On 3rd Friday in August, Kiosk Gallery welcomes Adam Finkelston as he presents a new series of photographs. “Across Disciplines” is a series of still-lifes incorporating objects associated with Finkelston’s environment as an educator, where he and his fellow teachers utilize symbols, models, and illustrations as visual communication tools. The images examine contemporary and historical world-views, and the tension between scientific fact and belief.
Adam Finkelston is an artist, art educator, and magazine publisher based in Roeland Park, KS. Finkelston holds an MA in Photography from the University of Missouri – Kansas City (UMKC), a BFA in Photography from the Kansas City Art Institute, and a BA in Art Education from UMKC. He has shown his photographs in many solo and group exhibitions, and received several awards for his work. In addition to his studio practice, Finkelston is the owner, publisher, and co-editor of an internationally-recognized quarterly art magazine called The Hand Magazine: A Magazine For Reproduction-based Arts, through which he has also curated exhibitions of international artists. As an educator, Finkelston has received numerous awards and grants, including the 2016 ArtsKC Education Award, recognizing his multi-disciplinary student project, Creative Co/Lab.
Artist Statement – Adam Finkelston:
The primary concept of my artwork is to explore the relationship between contemporary and historical world-views. The question I come back to when making art is, “what is behind this idea?” Whatever the idea is, I am curious about what has contributed to our understanding of it, how our understanding has changed, and projecting how that understanding may change again. I am interested in how the form of storytelling or narrative through imagery relates and defines our understanding of our world. The subject matter references concepts such as natural vs. synthetic objects, our changing points of views on universal ideals, as well as how we perceive the natural world and each other.
The images in “Across Disciplines” are related to my work as an educator. I am interested in the cycle of how knowledge moves from an idea to accepted fact, is then disproved and redefined, and cycles back again. I began by considering how various scholastic disciplines are taught, and how they are connected. I tried to convey a sense of each discipline by using objects associated with them, combined with other objects and visual elements that might tie the separate disciplines together or represent some aspect of my own visual language. Transparencies with writing, drawn diagrams, and connecting lines serve as visual symbols of these connections.
KIOSK 