Interpersonal Medium

Artist Nancy Hwang's projects involve actual relationships between her and the people who encounter her work. Example: Interested in the connections between customers and personal service employees such as masseuses and manicurists, Hwang has gone into parks and given free massages, manicures and pedicures to explore the relationships that developed. Another project involved opening an ice-cream parlor on the fourth floor of a building and lowering orders via pulley to customers who ordered at street level through a megaphone. She served drinks in a bar built into a tiny space, which accommodated a single patron at a time.Starting today, she presents This Is Not a Couch at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (4420 Warwick, 816-753-5784). "An underlying current in all of her projects is a sense of open-endedness, chance and spontaneity," curator Christopher Cook says. "This project is no different, in that she is going to put herself out there with hopes of building relationships among strangers and herself." Throughout the month, Hwang will engage museum visitors in conversation in the atrium during regular hours, with an eye toward matchmaking. Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Fri., Feb. 8, 6-7 p.m., 2008