Review

"Goatsbeard Standoff," Oil on Canvas.

Mark Mohr

8 a.m.-5 p.m.

Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences
1750 Independence Avenue
Kansas City, MO
816.283.2000

Hours: 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday
Runs through: March 31

Artist site: http://www.mohrart.com
Gallery site: http://www.kcumb.edu

You might expect a university specializing in cutting-edge biomedical research to favor equally avant-garde art: ceramic meditations on the double helix of DNA, perhaps, or computer-generated renditions of beneficial bacteria.

If you think about it, Mark Mohr's landscapes make perfect sense in this context. Our first medicines, after all, came from plants. Many modern remedies do, too -- and more remain to be discovered. (All the more reason to take care of the environment, wouldn't you agree?)

Mohr also paints cityscapes. Most of them sold last year. He's painting more urban scenes. Do check his site to see them. They're worth the click.

His show, running through March at the Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences, offers far more than a statement on the link between science and nature.

For one thing, it's a testament to the value of the simple: art that seeks only to depict, not to declare, debate or declaim. There's a world of good in that.

In the post-postmodern era, there's a tendency to roll the eyes at That Which Has Been Done Before. We like new things: gadgets, cuisines, romance. Then the shine comes off, and we get bored, and the search for the New resumes.

In any field, advances are necessary. If they weren't, KCUMB wouldn't exist. But to say that art has no validity or vitality if it doesn't push the envelope is laughable. It takes skill, absolutely, to tear through improvised electonic riffs in 7/16 time or devise full-room installations based on the latest discoveries in astrophysics. But it takes equal skill and creativity to work within set forms -- be they landscapes or sonnets or twelve-bar blues.

Mohr's pieces, especially those painted in the Flint Hills, encapsulate what I've long said about this region: Anyone who thinks it's flyover country should try driving through it. We don't have oceans, but we have seas of grass. We don't have mountains, but we have stark hills the color of red brick. And I'd put our sunsets up against anyone's.

Mohr conveys that beauty skillfully and faithfully. In so doing, he provides a service just as valuable as that performed by the university's researchers and faculty.

Honestly? Sometimes quiet contemplation of nature -- in the wild or on the wall -- is better medicine than anything found in a pill.

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