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Join the Kemper Art Museum in celebrating the opening of the spring exhibitions.

Kahlil Robert Irving: Archaeology of the Present features the artwork of St. Louis–based artist Kahlil Robert Irving. Clay-based works are at the center of Irving’s multidisciplinary practice, which examines digital media, memory, race, and Black life as subjects embedded in his ceramic sculptures. This exhibition features Irving’s new sculptures, videos, and paintings that together consider our relationship to the city street as a place and a concept, while also challenging constructions of identity and culture in the Western world.

Santiago Sierra: 52 Canvases Exposed to Mexico City’s Air presents Madrid-based artist Santiago Sierra’s installation of fifty-two canvases representing a visualization of the toxicity of contemporary urban life. Hung in a minimalist grid, the work was created by placing adhesive-lacquered canvases on the floor in a building in Mexico City with the windows open, allowing the air to settle on them, and removing one canvas each week in a year. The result is a disturbing time-lapse of noxious accumulation that references not only pollution in Mexico City but also the increase of airborne contaminants in congested areas around the world.

The Body in Pieces draws from the Kemper Art Museum’s significant collection of modern art to explore how the fragmented body acted as a metaphor for modernity in early 20th century art. Many European and American artists experienced the mechanization of newly industrialized cities and consequently sought to incorporate these mechanical movements into their creative processes, portraying human bodies that are segmented into geometric shapes, cropped into fragments, or melted into gestural brushstrokes. Featured artists include Jean Dubuffet, Fernand Léger, and Joan Miró, among many others.

Free and open to the public

Related events

Join a Q&A with artist Kahlil Robert Irving and Hamza Walker, director of LAXART, in Steinberg Auditorium at 5:30 pm.

Parking

Free parking is available in the East End Garage after 5 pm. Enter at the intersection of Forsyth Blvd and Wrighton Way. View a map and complete parking information here.