The main Biennial of the Americas event is at MCA Denver, but there’s another official show, Vis-à-Vis, at the McNichols Building. It includes installations by four selected “ambassadors” – two from Denver, two from Mexico City. The Denver artists, Melissa Furness and Matt Scobey, did a residency in Mexico City, while…

One of the largest galleries in town, Michael Warren Contemporary, is currently hosting three freestanding solos. Each is showcased alone, free of intrusions from the sensibilities of the others. To the left of the entrance is Patsy Krebs: Time Passages, made up of the artist’s austere ruminations on the horizon…

Metropolitan State College of Denver was founded in 1965, with the goal of providing higher education for students who had previously not had much of a chance to seek out a college degree, particularly minorities and low-income individuals. The concept appears to have worked, because the school continues to have…

Denver has never been a great town for fans of architecture. Important buildings from the past routinely go under the wrecking ball, while only a tiny percentage of their replacements are any good at all. It’s actually a brilliant strategy on the part of developers: Short-circuit any future historic-preservation struggles…

Pirate Contemporary Art will host a closing reception tomorrow, July 3, from 6 to 10 p.m. for Charles Livingston: Spaces Between and Other Anomalies, an ambitious conceptual solo in the main gallery, and for Priscilla Fowler: Biomorphic Abstraction, a tidy abstract show in the associate space. Both shows are worth…

Nature’s Line, the lyrical group show now at Space Gallery, is a worthy followup to the impressive Pattern, which was presented there earlier this summer. In Pattern, the theme was repeated imagery, as the title suggests. This time, the subject is the organic line, which is also conveyed in the…

Hal Gould, who was a force of nature when it came to photography, died June 25 at the age of 95. A photographer and photo dealer, Gould was also an advocate for photography’s place in the fine arts — a campaign he led long before the idea became fashionable or…

There has been a lot going on in and around the Denver Art Museum recently — so let’s get started. Last year, William Morrow left the DAM after an extremely short tenure as the Polly and Mark Addison Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. His departure was seemingly by mutual…

On Friday, June 19, artist Roland Bernier died after having suffered a heart attack the week before. Until recently, he’d been active in the Denver scene, where he wasn’t just an accomplished artist, but an advocate. Art was his life, and Bernier regularly attended exhibition openings with his wife, Marilyn,…

For the unusual solo Sabin Aell: The Buoyancy of Nothing, the artist has created a series of related wall pieces in the front spaces at Walker Fine Art; she calls them “wall designs,” and they function together as a single, coherent installation. The interrelated designs take up all of the…

There are two shows at Ice Cube Gallery right now, both featuring recent work by new members of the co-op. Each is interesting in its own way — and worth seeing — but there is some urgency since both also close this weekend.  In the spaces to the right is…

Almost anything goes in contemporary art right now, which explains the wide range of expressions included in the three shows at MCA Denver. It makes sense to begin with Critical Focus: Monique Crine, which is installed on the lower level. The exhibit was organized by MCA curator Nora Burnett Abrams…

Though its obituary was written a generation ago, abstraction is back with a vengeance in contemporary art. This week, I’ll look at a set of four solos and a small group effort at Robischon Gallery, along with a super-simpatico solo at Rule Gallery. The festivities at Robischon begin with Don…

There’s a handsome solo at Gildar Gallery titled Someone Called Me by My Name: New Work by William Stockman. It was put together by Simon Zalkind, who’s had a long relationship with Stockman; Zalkind also curated a show of the artist’s work for the Singer Gallery at the Mizel Center…

Space Gallery owner Michael Burnett believes that the impressive Pattern: Geometric / Organic, now on display at the gallery, is his best effort yet. I have to say, though, that I’ve been checking out exhibits at Space for years, and there have been many solid shows presented there. It’s true…

Though abstraction has made a big comeback in the early part of the 21st century, representational imagery is still a persistent interest for painters and sculptures. To prove it, there are a number of shows on view right now that delve into the idea of depicting exterior reality through either…

Although he currently lives in New York, painter Paul Jacobsen is a Colorado native and still maintains a studio in Rico, near Telluride. The title of his solo, Outpost, on display at the David B. Smith Gallery, refers to frontiers – both the wilderness of the San Juan Mountains around…

Dennis Pippen, co-president of Edge, makes his Denver gallery debut there with the solo Magically Delicious, in the venue’s recently spiffed up space. The title, which is taken from the Lucky Charms cereal slogan, aptly conveys the idea that Pippen is interested in engaging pop culture with works referring to…

Joan Miró is without a doubt one of the key figures in the development of abstraction in the twentieth century. In fact, aside from Picasso, he is the most important source in developing non-pictorial images. In the 1920s, Miró, a Spanish artist working in Paris, like Picasso, began to develop…

After consulting for History Colorado on the “Movimiento Chicano” section of its 1968 exhibit, Museo de las Americas director Maruca Salazar started thinking about presenting her own show on the subject of Chicanos. Salazar, who is from Mexico, explains that Chicanos are not Mexican-Americans; rather, they are the descendants of…

This year, the Month of Photography has expanded so that it not only fills March, but runs all the way through April. In fact, the last of the shows, including the contemplative Far Between at Robischon Gallery, will be on view into May. Typically, Robischon presents sets of related solos,…

From its beginnings in the mid-1800s, Denver has been a city of booms and busts, but there’s no doubt that the Mile High City is on one hell of a tear right now. The current economic explosion actually began in the late twentieth century, making the recession of a few…