AIA Kansas City: The American Institute of Architects

Jeremiah Ariaz: Frontier
Opening reception: Friday, December 4, 6-9pm; Artist remarks: 6pm
Exhibition runs: December 4, 2009-January 7, 2010
Gallery Hours: Thursdays + Saturdays, 12-5pm
(closed December 24-January 2 except by appointment)
http://www.charlottestreet.org

Charlotte Street Foundation’s Urban Culture Project is pleased to present Frontier, a solo exhibition of recent work by Louisiana based artist Jeremiah Ariaz. The exhibition opens at UCP’s la Esquina venue with a reception on December 4, 2009, 6-9pm, and remains on view through January 7, 2010.

The exhibition features a new three projection video installation, Frontier, which was filmed in rural Kansas. Shot by three cameras aligned side by side, the piece presents a panoramic view of open sky and prairie, amidst which the artist attempts to “run West” for a duration of 24 hours. As one quickly realizes that the figure, dressed in blue jeans and cowboy hat, is making no progress but rather running in place, the work becomes both a quiet meditation on the land and a portrait of unfulfilled desire. The adventure-seeking, possibility-laden American call of “go West young man” is here answered with futility and exhaustion, with the outcome of his action being a scar carved in the earth.

The video installation builds upon Ariaz’ 2008 installation, Shadow Root, which takes the historic Santa Fe Trail as its entry point for contemplating time and place. First exhibited at the Good Children Gallery in New Orleans and reconfigured for this show, Shadow Root specifically draws inspiration from ruts in the earth left by wagons, mules and oxen following the trail — “a physical resonance of westward expansion” —that remain visible near Ariaz’s hometown of Great Bend, Kansas. Through drawings, color photographs (presented as slide projections), and sculpture (a wooden wagon wheel acquired by Ariaz as he retraced the trail upon which the drawings are based), Shadow Root considers the trail, the people who travelled it, and the larger ideas that it represented. The installation further explores multiple forms of mark-making –as cumulative process, collective action, personal expression, physical gesture, material residue, index of presence, and marker of absence.