La Gente/The People: Jonathan Christensen Caballero

Belger Crane Yard Gallery presents La Gente/The People: Jonathan Christensen Caballero opening Friday, July 2, 6 pm – 8 pm at 2011 Tracy Avenue, Kansas City, MO 64108. The exhibition will remain on view through October 2021. Jonathan Christensen Caballero’s multi-media figurative sculptures are both personal and political. Inspired by familial ties, his work focuses on the immigrant experience and gives visibility to the struggles of the working class, including Latin American laborers in the United States. Christensen Caballero uses a number of materials to create his life-sized sculptures, including red earthenware, recycled fibers, and fabrics, readymade objects, building materials, indigo, metal, and wood.  His choice of materials is deliberate and layered with meaning and history.   The red earthenware faces begin as life castings of people in the artist’s life.  The indigo and denim used in the construction of his figures reference the history of labor.  The reused tablecloths, bedsheets, and work tools that clothe and adorn these figures relate to specific objects that laborers work with today.  Additionally, the iconography and artist’s choice of color palette acknowledge the pre-colonized art of the Americas. Jonathan Christensen Caballero depicts moments of labor and struggle alongside feelings of love and joy.  Poignant, hopeful, and rich in meaning, the works in this exhibition are a reminder of existing inequities, of our common bonds and interdependence. Jonathan Christensen Caballero was born and raised in Utah. He graduated from Utah State University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in ceramics and sculpture and completed his Master of Fine Arts in ceramics from Indiana University in the spring of 2020. He is the current Interdisciplinary Ceramic Research Center (ICRC) Artist in Residence at Kansas University in Lawrence. He is a recipient of the International Sculpture Center Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award and was recently recognized as a 2021 Emerging Artist by Ceramics Monthly.