AUSTIN, TX.- Urban Culture Project is excited to present two new exhibitions together featuring recent work by nearly twenty Austin-based artists never before seen in Kansas City. The result of a collaboration with Okay Mountain, an artist collective and artist-run gallery in Austin, Texas, the shows open Saturday, November 22, 6pm at Paragraph gallery and Project Space, 21-23 East 12th Street in downtown KC.

TEXPOSÉ: NEW ART FROM AUSTIN at Paragraph gallery, curated by Kansas City-based painter Grant Miller and Charlotte Street Foundation Associate Director Kate Hackman, features the work of six Austin artists selected through image reviews and studio visits conducted in Austin this summer. Featured artworks, which include drawings, paintings, mixed media works on paper, videos, and a live performance on opening night, were selected by the curators with an eye toward complementing work being made and seen in Kansas City. Specifically, the show highlights experimental performance-based video work in the hopes of encouraging more work of this ilk in Kansas City, while also including works that demonstrate a high level of craftsmanship, attention to detail, and labor intensive process – aspects characteristic of the work of many Kansas City-based artists as well. Interests in pop culture/subculture, consumerism, the built environment and utopia/dystopia are woven throughout the exhibition.

IT’S GONNA BE REVERYTHING at Project Space is a group exhibition of artworks and site-specific installations by the Okay Mountain collective, who will spend more than a week in Kansas City prior to the opening. This new series of works seeks to highlight the collaborative way in which the group maintains its gallery and wealth of duties. Works featured are as diverse as the members themselves and include drawing, video, sound, and large-scale sculptural installation. To produce these elements, the collective draws on both their aesthetic and conceptual similarities as well as their differences to find new ways of working together. The result of these experiments often reflects the group’s hard work and initiative paired with an equal passion for the light-hearted and whimsical.

The other component of this exchange project, SLOW COOKED: NEW ART FROM KANSAS CITY, opens at Okay Mountain, 1312 E Cesar Chavez Ste B, Austin, Texas, on November 8. Curated by Okay Mountain co-director Sterling Allen from image reviews and studio visits conducted in Kansas City this summer, the exhibition features work by Marcus Cain, Michael Converse, Colin Leipelt, Kacy Maddux, and James Woodfill. Though the formal and conceptual aspects of the five artists chosen for Slow Cooked are very different, Allen views “a solid commitment to an idea and the patience necessary to carry that work into fruition,” as a unifying characteristic of the work. Carnal Torpor, a collective comprised of Colin Leipelt, Ashley Miller and Seth Johnson, will perform live at the opening.

This collaboration is Urban Culture Project’s second exhibition exchange project, following TRUCK, a St. Louis exchange/collaboration with White Flag Projects in 2007, which culminated in an exhibition of St. Louis artists presented at UCP’s la Esquina venue, curated by Kansas City based artist Barry Anderson, and an exhibition of Kansas City artists presented by White Flag, a non-profit space in St. Louis, curated by director Matt Strauss. This Austin-Kansas City exchange was instigated by Grant Miller and Sterling Allen, who met as artists in residents at the Millay Colony for the Arts in Upstate New York.

“I immediately drew parallels between Okay Mountain and Urban Culture Project,” says Miller. “Okay Mountain, run by 10 artists who collaboratively decide programming and split rent and expenses involved in running a gallery, is committed to bringing progressive national and international shows of both emerging and established artists to Austin, and has inspired a new energy and thriving creativity around it. Urban Culture Project has revitalized relatively abandoned urban areas through the presence of the arts at a similarly grassroots level. Although both have different approaches, the result is the same: a sense of artistic collaboration and an enhanced sense of community. And both are important models for other mid-sized cities across the United States that are lacking in community and artist-run projects; projects that offer an alternative to the traditional artist and commercial gallery relationship.”

Through these exchange projects, UCP aims to create new avenues for Kansas City area artists to gain exposure, develop specific relationships with arts practitioners, leaders and patrons in other cities, and to further build a "buzz" about our area’s arts community nationally. In addition, these projects bring peer artists and arts professionals from other cities to Kansas City in order to share work, ideas and resources. “This exchange show demonstrates each group’s desire to grow from one another,” says Miller. “It is more than just an exchange of artist’s work, It is also an exchange of thoughts and ideas; building relationships to help both groups flourish and continue to make positive change in their communities.”

An initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, Urban Culture Project creates new opportunities for artists of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming. The concept for Urban Culture Project emerged through extensive conversations with and support from individuals in the arts and business communities oriented toward furthering Kansas City’s development as a dynamic center for artists and contemporary art.

Founded in 2006 in Austin, Texas, Okay Mountain is an artist-run gallery committed to enhancing Austin's appreciation of global contemporary art by showing diverse works, partnering with cultural and social institutions, and providing a place for artists to work and exhibit. Okay Mountain believes this is possible by drawing on diversity, hard work and the support of friends who share our goal. As a group they have hosted over 25 exhibitions, many live music events, worked with over 100 different artists, opened a studio work space for local artists, and continue to show their own work individually and as a collective. Rarely presenting their own work at the gallery, Okay Mountain has presented collaborative exhibitions elsewhere, including at the Creative Research Lab, Austin, TX.