Performance Art 
SAN ANTONIO, MEET LAWRENCE; LAWRENCE, MEET …(3)
May 27, 2011 —
“The New Old San Antonio: Tales from the Little Big Town” showcases works by 33 artists who have strong ties to the city of San Antonio. They vary in theme, approach, and level of experience — but the pieces selected pieces work together as a whole. The resulting exhibition, which showed in San Antonio last month and is at the Lawrence Arts Center through June 17, is a mix of work that paints the city as a diverse and vibrant arts community.
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A Reverence for Reverence: Margo Kren
Margo Kren’s show at the Lawrence Arts Center is as much an act of devotion as the structures which inspired it.
PETER WARREN: CROSSING
Peter Warren brings New York and new Norway experience to Kansas City, which he has called home for the past three years. A Review Studios resident added in 2010, Warren often collaborates with performers and other artists. His works are sophisticated conglomerates of carefully assembled objects he’s collected and scavenged. This profile by Janell Meador includes a video interview with Warren in his studio.
YOU’LL LAUGH UNTIL YOU FROWN
Humor lightens the serious nature of Dan Perjovschi’s artwork. Through the vocabulary of cartoons, the Romanian artist addresses subjects such as war, racism, government surveillance, and oil spills. His drawings and phrases are direct and approachable, presenting an often unsmiling reality veiled in a joking tone. See this site-specific installation in person before February 6, before it is painted over at the Spencer Museum of Art.
REALITY MY WAY
The art of Wayne Propst is scripted by real life; he says that true outsider art is not eccentricity but truth. Tom King catches up with the 64-year-old Lawrence, Kansas, artist whose exhibitions have a reputation both for being highly provocative and for enjoying good sales. King’s interview was conducted the day before Propst’s latest show, “Baby Heads 02,” which is being changed out at the Bourgeois Pig for the coming Final Friday openings.
KANSAS ‘WORKS’ AS NYC IN NEW FILM
A film about an artist’s survival, ”earthwork” by Kansas filmmaker Chris Ordal presents Stan Herd’s story of discovery as told through a single episode of his life, creating an outdoor installation (“crop art”) on Donald Trump’s land, a story with lessons that should resonate with all of us, artist or not. Filmed mostly in Kansas, it premieres in Lawrence on September 10.
RELIEF
One of the many video works in the “2010 Kansas City Flatfiles” exhibition at H&R Block Artspace, “This Is Us Joey Grimm & Jordan Johnson understanding our relationship” presents a riveting non-narrated storyline, a metaphoric struggle played out with a pane of glass, two candles, and two cups of water. The entire exhibition, primarily works on paper, is on view through September 25, 2010.
SPELLING OUT A LANDSCAPE
Some qualities in Kim Jongku’s “Mobile Landscape” at the Spencer Museum of Art compare to applying tone to a drawing page with vine charcoal dust or to child’s play in a sandbox. What fascinates is that the relief of the calligraphy also forms the hills of the fabricated landscape seen in the projection — and beyond what appears to be a rendition of a vast landscape are the moving feet of present gallery goers standing in the Electronic Media Gallery — in the same projected image.
PROVOCATIVE, INTENSE, FEMININE
“Shrew’d: The Smart and Sassy Survey of American Women Artists” presents an intense focus on the intersections of gender, identity, representation, and feminism. Much of the work in the Sheldon Museum of Art’s exhibition highlights contemporary production, but curators included a number of references to the history of feminine art, such as Martha Rosler’s series, and also have mounted a complementary exhibition from the museum’s own collection.
Theatre of Paint: Patrick Duegaw
It’s likely that each viewer of Patrick Duegaw’s “The Wrong Tools (for the Job)” will come away with a different set of plot lines, which would make this an ideal show for seeing with a group and discussing after. Based on people from Duegaw’s life, the subjects of his large-scale paintings do have their own stories, but finding visual clues in the work is the audience’s pleasure.
ART OF SPORT : SPORT OF ART
We find kinship in our attraction to the spectacle of sports, and there is a kinship between the spririt of competition found in physical games and in what artists do. The group exhibition, “You’re Such a Good Sport,” brings out that competitive spirit through both static works and related events, which continue through the month of April and to May 6, when the exhibition closes.
THE SHOW MUST GO ON!
Mel Chin’s Fundred Dollar Bill Project addresses the appropriation and alteration of currency imagery not only for art education, but to highlight social injustice. This national project is large and ambitious in its scale, as well as its scope. It is all at once about environmental health, lead awareness, social conscience, collaboration, and the creation of community.
AN INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE
Kim Jongku, of Seoul, South Korea, became the latest international artist-in-residence at the University of Kansas’ Spencer Museum of Art, which is making an effort to increase partnerships with artists. His installation will be on view at the museum through June 25, 2010.