Now Showing

Curiouser. Singer Gallery director Simon Zalkind is one of
the top curators in town, and one of the secrets to his success is
presenting artists whose efforts are worthwhile but who for some reason
rarely exhibit their work. That’s what’s happening now with the unusual
show Curiouser: A Dozen Years of Painting, dedicated to the
strangely compelling and richly hued oils and watercolors of Denver
artist Paul Gillis. A genuine artist’s artist, Gillis has earned the
respect of his fellow travelers in the visual arts while remaining
little known in the wider cultural community, and it is that fact that
Zalkind addresses in this solo. The pieces are hard to categorize,
because in them, Gillis combines elements of realism, surrealism,
abstraction and animation and assembles them in his own highly
idiosyncratic personal style. He’s created a cast of characters for his
pictures that includes robots, dolls with button heads, vessels and
animals, all of which interact in enigmatic ways. In some works, he
also incorporates a pseudo written language made up of incomprehensible
symbols. Through May 28 at the Singer Gallery, Mizel Arts and Culture
Center, 350 South Dahlia Street, 303-316-6360, www.maccjcc.org. Reviewed May 7.

Damien Hirst. You’d have to be living under a rock — or
have absolutely no interest in contemporary art — not to know
that Damien Hirst is a superstar, and that everything he makes is worth
millions of dollars apiece. The tight solo at MCA Denver (formerly
known as the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver) is not the first time
that local art audiences have had a chance to see Hirst’s creations in
person, but it is his first single-artist show anywhere in the American
West. Hirst’s “Natural History” series of dead animals in cases is
surely his most famous type of work. There’s an incredible one in the
MCA show called “Saint Sebastian: Exquisite Pain,” made up of a bullock
that’s been pierced with arrows. It’s simultaneously compelling and
repellent. “Saint Sebastian” dominates the Large Works Gallery, but
there are three other Hirst pieces, including two very different
paintings from his “Butterfly” series, in which actual butterflies are
affixed to the paintings, and one of his post-minimal “Medicine
Cabinets.” It’s apparent that Hirst is brilliant, with an eye for
beauty, though his mind goes in for ugliness. Through August 30 at MCA
Denver, 1485 Delgany Street, 303-298-7554, www.mcadenver.org. Reviewed October
16.

Marecak. This is a major retrospective of the work of husband
and wife artists Edward and Donna Marecak, key figures in the history
of modern art in Colorado. Edward was a painter and printmaker who came
to study at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center School in the 1940s.
In 1947 he married Donna, who was a potter. Donna would often throw the
pots and then decorate them according to Edward’s designs. The pair’s
creative heyday was the 1950s and ’60s, but both were rediscovered by
the local art world in the 1990s, right after Edward died and Donna had
retired. There are a number of unusual pieces in this impressive duet,
including several examples of abstraction by Edward, who was better
known for his figural compositions, and a large and handsome collection
of Donna’s precisely thrown and gorgeously decorated pots that have
only rarely been exhibited before. The gallery is owned by Randy
Roberts and directed by veteran art professional Paul Hughes, a
longtime supporter of the Marecaks; it is dedicated to promoting the
historic modern art of Colorado. Through July 3 at Z Art Department,
1136 North Speer Boulevard, 303-298-8432, zartdepartment@yahoo.com.

New & Noteworthy. Alice Zrebiec is astoundingly well
versed in the field of quilts, which makes her the ideal textile
curator at the Denver Art Museum, an institution with a world-class
assortment of them. For the latest show on quilts in the Neusteter
Gallery, on the sixth floor of the DAM’s Ponti building, Zrebiec has
put together a show that’s anchored by a recent acquisition, an early
nineteenth-century album quilt — the Hopkins Family quilt —
which is surrounded by nine others from the same era. The Hopkins
Family quilt — the ‘new’ in the exhibit’s title — has a
white field on which a red grid of lines divides the surface up into a
set of individual frames in which different motifs, including flowers,
musical instruments, a mantle and a sailing ship, among other everyday
things about the family, are presented. The other quilts — the
‘noteworthy’ part — are of widely different types, including an
impressive bridal quilt, an autograph quilt (where donors had a
calligrapher sign their names in the various fabric blocks) and even a
quilt inspired by Old Glory. Through December 31 at the Denver Art
Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-913-0096, www.denverartmuseum.org.

The Psychedelic Experience. The AIGA graphics curator, Darrin
Alfred, has only been on the job at the Denver Art Museum for a year,
and already he’s the author of a major blockbuster, The Psychedelic
Experience: Rock Posters From the San Francisco Bay Area. Alfred
selected around 300 posters from a gift of more than 800 relevant
pieces from Boulder collector David Tippit. A connoisseur, Tippit
sought examples that were in the finest condition available and those
that were artist-signed. Alfred uses the show to feature the principal
artists involved in the movement and exhibits the work of each in
separate sections. This was a smart move, since it conveys the idea
that a range of sensibilities, including art nouveau, surrealism and
pop art, among other sources, came together to form the psychedelic
poster style. Specialists in the field have identified a big five, but
Alfred doesn’t agree, so there are seven stars (one of which is a team)
in this exhibit: Lee Conklin, Rick Griffin, Alton Kelley & Stanley
Mouse, Bonnie MacLean, Victor Moscoso, David Singer and Wes Wilson.
Through July 19 at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway,
720-865-5000. www.denverartmuseum.org. Reviewed
May 21.

Rex Ray. The Promenade Space on the second floor of MCA
Denver is both a passageway and an exhibition hall. Given its limited
size and unconventional plan — the main wall runs diagonally to
the windows opposite it — the Promenade has been used exclusively
for single installations. The latest example is an untitled mural by
San Francisco artist Rex Ray, who used to live in Colorado. Ray has a
national reputation based not just on his fine art, but as a designer
of everything from books to coffee mugs. Ray created the mural
specifically for this show and specially designed the fabulous
wallpaper that surrounds it. The mural is signature Ray, with shapes
that rise from the base in the manner of a still-life or landscape. The
shapes have been made from cut-outs of painted papers that have been
laid against a stunning blue ground, and were inspired by organic
forms, or at least abstractions of them, as seen in mid-century modern
design. The wallpaper has a spare, all-over pattern on a white ground,
complementing the mural without competing with it. Through January 31
at MCA Denver, 1485 Delgany Street, 303-298-7554, www.mcadenver.org.

Virginia Maitland. This show, officially dubbed Virginia
Maitland: A Mirror of Abstraction; Paintings Across Time, is an
economical look at some recent pieces by the Boulder-based
abstractionist, together with a single older piece that clearly
anticipates what she is doing now. The early work, “Androgynous Stain,”
from 1974, is fabulous, with veils of strong color in jewel-like tones
colliding with each other in the center. Interestingly, Maitland rolled
up this painting thirty years ago, and it was just pulled out of its
tube and re-stretched last month. It hasn’t aged a bit during the
intervening decades and still looks bright and fresh. While it was
hidden, Maitland experimented widely with her paintings — even
incorporating photocopied images in some. But in the last year or two,
she’s returned to her colorist roots as exemplified by nearly a dozen
recent works in this show, most from 2009. Maitland moved to Colorado
from the East Coast in 1970, and she’s said that it was the West’s
expansive vistas that led her to embrace the color-field abstraction
that’s since become her signature. Through May 30 at Sandra Phillips
Gallery, 744 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-5969, www.thesandraphillipsgallery.com.