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Far North & Outer Space. Far North & Outer Space, now at Goodwin Fine Art, features new work by Beau Carey and Lanny DeVuono, both of whom create contemporary paintings based obliquely on views of the landscape. Many of the Careys are snow scenes and were inspired by a National Park Service artist-residency he did in a cabin at the base of Denali in Alaska. Carey is interested in mashing up styles, and his paintings are typically hybrids of landscapes and color-field abstractions. To say that the DeVuono paintings provide the perfect complement to the Careys would be an understatement, as she, too, blends straight representation with color-field abstraction. DeVuono’s views are hypothetical scenes of Mars, and she notes their similarity to the views of the Southwest. Most have two elements — a very complex gray-tone detail of the Martian landscape and a dreamy color field meant to convey the planet’s atmosphere. Through November 1 at Goodwin Fine Art, 1255 Delaware Street, 303-573-1255, goodwinfineart.com. Reviewed September 18.
Layered Perspectives. The persistent importance of abstraction in the West is shown off by Layered Perspectives at Michael Warren Contemporary, which features three artists working with the approach. One, Angela Berkson, hails from New Mexico, while the other two, Teresa Booth Brown and Stanley Bell, are Colorado artists. Gallery director Mike McClung has conceived of this group show as three interconnected solos. In these recent pieces, Berkson is referring to simple, iconic forms like an arrow, and a number of works are arrow-shaped and mounted to the wall with pivots so that they can rotate like the hands of a clock. The Brown section is a knockout, being made up of an array of her signature abstracts created with paint, collage and drawing applied to panels, often exaggeratedly horizontal panels. Bell fills the picture planes of his paintings with as much visual material as he can cram in, with some even having little toys and other elements appended to them while others combine hand-applied paint and stenciled passages. Through October 11 at Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-635-6255, michaelwarrencontemporary.com. Reviewed September 25.
Ray Tomasso and Regina Benson. For the last few years, Ray Tomasso and Regina Benson have been presenting tandem solo shows at Ice Cube Gallery. This bond developed because of the connections between their work. First are the shared themes: the natural forces in Colorado. Second, each is working in a medium outside the mainstream; Tomasso employs cast paper, while Benson uses dyed and pressed fabric. The subject of Tomasso’s pieces is Colorado’s extreme weather, which explains the title, Wind & Storm/Ray Tomasso. The work is meant to convey atmospheric events, and some were actually made outdoors. Benson’s installation compliments the Tomassos beautifully, and amazingly she works outside, too. For Regina V. Benson: Catching Fire, the artist has constructed a seamless installation made up of eleven separate-but-related rectilinear pillars suspended from the ceiling. These rectilinear elements are covered in dyed fabric with an all-over pattern of creases permanently impressed on them. They are meant to convey the idea of a wildfire. Through October 11 at Ice Cube Gallery, 3320 Walnut Street, 303-292-1822, icecubegallery.com. Reviewed October 2.
Unbound: Sculpture in the Field. Since the Arvada Center sits on a very large site, exhibitions manager Collin Parson and assistant curator Kristen Bueb decided recently to use a small part of it – a seventeen-acre field just to the south of the complex – as a xeric sculpture garden. Parson and Bueb invited Cynthia Madden Leitner of the Museum of Outdoor Arts in Englewood to partner with the center in the effort. MOA has made a specialty of placing large pieces of sculpture in various spots around metro Denver, and that technical expertise was very desirable. The group put together a list of sculptors they wanted to include, and the final roster of fifteen artists was established, with most being represented by two pieces. The participating artists, all of whom live in Colorado and work in abstraction or conceptual abstraction, are Vanessa Clarke, Emmett Culligan, John Ferguson, Erick Johnson, Andy Libertone, Nancy Lovendahl, Robert Mangold, Patrick Marold, David Mazza, Andy Miller, Charles Parson, Carl Reed, Joe Riché, Kevin Robb and Bill Vielehr. Through September 30, 2015, at the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, 720-898-7200, arvadacenter.org. Reviewed July 10.
