KANSAS CITY.- Kemper at the Crossroads’ first exhibition is Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher: Reel to Reel, a collaborative project by Texas-based artists Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher. The exhibition opens with a free public reception, 6:00 to 9:00 p.m., Friday, November 7. The exhibition is on view November 7, 2008–January 11, 2009, at Kemper at the Crossroads, the Kemper Museum’s new space (33 West 19th Street) in the heart of Kansas City’s Crossroads Arts District. Kemper at the Crossroads is newly expanded gallery space for the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Admission is free.

Reel to Reel (2007), fashioned from wood, wires, lights, motors, and automated video and audio components, is a sculptural video installation by Texas-based artists Jeff Shore and Jon Fisher. Working collaboratively since 2002, Shore and Fisher have constructed a complex network of floor- and wall-based kinetic sculptures, each containing a mechanized film set or an electro-acoustic instrument. Once activated, Reel to Reel delivers a multisensory experience that is both poetic and captivating, advancing dialogues between the history of cinema and music, and human interaction with new technologies.

Shore and Fisher bridge high- and low-brow instruments—handmade kinetic sculptures and props, vinyl records, analog electronics, and video sequencing software—to create an enveloping installation that is both captivating and theatrical. While their practice is collaborative, Shore generally executes the sculptural components and Fisher, a composer and computer programmer, completes the music/sound elements and the electronic gadgetry. Their works become participatory as the viewer pushes a button and activates the work and slowly slips into a mesmerized trance of video and audio experimentation.

The Kemper Museum’s showing also includes two earlier works by Shore and Fisher, Grass Growing Machine (2005) and Sand Timer III (2006). And, an interview between the artists and exhibition curator Christopher Cook accompanies the exhibition. This exhibition is the first solo Museum exhibition for Shore and Fisher.