughout Mar’s works. Their bodies, made from the influences that surround Mar in his studio and objects culled from antique and thrift shops, reflect the artist’s Queer, Latinx experience. Pepe Mar’s work is a layering of histories and materials capturing his overall ideas in a single monumental installation.

Pepe Mar: Rising Sun is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs.  

Artist Talk | Pepe Mar

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Pepe Mar: Rising Sun

Installation view, Pepe Mar: Rising Sun, August 19, 2022 - July 30, 2023, Atrium, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2022.

Tensile Strength Exhibition Checklist_FINAL_10-27-2022.pdf

Tensile strength, in science and engineering, is the resistance of a material to breaking under tension. Engaging with this definition, this exhibition displays a selection of works from the Kemper Museum Permanent Collection that embrace material fragility and/or endurance. The art featured in this gallery is stretched, snapped, salvaged, worn, assembled, and transformed either by human intervention or by forces of nature.

In part, this exhibition calls upon the history of assemblage and the found object, popularized by avant-garde movements of the early twentieth century such as Dadaism and Conceptual art. These influential movements developed as a result of the immense trauma of global war and rapid industrialization. Following in this legacy, the artists on view utilize everyday materials—tar, rubber, glass, soap, flora, and computer parts—or create works that approximate everyday life by combining materials in unexpected ways, such as the sculptural replica of a weathered building, House at Christmastime, Greensboro, Alabama (1993–94), by William Christenberry (American, 1936–2016). In doing so, these artists respond to their environments, breathing new life into the materials that they have carefully sourced and animated.

This exhibition arrives at a moment of deep social tension and infrastructural adversity in the United States. Tensile Strength marks our current state of fragility by focusing on the impermanent but lasting materials within our everyday lives. These materials, which often serve as apt representations of our lived experiences, wear and break under duress, but nonetheless persist through steady care, collection, and reinvention.

Tensile Strength is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Krista Alba, assistant curator.

High Tension: Kemper Museum Explores Tactile Realms with Tensile Strength Exhibit

In Hale County, Alabama, Two Visions of Place

Works in the Exhibition

Tensile Strength

Chakaia Booker (American, born 1953), El Gato, 2001, rubber tires and wood, 48 x 42 x 42 inches. Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Museum purchase, Enid and Crosby
Kemper and William T. Kemper Acquisition Fund, 2004.12.01. © Chakaia Booker. Photo: E. G. Schempf, 2017.

Organized from the Kemper Museum Permanent Collection, the exhibition Chromophobia borrows its title from a book of the same name by artist and writer David Batchelor (Scottish, born 1955). In his formative publication, Batchelor describes chromophobia as “a fear of contamination and corruption by something that is unknown or appears unknowable.” As such, there is a desire to “purge color from culture, to devalue color, to diminish its significance, to deny its complexity.” According to Batchelor, this anxiety is induced by what color supposedly signifies in wider Western philosophy and criticism: the so-called “feminine, oriental, cosmetic, infantile, vulgar, narcotic.”

The works chosen for this exhibition extend Batchelor’s conversation into the Kemper Museum Meeting Room, transforming the gallery into a space where color becomes the primary and celebrated force. With selections dating from 1920 to 2010, Chromophobia incorporates perspectives from various eras and artistic movements, foregrounding the artists’ differing approaches to color application and experimentation. One such example is a print by the late artist and teacher Josef Albers (American, born Germany, 1888–1976), who is most known for his playful series Homage to the Square and celebrated publication Interaction of Color (1963), both of which have influenced countless creatives and cultural producers. 

In bringing color from the margin to the center, Chromophobia chooses to embrace color expression–and all of its associations–as a liberatory practice rather than a superfluous or dangerous element of artistic production.

Chromophobia is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Krista Alba, assistant curator.

Featured Works

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At Kemper Museum there is no charge for admission, parking, special exhibitions, or programs. Your donation underwrites these expenses and inspires many thousands with contemporary art each year.

Chromophobia

Charles Demuth, American, 1883-1935, Wild Orchids, ca. 1920, watercolor on paper, 10⅞ x 8½ inches. Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection. Gift of the William T. Kemper Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, n.a., Trustee, 1995.024.01. No known copyright restrictions. Photo: Dan Wayne.

Green Gate brings together paintings, drawing, and sculpture by New York-based artist Reginald Sylvester II (born North Carolina, 1987, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY). Taking inspiration from abstract expressionism, contemporary design, and theological traditions, Sylvester's working process follows a trajectory from muse to mark making. Taking meditative walks around New York City with an open mindset led Sylvester to a green gate from which ideas about passage, Black bodies, radiated green light, and spiritual resonance are explored in his recent abstract work. Offering IX (2022), a recent acquisition to Kemper Museum’s Permanent Collection will be included in this exhibition.

This exhibition is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs.

Artist Talk | Reginald Sylvester II

Artist Reginald Sylvester II joined Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic in conversation at the exhibition's opening celebration.

Reginald Sylvester II: Green Gate

Reginald Sylvester II (American, born 1987), Offering GG.02, 2022, acrylic and drab shelter half over wood, 82 x 70 in.
© Reginald Sylvester II. Image courtesy the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photo: Daniel Greer.

Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence

Artist Virginia Jaramillo's first retrospective exhibition – Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Principle of Equivalence is the first major retrospective exhibition presenting a selection of seventy-three paintings and handmade paper works over nearly seventy years by New York-based artist Virginia Jaramillo (Mexican American, born 1939). Tracing the impact of the Jaramillo’s practice, which collide postwar abstraction with physics, science and the cosmos, archaeology and mythology, and modernist design philosophies, this exhibition sheds light on her career and situates it within the larger narrative of American abstract art. For decades, Jaramillo’s work has been celebrated internationally in groundbreaking exhibitions including The De Luxe Show, in 1971, one of the first major racially integrated exhibitions in the United States. Jaramillo also has an exhibition history in Kansas City that stretches back to the late 1970s.

Her work was featured in Kemper Museum’s debut exhibition in 1994 and is represented in the permanent collections of Kemper Museum, Spencer Museum, Daum Museum, and as well as in the Hallmark Collection. This exhibition is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Erin Dziedzic, director of curatorial affairs. A full-color catalog will be published in conjunction with this exhibition and distributed by Yale University Press.

Featured Artworks

Virginia Jaramillo was born in El Paso, Texas and raised in Los Angeles, California, before moving to Europe and settling in New York in the 1960s. Through her work, Jaramillo has forged a unique voice, experimenting with material and process to pursue her ongoing explorations of human perception of space and time.

1958–61 Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, California, USA

2023 Solo exhibition, Pace Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (forthcoming)

2020 Virginia Jaramillo: The Curvilinear Paintings, 1969–1974, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX    

1977 Virginia Jaramillo: Oil Paintings, Douglas Drake Gallery, Kansas City, MO

2018–20 Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power, organized by Tate Modern, Lodon, UK, traveled to Crystal Bridges, Arkansas  Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, TX

2011–13 Now Dig This! Art & Black Los Angeles, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, traveled to MoMA PS1, New York, NY; Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, MA

1994 Inaugural Exhibition From the Collection, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO

1984 Women Artists of the 80’s, A. I. R. Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1971 The De Luxe Show, Deluxe Theater, Houston, TX, USA

1959 & 61 Annual, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA

Virginia Jaramillo’s sprawling career takes her ‘East of the Sun’: ‘No one expected me to survive as an artist

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art awarded $100,000 grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for forthcoming exhibition, Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence

Warhol Foundation to Give $4 M. to 48 Organizations in Fall 2022 Grants

Best Practices: Virginia Jaramillo’s Abstractions Are Finally Coming into Focus

Meet Virginia Jaramillo, a Pioneering Minimalist Who Fuses Cosmology and Science Fiction

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Exhibitions are always free thanks to the generosity of members and other donors. Join or donate today to support free access to contemporary art.

Virginia Jaramillo (American, born 1939), Site: No. 3 51.1789° N, 1.8262° W, 2018 acrylic on canvas 72 x 72 inches

Courtesy of the artist and Hales, London and New York
 © Virginia Jaramillo. Image courtesy of the artist and Hales, London and New York. Photo: JSP Art Photography.

Kemper Museum is a leading presenter of contemporary art and ideas in Kansas City, Missouri. 

kemperart.org Jan 2023

Save your spot for our three-day art camp

Summer Camp Kemper: Landscapes, Archaeology & Science Fiction

Hear from exhibition curator and Kemper Museum Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic

Curator-led tour of Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence

newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble presents a performance inspired by the artwork of Virginia Jaramillo.

Musical Spectrum of Color: newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble

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Led by a museum educator, this three-day art camp features fun and creative activities inspired by the themes in the exhibition, Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence. Campers meet at Kemper Museum each day from 10 a.m.–12 p.m., Wednesday through Friday.

All art materials will be provided at no cost.

Click here for information on how to get to the museum and where to find our free parking lots.

Public programs are always free thanks to members and other donors. 

Public Program at Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Join exhibition curator and Kemper Museum Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic for a walkthrough of the exhibition, Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence. 

Principle of Equivalence is the first major retrospective exhibition presenting a selection of seventy-three paintings and handmade paper works over nearly seventy years by New York-based artist Virginia Jaramillo (Mexican American, born 1939). Tracing the impact of the Jaramillo’s practice, which collide postwar abstraction with physics, science and the cosmos, archaeology and mythology, and modernist design philosophies, this exhibition sheds light on her career and situates it within the larger narrative of American abstract art.

Public programs are always free, thanks to support from members and other donors. 

Musical Spectrum of Color newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble

Inspired by color and time, Kemper Museum welcomes the return of newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble as they present a performance series connected to the retrospective exhibition, Virginia Jaramillo: Principles of Equivalence.

NewEar is a professional chamber music ensemble featuring the music of living composers. Programming a wide range of musicians, instrumentations and styles, newEar often blurs the boundaries of classical art music, rock, jazz, world music, and the avant garde, creating eclectic musical interpretations.

newEar will present a second concert inspired by the exhibition on Saturday, July 15.

Image credit: Virginia Jaramillo (American, born 1939), Green Dawn, 1970, acrylic on canvas, 83⅞ x 72⅛ inches, The Joyner/Giuffrida Collection. © Virginia Jaramillo. Image courtesy of the artist and Hales, London and New York. Photo: Phoebe d'Heurle.

Public programs are always FREE for everyone, thanks to support from members and other donors. Join today to support free access to contemporary art. 

Sing songs, read books, explore art, and make your own art with a Kemper Museum educator and Kansas City librarian.

Tots on Tuesday is back on a new day and with a new name! Sing songs, read books, explore art, and make your own art with a Kemper Museum educator and Kansas City librarian.

Each Time for Tots session will be held at the museum, now during open hours so you can stick around and explore as you please!

Public programs are always FREE for everyone, thanks to support from members and other donors. 

Time for Tots

Join us an hour before the museum opens to the public for a quiet and low-stimulating environment and a hands-on activity.

Join us an hour before the museum opens to the public for a quiet and low-stimulating environment where participants can enjoy a hands-on creative activity while experiencing art. A designated gallery and sensory break room with visual resources, hand fidgets, and other tools will be provided. 

This is a program for families with children on the autism spectrum or people who have sensory sensitivities.

I﻿mage Credit: Ana Maria Hernando (American, born Argentina, 1959), Flor Nube I (Cloud Flower I), 2010, vellum, ink, collaged paper on paper, 60 x 40 inches, Collection of the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Gift of the artist, 2011.17.01. © Ana Maria Hernando. 