Artist include: Emma Amos, David Adamo, Lisa Alvarado, Cory Arcangel, Radcliffe Bailey, Sarah Briland, Susan Collis, Tacita Dean, Ben Durham, Adrian Esparza, Mike Goodlett, Jessica Jackson Hutchins and Toyin Ojih Odutola

 

"You begin with the possibilities of the material."

- Robert Rauschenberg

 

The inaugural exhibition in KMAC's newly renovated space will articulate the museum's new mission to connect people to art and creative practice. Through carefully curated programs that explore an extensive array of materials and processes, the museum will represent the forever-changing landscape of contemporary artistic production and material culture.  

 

Material Issue features artists who have developed a personal and highly critical dialogue with their chosen materials. The ideas and issues that are expressed in the works on view are nurtured through a diversity of material explorations related to pen and ink drawing, ceramics, woodworking, painting, textiles, film, video, and found objects. Demonstrating the ways that artists think through material, the exhibition provides insight into how certain creative endeavors push traditional process beyond the limits of conventional practice and allow materials to inform and resonate personal, historical, social, and political issues.

 

Material Issue signifies an area of artistic production and innovation where ideas and the physical nature of materials intersect with equal pliability. Artists mining this territory are in constant dialogue with the history of their chosen materials and the ways they can subvert our normal associations and interactions with the physical world.

 

The exhibit will explore the materiality of traditional materials along side film, video, performance and other new media, which are vital to a more expansive narrative that gives greater agency to our material surroundings. The 13 contributing artists engage in material investigations that facilitate a better understanding of our shared environment, thinking through historical relics, new and old technologies, cultural artifacts, domestic goods, and common art supplies.  

 

From the artists featured in this exhibition to those in the KMAC permanent collection, Material Issue will continue the museum’s efforts to resist the narrow definitions and hierarchical classifications of creative practice. The new KMAC begins with a show of contemporary artists who introduce important material examinations that reflect our current time and place.