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 would believe upon first glance.

3. Bill Amundson at Plus Gallery

I have never seen an art event so packed. When the show opened and when Amundson gave an art talk, I almost felt worried about shoulders brushing into the drawings accidentally. The art at this show produced laughter and close inspections from its onlookers. These works sold quickly. Awesome work.

4. Art Aspen

Art Aspen was an art fair, to be fair, but it was great to see Colorado galleries exhibiting alongside every major east and west coast gallery. This fair featured a slew of artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Andy Warhol, William Powhida, and basically Everybody. Jae Ko and Yu Fan pieces from Robischon Gallery were among the first pieces you saw as you walked in. It was a veritable time and space compression of artists.

5. Xi Zhang at Plus Gallery

Xi Zhang’s work will melt your face. Do yourself a favor and check out his work. I’ve never seen an artist so capable of painting on gold foil paper, or someone who puts the full spectrum of Golden paints to such work. He does work that is about his Chinese heritage, and also work that is about his friends, technology, and relationships. Xi Zhang is consistently listed and nominated as a Young Artist to Watch, and rightfully so.

6. Counterculture at MCA Denver

Reminiscent of the psychedelic poster show at the DAM a few years back, if only for time period, this show collects objects unlikely to make it into a museum. Perfectly there also was “The Ultimate Painting” which speaks for itself. This show is one that travels, but it was wonderful and fitting to catch it in Denver.

7. Ricky Allman at David B. Smith Gallery

I recently covered this show for Illiterate, and I am not tired of talking about it.  This is one of the few shows in this list that will still be hanging in 2012. You should go see it as soon as you can.

8. Henrique Oliveira and Jessica Moon Bernstein at BMOCA

So much great art emerges from Brazil, and this is true in Henrique Oliveira’s work. And as much as wood seems uninteresting, Oliveira made the most of both his medium and the space of the show, creating a wave of undulative form out of stapled wood shards. The second floor of this show, featuring Jessica Moon Bernstein’s bike tire piece, was also an enveloping, immersive installation.

9. The Fall 2011 MFA Thesis Exhibition at CU Boulder

Most of this show was awesome, or wait, all of it was. I always worry at MFA shows, concerned that BFAs at the same school will be passing up their Master’s-seeking peers. But the artists who put together this show developed a marvelous thing: unity amongst diverse artists. And plus it was just cool.

10. Hermann Nitsch at MCA Denver

Hermann Nitsch performances could be tagged as "Like the Walking Dead, only Real!" Easily filed within the drawer reserved for Shock Performance Artists, Hermann Nitsch is probably more terrifying than any other artist ever. But it’s important that his work came to Colorado. Important. And moving. But not in ways that one normally would expect to be moved. I don't think an actual Hermann Nitsch performance occured at the MCA Denver and I do not choose to look.

In organizing this list, I left many openings and shows unmentioned, regrettably. Runners-up are numerous. That being said, 2012 is going to have a tough time following up on the tails of 2011. Here's to the new year!

Becky Jewell, December 26 2011