Charlotte Street's Urban Culture Project Presents Two New Shows

Charlotte Street Foundation's Urban Culture Project is pleased to present Two new exhibitions opening January 21, 6-9pm at Paragraph and Project Space

At Paragraph / 23 East 12th Street KC MO 64105:
OUT OF THE FRYING PAN, INTO THE FIRE
NEW WORK BY AARON STORCK AND LEE PIECHOCKI
Painting, video, and installation addressing-with fascination and
skepticism-the boundary-blurring trends in contemporary art
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At Project Space / 21 East 12th Street KC MO 64105:
DUAL SINGULARITY
NEW WORK BY BRANDON BARR & JUSTIN RULO-SABE

BOTH OPENING FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2011, 6-9PM
Exhibitions run: January 21-March 5, 2011
Gallery hours: 12-5pm Wed, Fri & Sat; 11-6pm Thurs.

Out of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire
NEW WORK BY AARON STORCK AND LEE PIECHOCKI
OPENING FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2011, 6-9PM
Artists' Remarks @ 6pm
PARAGRAPH GALLERY (AN URBAN Culture Project VENUE)
23 EAST 12TH STREET, KCMO 64105
Exhibition runs: January 21-March 5, 2011
Gallery hours: 12-5pm Wed, Fri & Sat; 11-6pm Thurs.
Public discussion with artists: Saturday, February 26, 2pm

"The stability of the modernist era has disintegrated into a multiplicity of art making approaches. Artists, historians, critics, and theorists have systematically dismantled barriers and effectively opened the floodgates. Art, it seems, can be anything. We are free, but this freedom does not come without a price. The current pluralistic art milieu is unpredictable and chaotic, a tangled mess of methodologies."

So write artists Lee Piechocki and Aaron Storck, whose new exhibition, Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Fire, explores this idea of the contemporary "mess," its problematics and its potential. To do so, they draw subject matter from the immediate environments of their studios, and the messes, piles, stacks, and accumulations therein, while also drawing on their observations and perceptions of far-ranging aspects of contemporary culture and art, as well as theory, including the writings of Nicolas Bourriaud and his concept of Relational Aesthetics and the Altermodern.

The exhibition will include new still-life paintings and a series of sculptural objects/arrangements by Lee Piechocki, and a new large-scale multi-media diptych painting, an installation, two videos, and studies by Aaron Storck.

Lee Piechocki received his BFA in Painting from Ball State University in 2004. Based in Kansas City, MO and Lawrence, KS, he is a former Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project Studio Resident, 2008-09, completed an Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition Art Writing and Curatorial Fellowship in 2010, and, with Aaron Storck and Jeffrey Isom, is the recipient of a 2010-11 Rocket Grant. Piechocki's work has been presented in group exhibitions at venues including Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, KS; University of Kansas History Museum; Charlotte Street Foundation's Paragraph gallery (an Urban Culture Project venue); Allrise Gallery, Chicago; Wonder Fair, Lawrence, KS; Spencer Museum of Art at University of Kansas; Minnestrista Cultural Center, Muncie, IL; and County Club Chicago, among others. He is a member of the Asteroid Head artist collective and a co-director of Wonder Fair gallery. www.leepiechocki.com.

Aaron Storck received his BFA from University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 2001. Based in Lawrence, KS, he is a former a Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project Studio Resident, 2009-10, and, with Lee Piechocki and Jeffrey Isom, is the recipient of a 2010-11 Rocket Grant. In 2011, he will be an artist in residence at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE. Storck's work has been exhibited at Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts; Charlotte Street Foundation's Paragraph gallery (an Urban Culture Project venue); Hub-Bub Showroom Gallery, Spartanburg, SC; Art and Design Gallery, University of Kansas (solo); Dot Dot Dot Artspace, Lawrence; Carnegie Center, Dodge City, KS; Allrise Gallery, Chicago; Rare Gallery, New York; Dennis Morgan Gallery, Kansas City; and Riviera Gallery, Brooklyn, among others. He is a founding partner of the DotDotDot Artspace Cooperative and a founding member of the Fresh Produce Art Collective, both in Lawrence, KS. www.aaronstorck.com.

Dual Singularity
NEW WORK BY BRANDON BARR & JUSTIN RULO-SABE
OPENING FRIDAY, JANUARY 21, 2011, 6-9PM
Featuring Release of Dual Singularity helium-balloons + Artists' Remarks @ 6:30pm
URBAN Culture Project SPACE / 21 EAST 12TH STREET, KCMO 64105
Exhibition runs: January 21 - March 5, 2011
Gallery hours: 12-5pm Wed, Fri & Sat; 11-6pm Thurs.
Events in conjunction with exhibition (departing from Project Space):
January 30, 1pm: 1st Algorithmic Walk led by Justin Rulo-Sabe
February 25, 12pm: 2nd Algorithmic Walk
March 5, 12, 12pm: 3rd Algorithmic Walk

With Dual Singularity, emerging artists Justin Rulo-Sabe and Brandon Barr seek to interpret patterns of information embedded in natural phenomena, and to use digital media to translate that information into new languages and ways of seeing.

"Singularity occurs when a value approaches infinity or becomes undefined," says Rulo-Sabe, "This body of work demonstrates a way of looking at information as values to be transformed and recombined, until the ways of seeing the information become variable and multifarious enough to suggest near-infinite possibility."

For Brandon Barr, water has become the constant variable used in his work to explore ontological states or phenomena. "Taking up 70% of the earth's surface and 60% of the human body, water is an element that innately connects all life," he writes. "Whether it's through ritual or a pure physical need, its presence gives a sense of continuity, wholeness, being, and singularity." Exploring this natural element through the use of digital media, Barr considers how the opposing or inter-relationship of these two variables might yield a further evolved or exaptive "ultimate object."

Whether modifying a sound based on the atmospheric qualities of the gallery, compiling data entries from Internet users to form a representation of encyclopedic truth, or generating algorithms for exploration via a robotic vacuum's cleaning patterns, Justin Rulo-Sabe uses natural phenomena as determinate patterns in his work as it allows for escape from the confines of premeditation. In this show, he presents a survey of new writings, drawings and prints --the results of recent material and thought experiments.

Brandon Barr received his B.F.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2009. He is a currently based in Kansas City and ia Charlotte Street Foundation Urban Culture Project Studio Resident at the Town Pavilion studios. Barr received a grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts to support his work for this exhibition.

Justin Rulo-Sabe graduated with a B.F.A. in Art History and Interdisciplinary Arts from the Kansas City Art Institute in May 2010. His is currently living and working in St. Louis, and plans to continue his education and professional career by pursuing a responsive, humane, and ecologically sound practice in the field of architectural design.

Urban Culture Project is an initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, an organization
dedicated to making Kansas City a place where artists and art thrive. Urban Culture Project
creates new opportunities for artists of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by
transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary
arts programming. For more information, visit www.charlottestreet.org.