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Volume 3, Issue 21
October 11 - October 24, 2001
ART
GALLERY REVIEW
Two current shows provide excellent perspectives on contemporary art.
Although their premises are entirely different, each touches on vital
questions of
where art has been in recent years and
where it might be headed next.
The Emmanuel Gallery, on the Auraria
campus, offers The State of the Art:
Post Millennial Contemporary Art in
Denver. Gallery director Ken Peterson
invited six Denver contemporary galleries
to take part, exhibiting work by
artists of their choice from their rosters.
The only restriction was size: each
would have forty linear feet of space.
"This is a teaching gallery," Peterson
said. "At least that's one of its functions.
The intention was for students and faculty
to have a view of six of the area's top
contemporary galleries and what they're
exhibiting."
He invited galleries with "longevity,
who've been in business for years and
figured out how to stay open"-- plus
some of the newer spaces that he feels
are going in interesting directions.
There are some exceptional pieces
included here. "Aspen" by Sushe Felix
(William Havu Gallery) taps modernist
sensibilities in a dance of modulated
color. Chuck Forsman's "Drought and
Disinterment" (Robischon Gallery) is the
most ethereal piece I've seen by this
artist, a levy extending out into mist-shrouded
waters. Susan Berkly's "Urban
Renewal" pieces (Fresh Art) are especially
tasty, small collages of wood, wire,
paper fragments, like wind-blown snippets
of memory captured for our inspection.
Michael Brohman's bronze chickens
(Ron Judish Gallery) are weirdly erotic:
"Roasted and Ready" and "Finger
Lickin' Good" should replace barbecue
sauce with K-Y jelly.
Santiago Perez's "Aviator" (Carson
Masuoka Gallery) is gorgeous, a terrific
magical realism view of dancing horse
and circus ringmaster, presented on a
bodaciously large scale. "Untitled #5
NYC" by Dale Chisman (Rule Gallery)
presents all the strengths this fine artist is
known for: scale, intense color, sparsely
graceful composition.
Viewing the exhibit, the question of risk
came up: Which galleries are pushing the
edges, taking risks? In one way, the
riskiest work here may be Carl Andre's
three small "Lyri" pieces (Rule Gallery).
Andre is known for minimalist boulder
installations. The "Lyri" are words
arranged on paper (and date from the
1960s). Defining "risky" as "not visually
appealing," these get my vote.
But "risky" usually has different definitions
in an art gallery context. The
Emmanuel show looks relatively cohesive.
Some works, from different galleries,
draw on nearly identical palettes,
and there's certainly an overlap from
gallery to gallery in some general sensibilities.
Galleries need to sell artwork to stay in
business. So, who buys art? Peterson
points out that "in the last twenty-five
years, [Denver area] corporations have
been buying contemporary art instead of
only western art, and that's a huge shift."
But corporations aren't the only art collectors,
which brings us to the other
exhibit. The David Adams Collection is
on display briefly at Andenken Gallery
and Design, prior to being auctioned off
on October 13 to pay medical-expense-related
debt incurred several years ago.
The auction is being presented by AHA!
-Artists Helping Artists, a group created
to help people in the art community meet
health-crisis expenses. (AHA!'s community
support helped me survive breast
cancer seven years ago; now I volunteer
for AHA! when occasion arises). These
works-- and there are more than 100
here-- were created and collected during
the 1980s, as Adams was establishing
what is probably Denver's finest, most
definitive collection of local and regional
art.
Culturally, we're shown stereotypical
and false images of ourselves. As portrayed
on television, artists are generally
anti-social eccentrics, art dealers are
well-heeled links to reality for the inarticulate
artists, and collectors, when
they're portrayed at all, are asthetically
in-bred, persnickety, snobbish-- think
Frasier.
David Adams won't be mistaken for
Frasier. A tile setter by trade, he's seldom
seen without a baseball cap, probably
one with a lumber-yard logo. This
guy invented "unpretentious." His
method was more instinctive than investment-
calculated. Artists and galleries
loved him-- he helped launch careers.
Adams was a familiar figure at every
gallery in town and he was the best variety
of collector: He bought what he
liked. And he liked some pretty fine
stuff.
Dale Chisman is represented by three
super pieces and you can clearly trace
how the Emmanuel show's piece is related
to these ancestors. Homare Ikeda is
present in both shows, too, and his style
matures visibly.
Works by artists like Kevin Oehler and
Joe Snyder, Karen Breunig and Mike
Duffy, Eric Johnson and Mary Shivers,
Mark Villareal and John Fudge and Zoa
Ace look terrific, look fresh. What
Adams collected was generally outside
any trend that would have dated the work
over time. From the polished sculptures
of Chuck Parson and Carl Reed to the
folk-art wooden truck by Bill Potts, this
exhibit is a snapshot of an incredibly
vital era.
The 1980s weren't all boom years for
Denver, but that meant studio rents were
low. Galleries sprang up almost monthly.
Some are still around (including
some of those in the Emmanuel show),
others vanished, but there was plenty of
art being created here and lots of places
to show it. If you lived here and viewed art
during the 1980s, this will
be a walk down memory lane; if you
weren't here then, it will be a evevation.
Denver tends to have an art-inferiority
complex as big as the damn Rockies,
fearing that nothing has happened here,
is happening here or will happen here.
Nonsense.
Denver (and the Front Range generally)
has supported healthy art communities
since the late 1880s. Artists weren't here
because they couldn't make it in New
York: many came here to get away from
the eastern art establishment. They
stayed because they wanted to live in
Colorado. That's still true. And collectors?
Aside from the desire for acquisition,
most also are moved by an honest
response to the artwork-- emotional,
intellectual, spiritual-- that transcends
any considerations about investment
value.
David Adams' collection is visionary.
It's worth ironically noting That Adams'
collection of artworks, selected by a single
individual, is considerably more
diverse than the Emmanuel show, works
selected independently by six different
galleries. It's also worth noting-- not
ironically, but because it speaks so clearly
about our community-- that gallery
personnel connected with the Emmanuel
show are also volunteering at the Adams
auction.
Where's Denver art going now? Isn't
that up to us?
--Renna Shesso
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