Top Ten Colorado Art Happenings of 2011
It’s almost 2012, and 2011 was an incredible year for art in Colorado. Here’s the list of the best art events of the year. 1. Clyfford Still Museum Opening This museum was a long time in the making. Like the Rothko Chapel in Houston or the Georgia O’Keefe museum in Santa Fe, this Museum will make Denver into an artist’s new home. 2. Huma Bhabha at the Aspen Art Museum This exhibition has barely happened, opening on Dec 22, but it ranks high for 2011. Usually Bhabha does sculpture, but her works on paper hold a mysterious quality. The works seem classically modernist, and they involve a lot more than you w...Read more
Interpretation the Key at
In a climate of ephemeral conceptual artistic notions Swiss curator Hans Ulrich conceived do it. Compiling a manual of do-it-yourself sets of instructions from internationaly renowned artists, Ulich invited participating artists to interpret and carry out the instructions. The instructions range in complexity from very simple ("Smile at a Stranger") to very complex ("Find a four leaf clover"), and have been carried out and exhibited in cities throughout the world. Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design Gallery Director, Cortney Lane Stell, is the latest to bring to life Ulrich's manual. Stell brought her own unique approach to the do it concept that h...Read more
Illiterate Film Night Thursday: Stingray Sam (Official Screening)
On Thursday night, July 8, Illiterate is proud to present Cory McAbee's follow-up to his gritty, interstellar western musical, American Astronaut. Shown in six consecutive episodes, STINGRAY SAM hurtles across the galaxy as a dangerous mission reunites Stingray Sam with his long lost accomplice, The Quasar Kid. Follow these two space-convicts as they earn their freedom in exchange for the rescue of a young girl who is being held captive by the genetically designed figurehead of a very wealthy planet. $5 admission...Read more
Dmitri Obergfell//Zach Reini at Phillip J. Steele Gallery
Of the visual art world in Denver as of late, things have kept a similar face. Not to say that there have been stagnant or stale exhibitions or that everyone is doing the same thing, but it is apparent that many in the world of visual art have found themselves on the same page. That being said I must say two artists that have read the entireity of said book and are on pages far beyond the material most have at hand are Dmitri Obergfell and Zach Reini. Both are currently students at the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design and are making leaps and bounds of progress in mixed media, paint, and installation art. Obergfell's portion of the show Huckleberry Hound has a fascinating effect to i...Read more
filed under: art
tags: Zach Reini Dmitri Obergfell Frank Stella Dan Flavin minimalism RMCAD
Engaging People: Eric and Heather ChanSchatz
Last Thursday at the MCA Denver, visual artists Eric and Heather ChanSchatz delivered a talk about their process. The talk was mediated by former Whitney museum curator David A. Ross, who during the audience question-and-answer session, determined that “Visual art in the 21st century is about how to engage people.” Engaging people is what Eric and Heather ChanSchatz are all about. Their collaborative art transcends the boundaries that often develop between the art world and, well, the rest of the world. In creating one of their ultra-lightfast silkscreen paintings, ChanSchatz will meet at length with different communities of people: their collabor...Read more
Art Opening: Looking For the Face I Had Before The World Was Made
Like six strangers locked in a room together, the work of six artists currently showing in the MCA Denver's exhibit: Looking For the Face I Had Before The World Was Made, attempt to find something in common to talk about. Approaching the conversation with disparate styles, and from differing locals and era's, the group is left to discuss their mutual choice of universalized subject matter - the unidentified human form. In their archetypal and often nondescript depictions of people and personalities, the six artists, William Stockman, Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, A.G. Rizzoli, Sam Beckett, and Michaël Borremans, enter into a conversation hinged on generality in order to keep everyone eng...Read more
Art Opening: Barnaby Furnas
Hey kids do you like violence? How about bloody carnage on canvas? Tonight head over to the MCA to view the visceral paintings of Barnaby Furnas, the 31 year old New York artist who creates mural sized battles between the figurative and abstract. Furnas' first major notoriety came for ecstatic battle scenes, gory and celebratory shootouts between variously exploding American civil war era icons, such as Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. His most recent paintings have done away with any human reference aside from that most vital fluid of life, blood. In these large-scale paintings, which often stretch the entirety of a room, and then some, and can take weeks' ju...Read more
.jpg "Ryan Riss | November 4 - October 28, 2011")
