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Kansas City’s galleries and artist-run spaces are heading into the new year with promising momentum — so should you.
There have been plenty of holiday markets and holiday-themed shows going on, including Hallmark’s Christmas town square at Crown Center. But if you want a spectacle that is not holiday-related, the galleries and art museums around Kansas City offer their own escape.
Whether you are looking to get away from the Christmas-hype or need some reassurance after a long and challenging year, these shows are sure to give you some food for thought and lift you out of the winter blues.
Make sure you catch them before they close!
"Idée Fixe" at ION Gallery
Established by Kansas City-based photographer and curator Elise Gagliardi, ION Gallery is a new addition to the art scene in the West Bottoms. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition, titled “Idée Fixe,” features works by Lawrence-based beadworker and mixed media artist Mona Cliff, Kansas City-based painter Thea Wolfe, and Pittsburgh-based mixed media artist and photographer Gavin Benjamin.
Each artist questions “predefinition” in their own way. Cliff wants the audience to expand their imagination on what Indigenous art can look like versus what’s commonly seen with her cyanotypes using beadwork transparencies. With paintings of pro-wrestlers, Wolf sheds light on the parallel between the absurdity of a sport built upon fabricated characters portrayed by athletes, and the lies and narratives we hear in political discourses.
Benjamin, combining photography with collage, creates different versions of the same image to represent how human perspectives can be easily altered with the change of color, texture, and composition. What do we think about the same character with or without a glittering diamond chain? What about in color versus in black and white?
When: Now through Jan. 31, 2025
Where: ION Gallery, 1200 W 12th St. Kansas City, MO 64101
“La Onda: Sana Sana” at Charlotte Street Foundation
La Onda is a Latinx artists collective co-curated by NYU professor Silvia Beatriz Abisaab, Lee’s Summit-based curator Silvia Arellano Fernandez, and Kansas City-based curator and multidisciplinary artist Cesar Lopez. Each edition of the exhibition features different members of the collective.
On view at Charlotte Street Foundation, “La Onda: Sana Sana” is a showcase of Kansas City-based emerging Latinx artists Victor Antillanca, Dani Coronado, Chantel Guzmán-Cupil, Tommy Lomeli, Paulina Otero, Andrew Pequeño, Angela Rangel, Jasmine Rodriguez, Isaac Tapia, and César Velez.
The title, “Sana Sana,” came from a healing song created for children to alleviate pain and feel loved. Like Lomeli’s ancient Mayan vessel Cempasuchil, the paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, and video on view leverage folklore and culturally specific motifs of mystical beliefs and spiritual practices, and considers how they still shape their community today with new meanings and values.
- When: Now through Jan. 25, 2025
- Where: Charlotte Street Foundation, 3333 Wyoming St, Kansas City, MO 64111
“If Only For a Moment” at Zhou B Art Center
Zhou B Art Center opened this summer in the historic Attuck School, in the 18th & Vine District, and the studios are filling up quickly. If you’ve been wondering who the current residents are, stop by “If Only For a Moment,” the organization’s first resident artist exhibition, before it closes in a few weeks.
For mystical portraits, check out the acrylic paintings by Zac Bendrick. The layered women figures represent the complexity of memories and private thoughts. Using bold and high-contrast palettes like orange and purple, red and blue, Bendrick’s fantastical images embody the profoundness of female existence.
Those drawn to the intersection of literary and visual art are sure to enjoy the cyanotypes by Karla Deel, each paired with poetry that further depicts the themes. “Heaven is Whenever / El Cielo es cuando sea” shows the interior of a cathedral — the representation of colonizer religion. It’s accompanied by Santo Domingo’s poem “Aqui,” which discusses the hypocrisy of man-made divinity, and how Oaxacan spirituality was deeply rooted in nature itself.
- When: Now through Jan. 18, 2025
- Where: Zhou B Art Center, 1801 E 18th St, Kansas City, MO 64108
"In a Blink" by Jordan Sears
In the blink of an eye, what do you see? In her solo exhibition, "In a Blink: Jordan Sears,” at United Colors Gallery, Kansas City-based oil painter Jordan Sears attempts to capture how what we experience shifts and interferes with our consciousness and focus.
The 2024-2025 H&R Block Artspace Jesse Howard Fellow, Sears draws inspiration from pop culture, and many might find the scenes in her paintings familiar from old movies. In “silk and anticipation,” a figure in a trenchcoat takes off her silk gloves in front of a black background. As the viewer, you might wonder: Who is she? A serial killer or a romantic encounter? Did you just wake up, and this is the first thing you saw? Is the last thing you remembered before passing out?
Through cropping, Sears isolates a single frame of movement from a full sequence, similar to how film directors zoom in and focus on specific elements, except here they’re separated from their original context. Each audience member may create a different narrative from this glimpse, an insight into their own psyche.
- When: Now through Jan. 31, 2025
- Where: United Colors Gallery, 611 N 6th St, Kansas City, KS 66101
“Ingress” by Katie Swan
Englewood Art Center in Independence is currently presenting “Ingress,” a solo exhibition by Kansas City-based sculptor, painter, photographer, and installation artist Katie Swan. The exhibit marks a significant transition in Swan’s art, where she shifts from her previous focus on human fragility to her new investigation into strength, stability, and resilience.
In “Ingress,” Swan presents a body of small ceramic sculptures mimicking bone fragments. Some are no larger than one’s fingernail, and others may be barely the size of a child’s palm.
They represent human being’s ability to withstand and endure, offering a slice of the intricate skeleton within our body, and the pressure and weight it withstands every second.
The exhibition also includes spine sculptures, capturing how our central skeletal pillar bends and moves, symbolizing a person’s fluidity and flexibility — and offering a different example of strength that allows individuals to reshape themselves and grow.
- When: Now through Jan. 18, 2025
- Where: Englewood Art Center, 10901 E Winner Rd. Independence, MO 64052
