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Birds return. Plants sprout. As spring brings us refreshed beginnings, we can look forward to new perspectives and open dialogues from Kansas City’s local artists.

If you are hoping to fill this season with meaningful artworks, here are six must-see exhibitions happening around town.

"The Water You Cannot Hold" at ION Gallery

“ Water You Cannot Hold ” features two Kansas City-based artists: abstract painter Sam Haan, whose works were featured in the latest issue of “New American Painting,” and award-winning moving image artist and educator Heehyun Choi, a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute.

The West Bottoms exhibition explores the relationship between language, archiving, and the fleeting nature of reality. Haan’s abstract paintings investigate the building blocks of languages and translate them into visual symbols, drawing inspiration from mathematical theory and textile structures. Words, phrases, and sentences are deconstructed into grids and strokes, turning each piece into a coded message whose meanings shift based on the viewer’s interpretations.

Visitors can then step into the screening booth to view Choi’s short film “This Isn't What It Appears.” The video documents Choi’s interaction with archival photographs of Korean women taken by American soldiers stationed in South Korea during the 1950s.

In 20 minutes, this Super8 film considers how the camera does not offer an accurate, objective means for documentation but rather a subjective reflection of the hierarchy between the photographer and the photographed, inevitably excluding parts of truth from the historical record.

"CEO: 1991"

Right next door to ION Gallery is an exhibition project space run by local collectors Dwight Smith and Elizabeth Oran, where a solo exhibition by Kansas City-based sculptor and multimedia artist Cesar Lopez is on view through the end of April.

Lopez is a 2024 Charlotte Street Visual Artist Award, and his work is part of the permanent collection at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. “1991” is Lopez’s birth year, which translates into “Knowledge (1), Born (9), Born, Knowledge” in Supreme Mathematics, a numerology system assigning qualitative meanings to numbers.

The sculptures in the exhibition work are modular creations assembled into different shapes and structures, implying our civilization — the infrastructure, the industrial designs that physically support our economy, and our cultural identity — are essentially an endless rendition of basic molecules.

The same metal arches repeat and vary, creating spheres, bridges, and grids, asking viewers to reflect on how a simple “node” can bring infinite possibilities.

"One Bedroom Apartment" at Gallery Bogart

Beginning in the 1960s, legendary New York-based art enthusiasts Herb and Dorothy Vogel created one of the most impactful collections within their intimate apartment space, amassing more than 4,000 works.

Inspired by the Vogels’ legacy, “ One Bedroom Apartment ” brings together exceptional small-scale works by emerging and mid-career artists, most of whom are based in Kansas City and Mexico City.

The pieces in this West Bottoms exhibition vary from textile art and ceramics to drawings and paintings, truly ensuring that there is something for everybody. In “Creature IX” a bright and versatile paper-based acrylic and gouache drawing by Kansas City artist, sculptor, and curator SK Reed, an orange figure walks across a golden field under a lime green sun. Tracing the fluid, shapeshifting figure, the piece is full of dynamic energy that draws the viewer in.

In “Quiero que aprendas a crecer para arriba y para adentro (I want you to learn to grow upwards and inwards),” Mexico City-based illustrator Mónica Figueroa uses color pencil to create a heart-warming scene of two women in conversation, their root-like feet suggesting that they sprouted from the ground.

The pair likely share a mother-daughter relationship as the dark-haired figure on the left sits on the ground, hands on her chin, listening cheerfully and curiously to the other as she shares her wisdom.

"Let the Sun In" at Charmed KC

Nestled in one of the old West Bottoms brick building on Santa Fe Street, Charmed KC is an independent gallery run by local abstract painter Alex Skorija .

“ Let the Sun In ,” organized by Hallmark curatorial assistant Lillian McMahan, showcases paintings made by Kansas City-based Egyptian artist Ella Dawood and current Englewood Arts resident artist Elise Fippinger. Both artists focus on intimate moments that expose the hidden beauty of repetitive daily life.

Each group of artwork is surrounded by long chains of beads that look like half-drawn curtains. Stepping into the gallery feels like entering a French Baroque-era dream where pearls dangle from bedposts and reality dissolves into a feminine fantasy.

For example, Fippinger’s small ceramic plates capture dreamy landscapes such as peaceful prairies and vibrant sunsets over the ocean, each functioning like a window peeking into a different world.

Ultimately, letting the sun in means gazing beyond the mundane. Undraw the curtains, and exciting adventures await.

"Time & The Word: Selected Works by Sandra Bowden" at Four Chapter Gallery

“ Time & The Word ,” a solo exhibition featuring mixed media work by Massachusetts-based Christian fine artist Sandra Bowden, is the perfect place for those interested in the beauty and craftsmanship in art inspired by religion and spirituality.

Bowden is considered one of the most significant Christian artists in America, and her work is in the permanent collection of the Vatican Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome.

At Four Chapter Gallery in the Crossroads, Bowden’s 2D mixed-media pieces collage Biblical archeological motifs and words found in Scripture, hymns, and commentaries through layers of paper and paint. Several pieces in the exhibition explore how music scores work as the universal language that transcends beyond written words.

In “Concert,” a scribbled piano score pierces into the rectangular composition like a light beam through darkness. In “Chant,” the gold-embellished area looks like water vibrating under sound, visually echoing with the hymn tab in the background.

Religion and spirituality have long served as inspirations for artists, and this work is worth time regardless of your personal faith. So long as viewers are willing to let Bowden take the lead, they are sure to enjoy a meditative journey into peace and tranquility.

"Stitched in silence: The tension lies elsewhere" at Haw Contemporary

Paraguay artist Claudia Casarino brings her large-scale tulle installations and charcoal drawings to the West Bottoms’ Haw Contemporary in her solo exhibition, “ Stitched in silence: The tension lies elsewhere .”

Casarino uses her large-scale fabric sculptures to explore the relationship between fashion and the human body. As we change clothes, dress, and undress throughout the day, we progress through the lifecycle of creating different identities and returning to our raw, naked, unmasked selves.

Fashion, on one hand, amplifies personalities and can serve as a bold statement of relentless individualism. On the other hand, it also suppresses and restrains individuals, forcing them to abide, submit, and conform through masking and disguising.

The transparent tulle blurs the line between concealing and revealing, liberation and control. Casarino’s charcoal drawings capture figures in different attires, with loose, sketching strokes. What does it mean when the same person’s clothing changes from casual to business, intimate to public-facing? What is hidden and erased when we place layers of fabric on our body?