KANSAS CITY, MO.- The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art highlights the innovative ways Asia’s contemporary artists incorporate cultural histories and age-old techniques into their artwork when it presents Past in Reverse: Contemporary Art of East Asia, on view through August 28, 2005. Past meets present in a diverse range of works by more than twenty contemporary Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean artists and artist groups in this exhibition, which includes paintings, sculpture, photography, installation works, video, and digital media.

Past in Reverse is a rich overview of how artists combine ancient techniques and expressions with new technologies to reveal the viability of incorporating longstanding traditions into contemporary art, honoring their respective cultural and artistic heritages in an increasingly globalized world. These artists explore conceptual and aesthetic principles that are rooted in the arts and culture of their particular regions. For example, Cai Guo-Qiang uses imagery from traditional Chinese landscape painting (a mountain, a long, tumbling waterfall) to create a skywriting drawing during an air show in California, an event that is documented in a video in the exhibition. In Game Series: Plant Contest (2000), photographer Cao Fei adds a modern advertising sensibility to her image of women reenacting the ancient Chinese pastime of composing poems in homage to flowers they have picked.