I-70 Series: Kansas City
Curated by Dana Turkovic and John Watson
Ethereal Locations
Interstate-70 is spattered with fresh road kill, porn stores and modest churches. The route linking St. Louis and Kansas City is a threateningly dangerous and bumpy car ride, through a raw level plain. Punctuating this --at expanse, exit signs guide the eye to gun-marts, XXX stores, chapels and run down strip malls. Fellow travelers, proudly sporting their "W" bumper stickers and the litter of burst open skunks, possums and stray dogs drive home the reality of the area's thinly concealed violence, isolation and confusion. The Interstate hovers unapologetically between the piety of the Sunday service and the vulgarity of the whorehouse. Is this cultural landscape a result of hard-pressed farmers --finding a precarious economic niche or enterprising ex-urbanites making a quick easy buck? Pick either and you would be right. It's a mix of bleak desperation and vibrant commerce. The I-70 is a modern pastoral vision. The intention of the series was to merely introduce two art scenes and provoke an ongoing dialogue that will produce complimentary exhibitions in both cities. But while daydreaming beneath the wide blue sky and the green pastures, I momentarily glimpsed the subconscious preoccupations of this violent terrain. Our shared experience of Missouri via this lethally rutted asphalt path connects Dolan, Esquivel, Honig, Neidinger and Watne to each other as artists. The outcome is an exhibition of the impression embossed on the mind by this stretch of road revealing the nature of the two cities it connects: open sky, crushed mammals, litter, wrecked cars, and spent passion. The I-70 show is a wild drive through the tension of this peculiarly dark but optimistic place.
