Published July 7, 2025
Professor Kenyon and MFA Alum Shin in "Common Currents" exhibition at Burchfield Penney, co-curated by MFA Alum Butler
Associate Professor Matt Kenyon and Alumnus Mizin Shin (MFA 2017) are featured in the group exhibition Common Currents: Contemporary Art from Northeast Ohio and Western New York. The two-part exhibition was co-curated by Alumnus Kyle Butler (MFA 2010).
On View: Jul 11, 2025 - Nov 2, 2025
At the Burchfield Penney Art Center
SUNY Buffalo State University
1300 Elmwood Avenue
Buffalo, New York 14222
Matt Kenyon's included work:
Burn Rate, 2024, Suspended Bitcoin miner, pendulum motion, uncut U.S. currency, thermochromic pigment.
Burn Rate is a sculptural installation that confronts the wastefulness and ideological contradictions of Bitcoin mining. At its center hangs a repurposed miner, whose only purpose now is to expel hot air—a potent metaphor for the empty promises and speculative frenzy that pervade blockchain culture. In this realm, trust—once the bedrock of human exchange—has been supplanted by faith in decentralized digital ledgers.
More info on Matt Kenyon: https://www.swamp.nu/about-1
Matt Kenyon, "Burn Rate", 2025 still image from dynamic installation
Mizin Shin included work:
Common Currents features Shin's work "The World Network Models" series, which "visualizes maps of transportation connections to expose the interdependent travel systems as networks of migratory movement.
Since the onset of COVID-19, we have all experienced how deeply humankind is connected as individual economic and health decisions affect those around the world. The prints, drawings, and installations show mapped data from travel patterns following historical trends in international mass transportation including air and ground travels—particularly rail in Europe.
The work not only portrays the stages of technological evolution but also illustrates the continual increase of interconnectivity emphasizing the complexity and quantity of travel patterns. The collected transportation data is used to visualize historical travel information and, in turn, reveals anthropological networks of interactions through war, culture, trade, and economy."
More info on Mizin Shin: https://www.mizinshin.com/
Mizin Shin, World Network Models Vol., 2022, Screenprint on clear acrylic sheet. 37” x 66” x 60” (height x width x depth) 36" x 60" /panel (5 panels total). Courtesy of the artist.
Mizin Shin, World Network Models, 2025, Chine-collé, Etching, Digital Print, 15” x 22.5” (height x width). Courtesy of the artist.
Mizing Shin, 中心 Balance, 2024, Collage, Risograph. 20” x 16” (height x width). Courtesy of the artist.
中心 Balance, explores the repetitive balancing acts across various anchor points that Shin constantly practices. Within Shin's interpretation of 中心 , Center of Mind (or Heart, Thoughts, or Will), the location of a center for balance does not land on a singular coordinate but the shifting positions of ourselves in complex relationships.
Kyle Butler's Co-Curation with Grace Chin
Selection Process:
Initial Entries were taken by digital submission, with final curation of the exhibition done by Grace Chin, Executive Director of the Sculpture Center in Cleveland and Kyle Butler, Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Villa Maria College in Buffalo. Chin selected initial submissions from the Western New York, and Butler selected initial submissions from the Northeast Ohio. The curators together then decided on final artists and scheduled studio visits in both cites to make a final selection of works for the exhibition.
Kyle Butler is a multi-disciplinary artist with a primary focus on two-dimensional works and periodic returns to sculptural installation. Originally from Michigan, he has lived and worked in Buffalo since 2008. He has exhibited widely in Western New York, including solo exhibitions at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, Buffalo Arts Studio, Nina Freudenheim Gallery (which represented him from 2011 – 2020), and Raft of Sanity. He has been in group exhibitions at the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Rochester Contemporary Art Center, and more. He has carried out large-scale performance and installation projects, including a spotlight project at Nuit Blanche in Toronto, Ontario in 2014, is a Franklin Furnace Fund grant recipient, and is in the collections at the Albright Knox, the Burchfield Penney, and numerous private collections. He’s organized many exhibitions, including co-curating the series Amid/In Western New York at Hallwalls, and as curator at Starlight Studio and Art Gallery for their Side by Each series. Butler is an Assistant Professor at Villa Maria College and a Teaching Artist at Starlight.
More info on Kyle Butler: https://kylewilliambutler.com/
Burchfield Penney exhibition information
[Originally published at:
https://burchfieldpenney.org/exhibitions/exhibition:common-currents/]
The Artists Archives of the Western Reserve (Cleveland, OH), in partnership with The Burchfield Penney Art Center (Buffalo, NY), is very proud to present Common Currents, a joint exhibition of work by visual artists from Northeast Ohio & Western New York that will be exhibited in Cleveland April 11 – June 21, 2025, and in Buffalo July 11, 2025 – November 2, 2025.
Cleveland and Buffalo have much in common, and not just their addresses on Lake Erie. These two once-thriving industrial cities are both engaged in a 21st-century reboot with the visual arts playing a key role in this renewal. These commonalities, accentuated by their physical proximity, led Cleveland artist, and AAWR board member, John A Sargent III and Buffalo artist Gary Wolfe to sketch out the beginnings of this collaborative exhibition in 2020. “We both recognized the need for artists to be seen outside of our respective cities,” says John Sargent.
Jurors Grace Chin, Executive Director of the Sculpture Center in Cleveland and Kyle Butler, Assistant Professor of Fine Art at Villa Maria College in Buffalo, reviewed hundreds of entries and made multiple in-person studio visits with an eye towards assembling a roster of 23 artists whose work would comprise the final exhibition.
Themes of exploration, transformation, reinvention, and the use and impact of technology infuse the collection, expressing through a variety of mediums the work of both cities to move out of their common Rust Belt pasts while also keeping mindful of how that past informs our perception and experience of the present.
Featuring the work of:
Western New York Artists
Dennis Bertram
Lydia Boddie-Rice
Chantal Calato
Frani Evedon
Bob Fleming
Robert Hirsch
Sun Young Kang
Matt Kenyon
Robert Pitts
Paris Roselli
Mizin Shin
Jeffrey Vincent
Northeast Ohio Artists
Timothy Callaghan
Nicole Condon-Shih
Susan Danko
Jen P. Harris
Chauncey Hay
Michael Hornyak
R Kauff
Mark Keffer
Sarah Paul
Katy Richards
Jean Weigl (Archived Artist)
In Cleveland, this exhibition opens to the public on Friday, April 11, 2025 and is supported by The David Davis Art Foundation, The Galleries at Cleveland State University via an Ohio Arts Council(OAC) grant, Cuyahoga Arts and Culture(CAC),and the George Gund Foundation.
At the Burchfield Penney Art Center, Common Currents is made possible through the generosity of an Anonymous Family Foundation; Cynthia Baird Stark and the Cameron and Jane Baird Foundation; The Margaret L. Wendt Foundation; and Shelley Drake in loving memory of Kenneth Drake.
Common Currents was first displayed at the AAWR gallery, Artist Archives on the Western Reserve, in early 2025.
Location: 1834 E. 123rd Street Cleveland, OH 44106
Info on AAWR exhibitions and events: https://www.artistsarchives.org/past-exhibitions-events/