The H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute presents, Artspace Project Wall, Michael Krueger: the distance of time (draws, and is charmed from moving) August 2, 2024 – 2025

Kansas City, Mo. (August 12, 2024) - The H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute is pleased to announce a new Artspace Project Wall by Michael Krueger, a nationally celebrated artist based in Lawrence, Kansas. 

Grounded firmly in drawing, Michael Krueger works in a variety of media, including painting, printmaking, animation, and ceramics. Krueger’s artwork reflects a deep interest in American history and contemporary culture, art history, the human experience, and personal memoir. His latest series of landscape-based works are inspired by William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and its story of Prospero, the one-time Duke of Milan and powerful magician who conjures a storm to torment the survivors of a shipwreck.

In the distance of time (draws, and is charmed from moving), to be featured this summer on the Artspace Project Wall, a dark night sky and an ocean’s white-capped swell are illuminated by the blazing descent of an otherworldly comet. As this interstellar traveler meets the Earth’s atmosphere, it threatens to collapse the space between geological and cosmological time into a singular extinguishing moment while reminding us of nature’s awe-inspiring power.

Regarding his artwork featured in this project, Michael Krueger states, “A few years ago, I started making work on the theme of forgiveness. I looked for visual metaphors that might express aspects of the thoughtful and emotional process of forgiving and arriving at forgiveness. The image of the meteor descending into the sea holds some of these metaphoric qualities for me. The distance we travel, and the passing of time can alter our perceptions and may lead to changed attitudes. I am interested in the space between feeling and knowing. It is in these spaces between thought and emotion, that we wade through complex trauma to arrive at a place of seeing our experiences differently.

In my image the meteor has presumably traveled a great distance, over a great deal of time, 50 million years or more is not out of the question. Changed as it enters the atmosphere, now burning bright, transmuting colors and moving rapidly toward its destination, to be extinguished by the ocean, but in my drawing, it is not extinguished, it remains in the night sky charmed from moving.

Ferdinand draws his sword; without warning he becomes fixed, made motionless by Prospero’s magic. 

The second part of my title, in parentheses, is taken from an action in the play The Tempest, (Act 1, Scene 2, Line 467). I likened these action words to my drawing not only as a direct reference to The Tempest, but more so to compliment the forever still meteor in my drawing, arrested by magic. A moment that would otherwise be over in an instant, it is now held still to be contemplated. 

What happens next, I like to imagine how the meteor might be slowed by the water, cooled rapidly, reverberating strange noises as the heat dissipates, even breaking to bits before landing deep at the bottom of nowhere. From space time, geological time, inconceivable time to the instantaneous moment the meteor plunges into the ocean, here is a metaphor for the sometimes long and arduous process of forgiveness, on arrival everything changes, a transformation occurs. 

In the end, Prospero gives up his magic, his need for revenge, and bows out on a note of forgiveness, the tone that finally rules the play along with an affirmation in the essential goodness of humanity.

I enjoy the double meaning in the words ‘draws, and is charmed from moving’, taken out of context from the play, these words now also relate to drawing. In making a drawing the tool is always moving, there is no need to charge it with pigment, as a practice it is charmed in this way. When the drawing is at rest, finished, it contains both time and movement held in a static state. Through the process of drawing one can trace a direct connection to thought and emotion, drawing amplifies the place between feeling and knowing.“

Michael Krueger has exhibited internationally and his artwork can be found in numerous public and private collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Denver Museum of Art, Denver, CO; Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA; Estonian National Museum of Art, Tallinn, Estonia; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; New York Public Library, New York, NY; RISD Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI; Frans Masereel Centre, Kasterlee, Belgium; Weisman Museum of American Art, Minneapolis, MN; and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY. Krueger is also a professor at University of Kansas, and he has taught numerous workshops across the country and abroad, including the Cranbrook Academy of Art; Rhode Island School of Design; Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland; St. Luc, E.R.G., Brussels, Belgium; Instituto Superior de Arte, Asunción, Paraguay; and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

About the H&R Block Artspace

Dedicated to artists, art, and ideas since 1999, the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute presents innovative exhibitions, public programs, and commissioned projects to engage and inspire the next generation of artists, designers, and culture workers.

The Artspace receives support for its programs from the Missouri Arts Council – a state agency, H&R Block Foundation, The Stanley H. Durwood Foundation, the Jesse Howard Fund at KCAI, and from private contributions. 

The Artspace is open and free to all. Public hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 12:00-5:00 p.m.

For more details about the Artspace’s public programs and additional information, visit www.kcai.edu/artspace. To schedule a group visit, call 816-802-3571. Follow us on Instagram @hrblockartspace and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/hrblockartspace/.