KANSAS CITY, MO.- The extraordinary and, at times, magical emerge from Anthony Lepore’s color photographs as he intuitively examines people’s desires to connect, relate, and possess the world around them. The exhibition Anthony Lepore: Restoration is on view October 3, 2008–January 4, 2009, at Kansas City’s Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. This is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. Admission to the Kemper Museum is free.

Please join us Friday, October 3 for the free opening reception, 5:30–7:30 p.m. That evening, Lepore will speak about his work at 6:30 p.m. in the Museum’s meeting room.

Featuring a dozen images, the exhibition focuses on his latest body of work that explores people’s well-intentioned, yet seemingly futile, attempts to preserve or recreate natural states. While the exhibition’s color-saturated images may appear disparate, a commonality lies in his works that examine relationships with the environment and one another. A sense of preservation—physical, natural, spiritual—occupies the artist’s large-format photographs.

Lepore has had solo gallery exhibitions in New York and Basel, Switzerland, and taken part in several group exhibitions, including 2007’s Art in American: 300 Years of Innovation on view at Beijing’s National Art Museum of China and Museum of Contemporary Art Shanghai, China, and organized by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art. A 2000 B.F.A. graduate of Fordham University, New York, Lepore holds a 2005 M.F.A. from Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. He works in Los Angeles, California.

The exhibition is made possible by M&I Bank, the Kemper Museum’s 2008 Exhibition Series Sponsor. The exhibition publication is made possible by a gift in honor of William D. Sullivan and his support of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Visiting Artists Program is supported in part by a generous gift from William and JoAnn Sullivan.