A Denver Art Preview. From a focus on women artists of the Front Range, through painting and sculpture with abstract line, the first few months of 2014 reveal a span of new art shows in Denver, worth viewing between football games, snowboarding trips and waiting in line at the marijuana shops.
The Transit of Venus: Four Decades, Front Range Women in the Visual Arts
January 10 – February 23, 2014
RedLine
2350 Arapahoe St., Denver
Curated by William Biety, this exhibition features the works of women artists, most of whom graduated from or were students at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In 1974, when there was not a single female member of the art faculty at CU, Helen Redman, Sally Elliott and Virginia Maitland formed Front Range Women in the Visual Arts, seeking greater visibility and validation for their work, and in the process changed the status of women in art. This exhibition features the work of Boulder-based color field abstractionist Virginia Maitland, swirling dot-based painter Barbara Takenaga and iconic ceramist Betty Woodman, along with Micaela Amateau Amato, Barbara Baer, Carol K. Brown, Marilyn Duke, Sally Elliott, Jaci Fischer, Margaretta Gilboy, Ann Isolde, June Julian, Virginia Johnson, Carol Kliger, Vidie Lange, Fran Metzger, Georgia Pugh, Jalaliyyih Quinn, Celeste Rehm, Marcia Rehn, Helen Redman, Sue Robinson, Barbara Shark, and Rebecca Van Buren. Powerhouses in Colorado art, all of these women have been making art for more than 40 years.
Even more impressive, this is the first exhibition in a series titled “She Crossed the Line” that will be seen at RedLine. Future installments in the series are:
Chen Man: March 1 – April 27, 2014
Senga Nengudi: June 6 – July 20, 2014
Harmony Hammond: August 2 – September 28, 2014
Judy Chicago: October 10 – November 30, 2014
Movers and Shapers: Virginia Folkestad, Ania Gola-Kumor, Virginia Maitland, Irene Delka McCray, Carley Warren
January 10 – February 28, 2014
Sandra Phillips Galley
420 W. 12th Ave., Denver
Five influential and accomplished female artists in Colorado come together to share their divergent approaches to art. This exhibition promises to be textured, diverse and provocative.
Jay Moore: Close to Home
January 11 – March 8, 2014
Parker Arts, Culture and Events Center
20000 Pikes Peak Ave., Parker
Nationally-renowned landscape artist and Parker resident Jay Moore will exhibit oil paintings and his complete body of copper plate etchings at the PACE Center in Parker. His work has been featured in over 25 different publications including a cover story in the January 2014 issue of Western Art Collector. His painting “Hazard Creek, Backlit” was purchased for Denver Art Museum’s permanent collection.
Romantic Overgrowth: New Work by Melissa Furness
January 23 – March 1, 2014
Plus Gallery
2501 Larimer St., Denver
This is Furness’s second solo exhibition at Plus Gallery. In her latest work she reimagines the sublime nature of early Romanticism via overgrown layers of re-appropriated and fragmented images of invented ruins that come together to depict alternate worlds in picturesque decline.
Out of Line: Jason Karolak, Ted Larsen, Derrick Velasquez, Kate Petley
January 30 – March 8, 2014
Robischon Gallery
1740 Wazee St., Denver
New York artist Jason Karolak paints with a relaxed brush to build vibrantly-hued networks of visually floating dimensional forms on canvas. His work is one of four concurrent solo exhibitions under the larger theme of line within abstraction. New Mexico-based Ted Larsen creates systematically like-minded yet irreverent sculptures that are formally skewed and constructed from riveted, aged, industrial metals, while Colorado artist Derrick Velasquez utilizes gravity and curvilinear lines created with layered bookbinding strips. The powerful female artist in the group, Colorado-based Kate Petley, amplifies gestural and linear repetitions through her unconventional use of film and resin.
Rashid Johnson: New Growth
February 21 – June 15, 2014
MCA Denver
1485 Delgany St., Denver
Beginning with the question, “What would happen if Sun Ra, George Washington Carver and Robert Smithson started a community together in the desert?” New Growth’s playful scrutiny intertwines cosmology and escapism in an attempt to blur the lines separating past, present and future. Johnson works with historically- and personally-loaded materials such as shea butter, black soap, LP covers, burned wood, tile, mirror, chairs and books, combined in complex paintings, sculptures and installations referencing the ongoing transformation of bodies and landscapes.
Sarah McKenzie: Transitional
March 14 – April 12, 2014
David B. Smith Gallery
1543 A Wazee St., Denver
Featuring a selection of works from 2008 to 2014, this exhibition will have a particular focus on McKenzie’s recent paintings of windows, which emphasize architecture, geometry, pattern and surface. Her paintings hover between stark realism and abstraction, often exploring abandoned and desolate places. Transitional is an appropriate title for this exhibition as McKenzie moves from her previous gallery, the now-defunct Robin Rule Gallery, and begins a new professional relationship with dealer David B. Smith. I suspect it will be a long and prosperous collaboration.
1959: The Albright-Knox Art Gallery Exhibition Recreated
February 14 – June 15, 2014
Clyfford Still Museum
1250 Bannock St., Denver
In 1959, Clyfford Still installed his own landmark exhibition at Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY. He subsequently gifted thirty-one of the canvases to the Gallery in 1964, believing they would make a respectful home for his work. One of those works will be seen in Picasso to Pollock at Denver Art Museum. At Clyfford Still Museum, director Dean Sobel will show works that were originally part of the 1959 exhibition at Albright-Knox Gallery but now are part of the museum’s collection, along with one work on loan from a private collector.
Modern Masters: 20th Century Icons from the Albright-Knox Art Gallery
March 2 – June 8, 2014
Denver Art Museum
100 W. 14th Ave. Parkway, Denver
Bringing together 50 iconic works by more than 40 influential artists, many recognized as the who’s who of Modernism, this exhibit at Denver Art Museum brings masterpieces from Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY that illustrate the development of modern art. The exhibit was initiated by Douglas Dreishspoon, chief curator of Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and curated for Denver Art Museum by Dean Sobel. From Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso to Georgia O’Keeffe, Salvador Dalí, Frida Kahlo, Roy Lichtenstein, Jackson Pollock and even Andy Warhol, this collection highlights the major stylistic developments of the last century.
Mark Penner Howell
April 25 – May 31, 2014
Walker Fine Art
300 W. 11th Ave. #A, Denver
Manipulating pictorial context to suggest new readings of familiar icons, Mark Penner Howell creates a visual mash-up where surprising and often satirical narratives emerge from an unlikely combination of source materials. With a focus on human recklessness and naïveté, Penner Howell’s realistic paintings are thought-provoking, hopeful and sympathetic.
Transitional Fragments: Laleh Mehran in collaboration with Chris Coleman
March 6 – April 12, 2014
Plus Gallery
2501 Larimer St., Denver
Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman are both associate professors in the Emergent Digital Practices program at the University of Denver. This exhibit of digitally-fabricated sculptural works presents a type of mathematical interpretation of terrain from around the world. In one series of works they present the perspective of a satellite, viewing earth through the clouds, with the occasional emergence of a skyscraper. Another series attempts to describe major underground resources such as water, natural gas and petroleum — the subject of numerous wars and political strife.
