KEN BUHLER | KIM UCHIYAMA
BEAUTIFUL LAND
NOVEMBER 1 - DECEMBER 20, 2024
EVENTS
ARTISTS’ RECEPTION
Friday, December 6, 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Wege Gallery
HYBRID ARTISTS’ CONVERSATION WITH KEN BUHLER AND KIM UCHIYAMA
Saturday, December 7, 10:00 am - 11:30 am CST
Wege Gallery / ZOOM
Join us for a conversation between two artists Kim Uchiyama and Ken Buhler, in conjunction with their exhibition BEAUTIFUL LAND. The hybrid event will be hosted in-person at the Ross Theater at the Wege Center for the Arts, and on ZOOM. Buhler will be present at the Ross Theater, with Uchiyama joining online. Registration is required for virtual attendance.
Kim Uchiyama, Element, 2022. oil on linen, 20 x 16 inches
Beautiful Land featuring Kim Uchiyama and Ken Buhler draws out two artists’ personal and idiosyncratic responses to landscape. The landscape in each artist’s works serves as a conceptual framework and a space of possibilities, revealing the nuance that comes from close attention and familiarity with a subject. Beautiful Land highlights both artists’ connection to the landscape of Iowa, each having spent their childhoods here, peering into the spacious night skies and out to the green and golden bands of farmland.
Uchiyama’s paintings, characterized by horizontal bands of shifting color have an auditory effect through loud and soft transitions in light, tone, and rhythm. Citing memories from her childhood of watching the drama of a midwestern storm roll across the sky, Uchiyama orchestrates a quiet crescendo, exposing the range within her own subtle awareness.
Buhler’s paintings evoke the sensation of gazing upward, into an expansive space where forms collide with a display of lights. In his marbled paper collages, he conducts swirling shapes on the surface tension of a fluid color bath, at once in control, and in service to the mysteries that arise. As in Uchiyama’s work, the environment of Buhler's paintings and works on paper encompasses the viewer, and like a satellite, we maintain a distance but receive a gift of perspective.
Ken Buhler, Faithful Compass Series #5: Catalan Atlas 1375, 2020. marbled paper, watercolor, antique map fragments, metal leaf
Ken Buhler, Dark Sky, 2019. acrylic/metal leaf on canvas, 50” x 36”
Kim Uchiyama, Transition, 2021. oil on linen, 20” x 16”
Beautiful Land is a traveling exhibition and collaboration between the Anderson Gallery at Drake University and the Wege Gallery. The exhibition was on view at Anderson Gallery September 5 - October 20, 2024.