Kim Humphries

Opening Friday, November 17 in the Cincinnati Arts Association’s Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts are two new exhibitions: a new series of paintings by Kim Humphries that examines the creative process in the use of keyboard-generated symbols in e-mail correspondence, and Casual Realism: Sculpture & Installation by TODT, a provocative installation of new work by the internationally-recognized artist collaborative TODT.

Until his recent move to St. Louis, Kim Humphries was an active and prominent participant in the Cincinnati art scene. During his tenure here, Humphries employed a broad range of artistic strategies in projects that encompassed such diverse media as sculpture, graphics, photography, installation, performance and unusual hybrids of all the above. Uniting these varying approaches was a common theme that sought to elevate the viewer’s awareness of the commonplace.

For his project in the Weston Art Gallery, Humphries has created a new series of paintings, a form not commonly employed by the artist, that is based on enlargements of the keyboard-generated symbols commonly referred to as "emoticons." These symbols, which are frequently configured to resemble a human face, are used to express various emotions in the context of e-mail correspondence and Internet chat rooms. By presenting and enlarging these creative configurations of electronic ephemera as paintings, Humphries elevates them to "art status" and presents them as precious objects. Thus the artist challenges the viewer’s traditional idea of painting and the creative process; resulting in a heightened awareness of these symbols that acknowledges them as an everyday aspect of artistic creativity in which we all participate.