Kendall Buster
dis-assembling utopias
22 June – 13 July 2016
Commune.1 is proud to present ‘dis-assembling utopias’, Kendall Buster’s first solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition spans the entire Commune.1 space and includes a large-scale sculptural installation, graphite drawings and collaged digital prints.
Buster is fascinated by the ways in which architectural structures embrace, contain, shelter, and frame the individuals who inhabit them. Her previous studies in microbiology and interest in the power dynamics of architectural spaces, have resulted in works informed by buildings both real and visionary, and by biological morphologies.
KB Model Cities Constraint
The gallery spanning installation,Model city (2016) is of central importance to the exhibition.Constructed out of cardboard and paper, the work suggests a model city of brute forms,referencing both geometric abstraction and utopian modernist architecture. This configuration of models is an ongoing project; an ever-growing inventory of architectural pheno types by way of simple planar constructions. Something sinister is revealed in the cool language ofthese angled models suggesting observation towers, enclosures without exits, windows for hidden eyes and coliseum-style pits. Their fortress-like construction speaks of how enclosures offer at once protection and entrapment. They directly reference the ways in which architecture can frame or control and how the dynamics of looking and being looked at reflect the power relationship inherent in all architectural spaces.
The exhibition will also include graphite drawings on drafting film and digital collage prints made with fragments of images from National Geographic magazines printed between 1960 and 1980.
KB_fragments and mutations 9_2014
BIO:
Before pursuing an education in art, Kendall Buster studied microbiology receiving a BS degree in Medical Technology. She then earned a BFA degree from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington DC and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University in addition to participating in the Whitney Museum’s Independent Study Studio Program in New York City. Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues nationally and internationally. These include The Hirshhorn Museum and the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC, Artist’s Space and The American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, The Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee, Suyama Space in Seattle, SCAD Museum in Savannah, and the Bahnhof Westend in Berlin. Commissioned projects include permanent site-responsive works for the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Frick Chemistry Building at Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University.