Artistic Rebellion

This Independence Day, many of the galleries that would otherwise hold art openings are closed in honor of our nation's most famous act of individuality. They'll open their doors next Friday instead. Meanwhile, in celebration of said individuality, at least two venues are featuring shows by artists whose work would never have made it back when this country was founded.Tonight between 6 and 9, the Urban Culture Project's La Esquina (1000 West 25th Street) opens The Ambivalent Nature of Things Around Us: New Work by Justin Farkas and Miles Neidinger. Farkas and Neidinger, both Kansas City Art Institute graduates, are collectors. Neidinger accumulates everyday objects such as car bumpers, drinking straws, coat hangers and twist ties and transforms them into massive structures that take the form of waves, arches and, in one case, an enormous wall of ruffled newspaper pages. Farkas, who may have been a construction worker in another life, uses hardware-store materials such as duct tape, wooden boards, lightbulbs and metal wiring to build works of, he says, "monumental scale."Over at the Red Light gallery (323 Southwest Boulevard), Jonathan Douglas Duran's multimedia installation La Vita Nuova is on view from 6 to 10 p.m. Duran works in a wide range of media — music, photography, painting, film, sculpture and the written word — and describes his work as "eloquent coherence via frenzied incoherence."
Fri., July 4, 2008