Neighbors in stockyards district salute Bill Brady gallery opening - Kansas City

Neighbors in stockyards district salute Bill Brady gallery opening By ALICE THORSON Kansas City Star New York art dealer Bill Brady’s decision to open a gallery in Kansas City has been the talk of the art world for months. On Friday, the project comes to fruition with the opening of the inaugural show at the Bill Brady Gallery in the renovated Telegram Building at 1505 Genessee St. Measuring 1,700 square feet, with 24-foot-high walls, it’s an impressive space. Brady’s arrival marks a new chapter in the evolution of the stockyards district in the West Bottoms as a cultural destination. John O’ Brien relocated his Dolphin gallery to the district three and a half years ago. Last year the artist-run Plug Projects set up shop at 1613 Genessee St. The two galleries will join Brady’s opening with their own Friday night. Brady’s inaugural exhibit, “East West Shift to the Middle,” is the first of two group shows featuring artists from New York, Los Angeles and Kansas City, including Art Miller, Jaimie Warren and Rashawn Griffin. The featured artists include familiar names such as Alexander Ross, who is represented by a large organic abstraction in the collection of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and Huma Bhabha, whose work is part of the Oppenheimer Collection at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art. Other artists who have shown in Kansas City before include Kansas City Art Institute alum Brian Fahlstrom, now based in L.A., and New York artist Donald Baechler, who had a big show of collages at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Gallery in the early 1990s. The other artists in the show are Katherine Bernhardt, Julia Chiang, Anne Eastman, Jason Fox, Tomoo Gokita, KAWS, Michael Lazarus, Erik Parker, Wallace Whitney and Michael Williams. Look for an eclectic mix of figuration and abstraction, comic and socially conscious. Exhibits will change out every eight weeks, Brady said, and the gallery will be open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Brady has hired up-and-coming Korean-born photographer, Ah-ram Park, who graduated from K-State in 2010, to be the gallery manager. Friday’s opening runs from 5 to 9 p.m. At the Dolphin gallery, 1600 Liberty St., look for new urban scapes by Mike Sinclair. “The pictures, inspired by talks with my mother, are about trying to make visual a tie we both feel with this town’s social and physical landscape,” says Sinclair, who has titled the exhibit, “Public Domain.” The gallery also will open a group show, “I Aim too High,” curated by O’Brien and friend David Collins. The reception runs from 5 to 10 p.m. Kansas City artist Andrew Jacob Schell’s exhibit, “Multi-Channel,” has been on display at Plug Projects since Jan. 20. The gallery will have a second opening Friday from 6 to 9 p.m.