Long Reviews
New Platforms for Art in the Current Environment
We have entered a paradigm shift in socializing. Always prepared to adapt, the art world is trained for moments like this.
On the Other Side: Reflections on William Plummer’s Passages to my Ā pó: Transplanted Joss
The word “melt” suggests potential, a process triggered by a reaction. What triggers is numerous, but how do traditions, roles, definitions, entire notions of being and selfhood begin to melt away through our work?
Counterpublic : a Future-Visioned Triennial
Sitting in a church basement, on a restored pew, I was waiting for the second loop of Cauleen Smith’s film Soujourner (2018).
Beyond the Whiteness of Spaces: Finding Phenomenology, Race, and Queerness in Bricolaje
The sheet of paper starts white, offering a space for your marks. The white frame offers to encase your object, simply and cleanly.
Matter Matters: Dispatches From A Material World
As a long-time knitting hobbyist, I was excited to see the UMKC Gallery of Art hosting Matter Matters, a show curated by Davin Watne and featuring the work of Karolina Gnatowski, Dan Gunn, Noel Morical, and Alex Lockwood.
Staging Ground: A Forest for Artists
My first viewing of Staging Ground left me spellbound and stimulated. My husband and I had our toddler in tow, so it was destined to be a quick overview.
Meditation for Your Computer
Meditation for Computers was a meditation for our own cyborg minds. Donna Haraway famously wrote about the concept of being a cyborg; a hybrid of machine and organism .
I know this feeling. I was here before: On Basic Essentials
The first chain convenience store in the United States opened in Dallas, Texas in 1927 by the Southland Ice Company, which later became 7-Eleven.
An Exhibition Performed: on Collaboration with Dannielle Tegeder
Currently on view at the H&R Block Artspace is artist Dannielle Tegeder’s (New York,NY) exhibition, Chroma Machine Suite: Forecasting Fault Lines in the Cosmos.
The Work of Marcus Cain and Cary Esser is Eyesight for the Blind
There is no end of the world. It’s one long, calcifying note of endurance that goes on until we are lulled into a vortex of white noise.
Through the Eyes Of Picasso: A Strange Lens in the World of #MeToo
Through the Eyes Of Picasso examines how the artist consumed the mysticism and ceremonial icons of Africa, Oceania and the Americas to extrapolate his work into new perspectives.
DO A THING: How to Start Your Own Artist Run Space
This year we are refocusing our energy at Informality to bring you new and exciting programming, while revamping some of our old ones too!
E S S A Y 4: BabyCat Looks Me in the Eye.
Here is a genealogy, or else a geometry, or else a circumstance: a smothering Summertime rolled away one morning to make coffee and left behind the Fall; a creative surge in my studio became apparent; a cat came to live with me.
When Viewing Molly Garrett’s Artwork, Consider This
Congratulations! You’ve done it. You’ve made it out of your house to this show. You’ve peeled yourself from the warmth of your bed, put on some decent-ish clothes, hopped in your car, and made your way downtown, faces past, and you’re art-bound. Or perhaps you made it here today after work.
Encountering the Black Everyday in William Toney’s Photography
“The black aesthetic turns on a dialectic of luxuriant withholding – abundance and lack push technique over the edge of refusal so that the trouble with beauty, which is the very animation and emanation of art, is always and everywhere troubled again and again.
Journeys and Cross-Generational Narratives in Barry Anderson’s The Janus Restraint
A labyrinth evolves before us in Barry Anderson’s The Janus Restraint, the ongoing multimedia project begun in 2012
Revealing Self: Patricia Bordallo Dibildox’s Poetic Objects of Identity
To acknowledge intellectually that one’s identity is fluid and intersectional is one endeavor; to make this visible through physical objects is another challenge altogether.
Why Should Artists be Writing in Kansas City: A Thesis Revisited
Four years ago, when I started Informality, the call for an arts publication was constantly within earshot. Art Practical, the Bay Area-based arts publication, had just come through town for a lecture and to feature Kansas City in their latest issue.
E S S A Y 3: The Distance and the Manicure.
On our second day in Texas we could not swim in the pool below the grotto beneath the cow field because of too much manure runoff and too little rain, and besides it was busy with too many people to be good for swimming, and so we followed a sign pointing up into the high scrub and pine instead.
Davin Watne’s Forced Perspective in “Picture the Wall” at Haw Contemporary
Photojournalists work with various media outlets to document our reality. We rely on these images to provide us with an accurate depiction of a story, although the framing will always be subjective