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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.
Joseph Coniff (in parenthesis). This is only the second presentation to open at the Rule Gallery since the untimely death of Robin Rule late last year. It was important to Rule that the gallery continue, so three longtime associates — Valerie Santerli, Rachel Beitz and Hilary Morris — are carrying on her vision. Rule might roll her eyes at the tumble-down character of the entry to the gallery, but she’d surely approve of the exhibition space where the Coniff show is installed. The work is from Coniff’s recent “Delineation” series, made up of sublimely elegant post-minimal paintings. Coniff creates hard-edged works in which he stacks three horizontal bars. The bottom is broad and painted; the one in the center is covered in vellum adorned with a delicate graph pattern; and the one on top is a thinner bar of color. Despite the unnatural shades, it’s clear that the works refer to landscapes. Also included is an irreverent sculpture made from an upended lamppost stuck in a bucket of concrete, done last year. It provides the perfect counterpoint to the cerebral paintings and works on paper. Extended through October 6 at Rule Gallery, 3254 Walnut Street, 303-800-6776.
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.
Where You Begin and Strangely Decadent. Pirate member Christine Buchsbaum invited her friend and fellow artist, Michael Bhichitkul, to help her curate Where You Begin, a group show in which artists employ ordinary subjects in unusual or extraordinary ways. Both Buchsbaum and Bhichitkul included examples of their own works, and both are genuine standouts. Buchsbaum’s is a photo of a pair of women’s legs standing in an ice-filled bathtub being used to chill fish. Bhichitkul created an image of a chunk of wood, then used an ax to chop into it and, as a consequence, the wall behind it. The show is filled in with work of the other invitees, who include two famous artists, Tony Oursler and William Lamson and a mix of others from Denver and across the country. In the Associate Gallery in the back, Laura Phelps Rogers has mounted Strangely Decadent, a selection of vignettes with a whiff of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries about them, owing to the inclusion of an old wall clock, a gaudy chandelier and a neon sign that reads “eat.” Through October 6 at Pirate Contemporary Art, 3655 Navajo Street, pirateartonline.org, 303-458-6058.
