Two solo shows now at the Spark Gallery take up the topic of realism — but each takes a clearly different path. Occupying a full two-thirds of the gallery, Robert Gratiot: Recent Paintings is made up of a group of striking hyper-realist compositions. Gratiot is particularly interested in meticulously reproducing…
With the Labor Day weekend looming just ahead, and the important fall season hard on its heels, there’s only one or two days left to catch two of the most significant exhibits presented this summer: Peter Durst, which combines installation with ceramic sculpture at the Curtis Arts and Humanities Center,…
Though Steven Alarid lives in Dillon, hes exhibited his idiosyncratic paintings, watercolors and drawings in Denver for more than a decade. Currently he is the subject of a solo show in the front gallery at Pirate. Its made up of pieces from his Empirical: series, which includes the untitled painting…
It was a couple of years ago that Jane Fudge, at the time an assistant curator at the Denver Art Museum, came up with the idea for Colorado Masters of Photography, the exhibit currently on display in the Merage Gallery on the DAM’s first floor. But the show, which is…
The funkiest of the funky new galleries to open in the last few months must surely be Apart Modern Gallery on South Kalamath Street. The two-building complex, joined by a rough-hewn courtyard covered in gravel and accented with sculptures, is located hard by a busy railroad track. The gallery is…
Cydney Payton, director of the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, is set to leave the institution she essentially created out of thin air at the end of the year. The handsome Elbows & Tea Leaves — Front Range Women in the Visual Arts (1974-2000) is the next-to-last BMoCA exhibit that…
Mind Over Matter, an exhibit of recent paintings by Victoria del Carmen Perez that now occupies ILK’s south gallery, may be an uneven show, but the best pieces are extremely good. And unusual. In fact, some viewers may be put off by the materials that the Cuban-born painter uses, and…
By way of celebrating the first anniversary of its opening, Bayeux Gallery owner and operator Carla St. Romain has mounted her most important show yet, the 3rd American Tapestry Alliance Biennial Exhibition. Bayeux is an appropriate stop for this national traveling exhibit, because it’s the only regional gallery specializing in…
In the main room at Pirate, co-op member Tony Coulter is presenting Only Mercy, an exhibition of a dozen elegant abstract paintings. Coulters method is simple: He smears paint horizontally and vertically on a linen canvas. The best pieces in this show are the three large ones that incorporate found…
A solo show in the Denver Art Museum’s Vance Kirkland Close Range Gallery is the most highly sought-after gig in the entire exhibition world in Colorado. It’s not that the Close Range is an impressive room — it isn’t. Rather, it’s an awkwardly shaped space shoved into the corner of…
Ties That Bind, at the Singer Gallery of the Mizel Arts Center, though nominally a group show, is actually three solos, as each artist has been given a separate section. The first featured artist is Amy Lee Solomon, who rarely exhibits locally. Her Structures of Atmospheric Turbulence: series, which is…
Under the direction of Sally Perisho, the Metro Center for the Visual Arts on Wazee Street has, more often than not, offered museum-quality shows, and this summer’s 20th Century Drawings and Objects, on loan from the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, is no exception. But wait a minute: What…
Last Thursday the atmosphere in Schlessman Hall, on the first floor of the Denver Art Museum, was positively electric. DAM trustees and staffers, community leaders, politicians, interested members of the community, reporters and photographers all gathered to hear Mayor Wellington Webb announce the name of the architect for the new…
Subtly placed at eye level on the front door of Ron Judish Fine Arts is a letter-sized sheet of paper with an advisory for viewers of Horse: the male as sexual entity. It states that the exhibit, which is now showing, includes the depiction of the male nude and that…
Pirate: a Contemporary Art Oasis is now hosting a group of interesting — though flawed — sculpture shows. In the main space up front is Soul Catchers, which features a large collection of abstract sculptures by Craig Robb. Some are on the wall, some are on the ceiling, some are…
It’s a basic contradiction of the art world: Artists compete with each other to get into the best galleries, while the galleries compete with each other to get the best artists. A standard offshoot of this situation is the endless chain of introductory exhibits, meant either to acquaint the local…
There are two compelling shows at the Emmanuel Gallery on the Auraria campus through tomorrow: Jerry Allen Gilmore on the main floor, and Christopher Nitsche in the loft. The Gilmore show is made up of drawings and paintings that combine abstract painting techniques such as splashes, drips and runs with…
The appeal of minimalism, in any of its many stylistic guises, is based on the aesthetic philosophy that less is more — even when, as in pattern painting, that idea is not strictly honored. Modern art has embraced the minimal component for nearly a hundred years. It began with the…
Theres a rumor that has been spreading through the art world for months: that one of the states most accomplished artists, Bill Stockman, is set to pull up stakes in the fall and move to, of all places, Philthy-delphia. Now, I was born in Philly, and I can tell you…
Ironton Studios & Gallery, which opened in April, is a hard place to find — unless, of course, you work in the freight-hauling trade or some other light-industrial pursuit that might bring you to the corner of 36th Street and Chestnut Place. Actually, it’s not far from Coors Field, but…
Two interesting shows are now located back-to-back at the Edge Gallery. In the front space is Quaternion, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Kimberlee Sullivan; in the middle space is a very strange display of sand paintings by Roger Beltrami titled Echoes From the Canyon. Sullivans pieces have…
Among the pleasures of Golden’s Foothills Art Center — other than the wonderful old church and parish house it occupies — are several shows that are a part of its regular schedule. One of these, the North American Sculpture Exhibition, or NASE, can be counted on to be one of…
