“Intergalactic Soul” is infinite.

A show created by Charlotte artists Marcus Kiser and Jason Woodberry provide the soul behind the art, but fellow artist Quentin Talley is the musical curator. From the Harvey B. Gantt Center to the McColl Center, the trio will highlight the musical element starting Feb. 15 at the Little Rock Cultural Center (401 N. Myers St.) at 7:30 p.m. Talley’s narration will be accompanied by the Soul Providers.

“I’ve been part of the project as performer and narrator,” Talley said. “Kind of bringing the narrative and the visuals off of the wall, and telling the story behind it with me and the band.”

Said Kiser: “Q’s narrative is just based on the artwork. Pretty much all of the artwork that we’ve created he has songs for each piece. He’s pretty much the curator in the gallery, explaining what these pieces mean through a musical fashion. It’s always been that three-prong element of me, Jason and Q.

“Q is always delivering the narration. Even when people can’t understand the pieces, he brings in that performance to tie everything together. People are like ‘oh, that’s what this satire means,’ or ‘that’s what the message means.’”

From Charlotte to Portland to Miami, the exhibit appears as a comic strip. Talley’s task is to tie together the message in a galaxy far away, and American turmoil.

“Q has already had this musical narrative for it,” Kiser said. “We came up with this before we did the show at the Gantt Center, because we wanted to do these pop-up musical shows to sort of project the artwork, and then have the focus on the actual performance of Q. Now we’re just like ‘let’s do something cool, and let’s have some fun.’”

Said Talley: “I really wanted to work on the narrative part of the show, and kind of put somethings in stone, and try and make this part its own kind of theme where if they wanted to do a pop-up show they could be focused on the art, but it would be performance related, instead of necessarily visual related.”

Talley’s sociopolitical artistic style fits “Intergalactic Soul.”

“It’s been an interesting process, because the underlying commentary is heavy, but the work is light and airy,” he said. “You’re trying to get people to eat their vegetables, but you want to dress it up as cheesecake so people can digest it. Having that social commentary in the piece, without sometimes getting so bogged down on politics. Even though it’s part of the piece, that’s been the biggest challenge for me. I already lean as a writer toward the sociopolitical. Just trying to reframe it in a sci-fi context has been a great challenge for me as a writer.”

Said Kiser: “We want to cover these real issues, but we don’t want to preach to people. Everybody likes dessert, and most people prefer dessert over their vegetables. We’re trying to take these real issues that are going on, and kind of disguise them as these cutesy cartoons—this comic book art style that we have, all while  address the issues. We feel like we can reach a larger audience that way. We just want people to have this broccoli cheesecake, minus the sugar and all the bad stuff. We want it to look very appetizing, but we want to have some real meaning behind it.”

On the Net:
www.eventbrite.com/e/intergalactic-soul-tickets

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