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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 has 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.

This exhibition presents thirty years of expressive paintings and drawings by Cornwall, UK–based artist Denzil Forrester MBE (Grenadian-British, born 1956). Taking inspiration from London’s dub reggae culture and clubs of the 1980s, Forrester’s working process is analogous to creating versions or reconfigurations of the same music track. Forrester’s numerous sketches from this period, made in the semi-darkness of urban dancehalls, continue to inform his paintings today. References to the diaspora, dub reggae, and the policing of Black cultural expression in Britain reverberate like a refrain throughout his practice. These figures and expressions read like a visual dub mix, echoing one another, and reconstituting themselves while projecting the transformative energy of the music.

Duppy Conqueror explores four themes that evolve throughout Forrester’s practice, circulating around ideas of ancestry, family, the aura of the reggae club and music scene, and the violence inflicted on Black communities.

Originating in Jamaica at about the time Forrester moved to East London in 1967, dub reggae speaks to his memories of the Caribbean while representing a vibrant cultural community in the UK. Works such as Rave On (1991), capture the energy of the dancing crowds and the idiosyncratic styles the clubbers wore. While such images express a sense of joy and freedom, paintings such as Brixton Blue (2018), also hint at the oppression of Black cultural life in Britain. Inspired by the death in police custody of the artist’s friend Winston Rose, this work exposes the physical, social, and emotional brutality inflicted on the Black body.

Duppy, an African word that evokes spirits and ancestors, is related semantically to dub, or the altered recordings of familiar songs made anew. This idea mirrors the dynamic of a music that echoes the past, speaks in the present, and anticipates the future. Key paintings in the exhibition Stitch Up (2017) and Reading with Ma Pets (2018), reveal the convergence of timelines that similarly defines Forrester’s work, from his childhood memories of Grenada to his experiences of London as a young man.

Duppy Conqueror is organized by Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic.

Featured Artworks

Forrester is most well known for capturing the vibrancy and dynamicsm of 1980s London reggae and dub nightclub scene. Of his work, the artist says “I just wanted to draw movement, action and expression. I was interested in the energy of the crowd, particular dance movements and what the clubbers wore. In these clubs, city life is recreated in essence: sounds, lights, police sirens, bodies pushing and swaying in a smoke-filled room.”

1983 M.A., Fine Art, Royal College of Art, London, England

1979 B.A., Fine Art, Central School of Art, London, England

1976 Foundation, Central School of Art, London, England

2021 Itchin & Scratchin, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, England; travelling to Spike Island, Bristol, England

2021 Life Between Islands: Caribbean–British Art 50s – Now, Tate Britain, London, England

2019 Brixton Blue, TFL Commission, Brixton Underground Station, London, England

Panel Discussion | “Denzil Forrester: Duppy Conqueror”

Denzil Forrester’s first major U.S. exhibition opens at Kemper Museum

A Painter Who Captured London’s 1980s Reggae Scene

In London, Essential Survey Shows Painter Denzil Forrester’s Full Range

Denzil Forrester's Paintings Celebrate Pre-Gentrification London Nightlife

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Premiere Benefactors

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Denzil Forrester: Duppy Conqueror

Denzil Forrester (Grenadian-British, born 1956), Night Flames, 2012, oil canvas, 42 x 66⅛ inches, Courtesy of Tia Collection, Santa Fe, New Mexico. © Denzil Forrester. Courtesy of Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM. Image courtesy the artist and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Photo: Mark Blower. 

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

Generous contributions of all sizes help keep the Museum FREE for all visitors.

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.

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.

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

kemperart.org Jan 2023

Insights into recent additions to the Kemper Museum Permanent Collection from Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic

Collectors Forum Salon: Recent Acquisitions

Join us for an evening of figure drawing inspired by works on view in the galleries.

Studio Night: Capturing Rhythm

Save your spot for our three-day art camp

Spring Camp Kemper

Build your professional art portfolio with the Kemper Teen Arts Council.

Teen-led Saturday: Portfolio Building

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

Low Sensory Saturday

Meet Kansas City-based artist Jason Pollen, whose work is currently on view at Kemper Museum.

Coffee and Conversation with Artist Jason Pollen

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Save your spot for this three-day art camp, taking place from Wednesday, March 22–Friday, March 24. Inspired by featured artwork in Denzil Forrester: Duppy Conqueror. 

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

We welcome the Collectors Forum for a special after-hours reception at the museum celebrating recent acquisitions to the permanent collection. Director of Curatorial Affairs Erin Dziedzic will answer questions and provide insights into the process of institutional collecting through the lens of works added to the Kemper Museum Permanent Collection during the past year. 


I﻿mage: Reginald Sylvester II (American, born 1987), Offering IX, 2022, acrylic, paper, tarp and rubber over wood, 60 x 72 inches , Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. Gift of Private Collection, 2022.7. © Reginald Syvester II. Image courtesy the artist and Maximillian William, London. Photo: Daniel Greer. 

This special event is a benefit of Kemper Museum Advocate or National Committee level memberships.

Join us for an evening of figure drawing inspired by the techniques and themes in Denzil Forrester: Duppy Conqueror. A local visiting instructor will guide participants in their drawing practice through instruction and live demonstration, making connections to the work on view as well as their own.

Materials provided. Drawing sessions take place at Kemper Museum. All levels of experience are welcome. Cash bar.

Capacity is limited! If your plans change and you can no longer make it, we appreciate you canceling your reservation to give someone else the chance to attend. 

Practice your Italian and English and learn about contemporary art at Kemper Museum each Thursday.

Join the Italian and English Language Exchange Club! 

Led by Kemper Museum Docent and Italian native Benedetta, each language exchange session begins with a half hour of conversation in Italian followed by a half hour in English about artwork on view in the galleries. 

This club meets every Thursday at Kemper Museum and is open to all, regardless of knowledge of English, Italian, or contemporary art. 

Registration is required and attendees are encouraged to attend all sessions in April.  

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

Italian - English Language Exchange Club

Build your professional art portfolio with the Kemper Teens. Council members will use studio-style lighting to capture headshots of participants and professional images of their artwork. Registration is required. Participants are limited to bringing no more than five 2-D works works of art that are no larger than 20 inches x20 inches. 

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