The Collaborative | SOLSTICE

December 9, 2023 – February 24, 2024

Kendall Buster, Model City (Constraint), 2016, Flashe vinyl paint, paper, cardstock, foam-board, and sewing pins.

The Kreeger Museum and Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) are pleased to present SOLSTICE, a solo exhibition by sculptor Kendall Buster in conjunction with her solo presentation, SEED, concurrently on view at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) in Reston, Virginia.

This exhibition, curated by Jaynelle Hazard, Executive Director of Tephra ICA, features the single installation Model City "Constraint" which suggests a sprawling landscape of brute forms, referencing both geometric abstraction and modernist architecture. For Buster, the work demonstrates an exploration into ways in which the monumental can be expressed through the miniature. In the exhibition, sunshine filters into the gallery, defining the works’ whorls and chambers in an unpopulated cityscape that seems filled with talking shadows. Feeling nostalgic while simultaneously futuristic, there is a dialogue with nature and a negotiation of light in the space, providing a sense of strange wonderment.

With the installation being perfectly white and its chalky, gouache matte material, the angled models made with cardboard and paper suggest observation towers, enclosures without exits, windows for hidden eyes, or
coliseum-like pits. In alignment with Buster’s practice, there is a push and pull of the interior and exterior, provoking the question of whether the viewer is looking in, looking out, looking up, looking down, or whether
they are being looked at.

“Kendall Buster’s 'Model City "Constraint"' emphasizes the wise phrase –‘Where there is light, there must be shadow, and where there is shadow there must be light.’” – Jaynelle Hazard

This exhibition is presented under The Collaborative, a program developed by The Kreeger Museum in 2021 to support Washington-area artists.

Presented in collaboration with Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art.
Curated by Jaynelle Hazard.
 

About the Artist

Kendall Buster earned a BFA degree from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University. Additionally, she participated in the Independent Study Studio Program at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY. 

Her work has been exhibited in numerous venues nationally and internationally including the Hirshhorn Museum, the American University Katzen Museum, and the Kreeger Museum in Washington, DC; Artist’s Space and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, NY; the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, GA; the Haggerty Museum in Milwaukee, WI; the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, MI; the Boise Art Museum in Boise, ID; Suyama Space in Seattle, WA; Artyard in Frenchtown, NJ; the Bahnhof Westend in Berlin, Germany; Commune 1 and KZNSA Gallery in South Africa; and more. 

Buster has created commissioned sculptures for the DC Convention Center and Wilmer Cutler Hale in Washington, DC; Markel Corporation and Massey Cancer Center in Richmond, VA; The Science Center at The Episcopal School in Alexandria, VA; The Bank of Oklahoma Arena in Tulsa; as well as a roof-top sculpture for The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno. Buster’s work has been reviewed in ArtForum, Sculpture Magazine, The Washington Post, and more. She has been interviewed by Neda Ulaby on NPR’s Morning Edition as part of a series on art and science and was a recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in the Arts.

She currently lives and works in Richmond, VA and is a Professor and the Graduate Director in the Department of Sculpture and Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University.