A generation ago, when you said “contemporary art,” it was assumed you were talking about creations from New York City, south of 54th Street — even if you were referring to internationally important material. In the 1980s, everything started to change. First there were the artists from Italy and Germany,…
There’s a charming little group show at Sandra Phillips Gallery (744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969) with the grammatically challenged title of CONVERSATIONS REFLECTIONS. (Shouldn’t that be CONVERSATIONAL REFLECTIONS or CONVERSATIONS REFLECTED or even CONVERSATIONS /REFLECTIONS?) Anyway, unlike the plodding gait of the title, the show itself flows beautifully, with the…
Fine-art videos have been playing a larger role in the contemporary realm in recent years, but I have a hard time understanding why. And a significant group exhibit with the clever title What Sound Does a Color Make? , on view through the weekend at the Center for Visual Art,…
John Matlack: Bridges, Fishes, and Boats
Of the various alternative spaces in Denver, Spark Gallery (900 Santa Fe Drive, 720-889-2200) has more than its share of established artists as members. Surely this explains why Spark is a flagship of the Santa Fe Arts District. It is one of only a handful of places along the row…
Mayor John Hickenlooper’s predecessors made that whole mayoral-legacy business look like a snap. Federico Peña can be credited with many important things, including shoving the idea of a lower-downtown historic district down the throats of property owners, thus saving the neighborhood from being scraped for surface parking. And he became…
Now that famous New Yorker Steven Holl is no longer involved with designing the courthouse portion of the Justice Center complex (see review, page 44), all the talk is about whether or not the local architectural firm klipp is up to the job. So it’s perhaps relevant to look at…
This past summer, Cydney Payton, director of Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art, put together a mini-blockbuster, Decades of Influence: Colorado 1985-Present. In that exhibit — which was displayed not only in the MCA’s own facility, but also extended to Metro State’s Center for Visual Art, to the Carol Keller Project…
The new P Design Gallery (2590 Walnut Street, 720-259-2516) adds something new to the art scene in town: a place where design is presented not only as home furnishings, but as serious contemporary art. P is partly a furniture boutique showcasing cutting-edge design and partly a proper exhibition space, where…
From the moment Daniel Libeskind was tapped to design a freestanding addition to the Denver Art Museum, people began to question whether a building designed by a deconstructionist could possibly function as an art museum. There was even more skepticism when Libeskind’s model for a crystalline concoction of up-ended boxes…
Every other year, the University of Denver’s School of Art and Art History teaches a very interesting class called the Marsico Curatorial Practicum. It’s an outgrowth of the special relationship DU has with Vail mega-collectors Vicki and Kent Logan, who open their collection to the school and allow art students…
The daring Frederic C. Hamilton Building created for the Denver Art Museum by Daniel Libeskind and the Davis Partnership became an instant Mile High landmark when it opened last week. The same thing happened 35 years ago when what is now called the North Building, by Gio Ponti and James…
The often overlooked Emmanuel Gallery (Auraria campus, 303-556-8337) is currently hosting an important show called Treasures Revealed: The Art of Hungary, 1890-1955. To give you an idea of the significance of this particular exhibit, not only did the Hungarian ambassador come out from Washington, D.C., for the preview, but so…
It’s been more than seven years in the making, and for the last three, it’s been slowly rising on a site just south of the intersection of West 13th Avenue and Acoma Plaza. You’d have to have been living under a rock — or way out in the suburbs –…
Almost seven years ago, the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver opened in a two-level space in the former Granada Fish Market at 19th and Lawrence streets. Since its inception in 1996, the MCA (then known as MoCA/D) had been ensconced on the mezzanine of 1999 Broadway. The MCA originally intended to…
There’s one thing you can always expect from the Singer Gallery in the Mizel Center for Arts and Culture: high-quality art exhibits with some kind of intellectual content. So it’s no surprise that EUGENE YELCHIN: A Thousand Casualties, a solo featuring expressionist abstractions based on Old Master paintings, is one…
The funky little Edge Gallery (3658 Navajo Street, 303-477-7173) is the city’s oldest art co-op, which may be why it frequently hosts great pairs of solos. Currently, Edge is home to a couple of sophisticated shows dedicated to contemporary abstraction, with Jennifer Hope: 4 new paintings installed in the front…
William Havu Gallery is the only art shop in the city in its own specially designed building. That’s why, when things are really cooking, as they are right now, the atmosphere is more like that of a small museum than a retail store. For his opening volley this season, gallery…
There are two interesting shows kicking off the fall season at Walker Fine Art (300 West 11th Avenue, #A): WHAT SEASON IS THIS, which is in the front and combines paintings by Don Quade and sculptures by Paula Castillo; and, in the back, Selective Vision: The Art of Digital Atelier,…
Last month I wrote a piece about the Civic Center Conservancy in which I implied that the group’s members were a bunch of clowns (“Civic Circus,” August 10). In the weeks since, I’ve really come to regret that metaphor and feel a little guilty. After all, clowning is an honorable…
Daniel Libeskind’s ideas for Denver’s Civic Center are off the wall (see review,) but equally bizarre — though in a positive way — is the launching of the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar (404 South Upham, 303-742-1520) with an opening on Saturday, September 16, from 2 to 9…
44T ARTSPACE, the exhibition end of Metro Frame Works (4400 Tennyson Street, 303-433-0335), is a smart-looking miniature sales room with extensive show windows that open the place up to the street. The gallery is one of only a handful participating in this year’s Denver Art Dealers Association series highlighting talent…
August is typically a dead time in the Denver art world, so the Denver Art Dealers Association came up with DADA INTRODUCTIONS, a way for members to present shows by artists whose work has not previously been shown in town. Robischon Gallery (1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788) is just about the…
