Draw your own conclusion
5 fantastic Denver art shows (and they all happen to feature women)
What to make of the fact that the five most interesting art exhibits in Denver this month all feature female artists? Let’s call it progress, and leave it at that.
Sure, it would be easy to get carried away, to declare that the time has arrived when painters, sculptors, photographers and various other objectmakers who happen to be women are finally getting their due on a regular basis. These shows aren’t a draw because the artists share certain body parts. They’re just smart and solid and each has a hook that pulls you in.
They cover a lot of ground. There’s painting — stunning painting, actually — but also plenty of threedimensional work that defies easy description. They challenge visually, politically and intellectually.
And while this female moment is certainly worth noting, it’s surely not the end of art’s longrunning gender problem. Men still run the major museums here, as they always have, and they rule the high end of the art mar ket when it comes to who sells what and for how much. Oh, and they have the loudest critical voices.
The real revelation comes from the art itself. By and large, it’s genderneutral. If there were no labels, no show announcements, no press, no bios with obvious pronouns on the walls, could you tell this art was all by women? Not really.
It demands you see it without bias. That you simply consume it on its merits. And all of these shows have plenty of merit. Virginia Maitland, “Retrospective, 1965Present,” Arvada Center.
Virginia Maitland has long been
considered one of Colorado’s premier abstractionists, and this show puts it all into perspective: 45 works spanning 53 years. It’s an important milestone in the career of an artist who continues to surprise, and a big move on the part of the Arvada Center to be a serious chronicler of the region’s cultural scene.
Maitland is bestknown for her color field paintings, working in the style made famous by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman but adding her own updated twist. Her big blocks of vibrant blues, reds and greens — so often delivered by modernists with cool precision — have softness and dimension, even a sensuality. They take on the personality of billowy, foldable fabric, connecting meaningfully to the real world. The exhibit makes the most of their natural appeal, grouping large works together for maximum effect. The show, and the catalog created for it, serve as a crucial document on how Maitland developed her considerable skills.
Through Nov. 11, Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Blvd., Arvada, Info: 7208987200 or arvadacenter.org.
Suchitra Mattai, “sugar bound,” Center for Visual Art
Suchitra Mattai, born in Guyana and headquartered in Colorado, describes herself as “an American, Caribbean, South Asian from Latin America,” and this exhibit pulls that string of identities together into a series of colorful, multimedia, multidimensional works of art.
Mattai explores the concept of home, and it’s complicated, informed by the physical fluidity of the places she has lived, plus her family’s own past working as indentured servants on the sugar plantations of colonial Guyana. Is home a choice? Does it happen to you? She presents a case that it is more ephemeral than actual maps might suggest, using as evidence gathered objects, such as textiles and furniture, assembled around her own work in paint, video, sculpture and collage. The exhibit, curated by CVA’S Cecily Cullen, positions Mattai as an important voice in Colorado’s evolving, diversifying art scene.
Through Nov. 3, Center for Visual Art, 965 Santa Fe Drive, 303 294 5207 or msudenver.edu/ cva.
Daisy Patton, “This Is Not Goodbye” at the CU Art Museum and “A Rewilded Arcadia,” at K Contemporary
Daisy Patton’s work — currently overlapping at two exhibits — is equal appealing and mysterious, full of color and pattern and social history. She works with found, vintage photographs of individuals or groups of people from generations past, reproducing them, often at a largescale, and painting over them liberally in loud pinks, purples and yellows. She might blot out a face with a smash of blue or add a sprig of magenta leaves to create a jungle of imaginary flora in the background.
There is a loving disrespect for the original photos that Patton starts with. These people, once vibrant and active mothers, siblings, husbands and wives, lose their identity as individuals. Instead, they are imbued with an eternal presence; they become symbols of maternity, fraternity, youth and love, and reflect our own ideas about identity through a timeless lens.
The CU show runs through Nov. 17. Info at 3034928300 or colorado.edu/cuartmuseum. The K Contemporary exhibit in Denver’s Lower Downtown continues through October. Info: 3035909800 or kcontemporaryart.com.
Tara Donovan “Fieldwork,” Museum of Contemporary Art Denver
Tara Donovan’s “Fieldwork” is the MCA at its ambitious best, taking its place as a significant voice in contemporary art beyond its regional borders. Brooklynbased Donovan is a national, and popular, figure and this exhibit, curated by Nora Burnett Abrams, presents a definitive look at her talents, combining work that is old and new, flat and multidimensional.
Donovan’s skill is transformation, finding the fantastical qualities of “everyday materials like plastic straws, index cards, rubber bands, Slinkys, and Mylar,” as the MCA puts it, and rendering them into objects that hang on the wall or consume large amounts of floor space that viewers are invited to wander through. It’s a big show, taking over the entire museum.
Though Jan. 27, at the MCA, 1485 Delgany St. 3032987554 or mcadenver.org.
Theresa Anderson, “everything squiggles,” 808 Projects
Denver artist Theresa Anderson explores complicated ideas about our relationship to objects, but she does so minimally, often taking found objects that are personal (like pantyhose) or removed (like industrial foam) and arranging them in a way that readjusts how we consider them.
Her work tends to be sparse and a bit distant, and that’s what makes it so alluring. You fear it a little, but you also want to touch it, to experience it physically. It’s brave and, often, on a comfortable edge of brilliant. This exhibit, curated by Mardee Goff, brings some of the artist’s older objects into dialogue with hew new work. That makes it a wideranging combination of painting, drawing, sculpture and animation. With its mix of media and attitude, Goff describes it as “undeniably and unapologetically feminine, yet genderless.”
Through Oct. 21, 808 Projects, 808 Santa Fe Drive. Info: 808projects.com.