KANSAS CITY, MO.- Urban Culture Project is pleased to present Missed Connections, a solo exhibition of work by Kansas City artist Paul Shortt. The show opens Friday, May 15, 6-9pm with a free reception at Urban Culture Project Space, 21 East 12th Street, Kansas City MO. The exhibition runs through June 4, with gallery hours each Thursday and Saturday, 12-5pm.

Shortt’s exhibition takes its name from the online classifieds section of Craigslist, where individuals post ads in attempt to reconnect with other people, typically strangers and potential love interests glimpsed in public spaces. The show will feature a video involving a series of Missed Connections read aloud, combined with empty images of the places they describe, as well as a series of photographs of site-specific interventions inspired by specific ads. For these interventions --in the cake section of the supermarket, the bathroom wall of Starbucks, the 3rd floor elevator lobby of a garage in the Power and Light District – Shortt rewrites these personal ads in the highly specific locations they took place and then photographs them in situ.

The artist is interested in how our daily interactions are affected and mediated through technology and the Internet. “In today’s culture, we have the option of functioning through the masks of Facebook and Myspace,” says Shortt. “This work asks questions how these virtual and social networks can create a lack in genuine human interaction. By taking formatted ads from online and materially interpreting and re-presenting them in public, I am re-personalizing the ads while increasing the chances of a re-connection.”

Paul Shortt is a 2009 graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute. His work was recently featured in “Boys 2 Men,” a two-person show at KCAI Crossroads Gallery in Kansas City.

An initiative of the Charlotte Street Foundation, Urban Culture Project creates new opportunities for artists of all disciplines and contributes to urban revitalization by transforming spaces in downtown Kansas City into new venues for multi-disciplinary contemporary arts programming. For more information, visit CSF’s NEW website at www.charlottestreet.org.