Shock takes artwork to KC for multimedia exhibit

Between running the Schock Community Arts Center, heavy involvement in several Scott City organizations and teaching sculpture and new genre art at Southeast Missouri State University, Paul Schock is a very busy man. But he still found time to work on an exhibit of his multimedia artwork that opens today at the Leedy-Voulkos Art Center in Kansas City and will run until November.

It is a homecoming of sorts for Schock, who received his bachelor's degree in photography and sculpture from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1989. Schock was also a visiting teacher at the art institute for a year in 2000, at which time he helped out former instructor Jim Leedy with the art center he founded.

"It's one of the major galleries in Kansas City," Schock said. "And the nice thing is that it's at my old alumni stomping grounds."

Schock said the exhibit, titled "So ... From One Point to Another," is a "combination of a lot of things -- paintings, sculpture, video, sound and installation pieces -- all in one space."

The exhibit has been over a year in the making, as Schock had to find time in his busy schedule to create a body of artwork that would fit in the 10,000-square-foot exhibit space. He also needed a body of work that communicated similar ideas and messages.

According to Schock's artist statement, "the work in this exhibition examines the various ways that we interact with and absorb information from our environment. In particular, my work deals with images and how societal institutions use images in order to manipulate us and shape our decisions."

Schock said he is interested in using the same media that advertisers use, visual, and using that media to get people to think for themselves instead of being influenced by it. He takes recognizable advertising icons like the Kool-Aid pitcher and puts them in a unfamiliar environment -- in this case, a nudist camp.

His artwork also focuses on the tension between conformity and freedom, evident in a painting of an old gunfighter who is in a shootout with a man in a business suit.

"What I would like to have is people look at the work and take a chance to reflect upon it, start thinking, laughing, use it if they can," Schock said.

kalfisi@semissourian.com

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