Art that lives in the moment the focus of dual exhibits

Stopping the clock, taking a look

There are moments in our lives that aren’t meant to matter. The time we spend waiting for a bus, or recovering from an illness. The seasons we deplete building a house we have yet to occupy.

It’s all necessary, but transitional, unavoidable, even annoying. We may remember these pauses, but we have little reason to recall them.

SarahMcKenzie’s paintings dwell in this sort of time, or untime. She stops the clock on things that are going away before they disappear.

Her “Interior 1,” now on display at David B. Smith Gallery, freezes a home-remodeling project midway through. Rooms are framed, power cords installed, but the drywall is yet to go up. A few days from now, the construction job will cease to exist, replaced by something more like real estate.

Similarly, she renders “Gates FactoryWindow #5,” depicting a grid of windows in the decaying former rubber plant in Denver. The building, a city landmark, is slated for demolition and sits idly waiting for the wrecking ball. Soon, it, too, will be gone.

McKenzie, who lives in Boulder, tends to work big, using oil and acrylics combined. The painting “Frieze,” which captures a tent set up to display work at the Frieze Art Fair in London last year (another temporary space) is 5 feet by 5 feet. The Gates piece is a considerable 10 feet long.

Across those broad canvases,

Nicole Schwager and David Smith took in the Mark Dean Veca site-specific project called “Le Poppy Den” from the comfort of the bean bag chairs available on the carpeted floor. Karl Gehring, The Denver Post