The Museum of Contemporary Arts Denver brings a rotating series of exhibitions t
The Museum of Contemporary Arts Denver strives to bring the hottest new art to a city once called a cow town. Founded in 1996, it moved to its permanent home in the Lower Downtown less than two years ago. In its sparkling, glassed-in space, this “museum without a front door” has shown the work of over 29 artists.
The MCA is a non-collecting museum, which means that it doesn’t spend its money buying and displaying a few works of expensive art. Instead, in the spirit of keeping contemporary, it continually searches out new artists worldwide and opens new exhibitions in its five galleries and sites for special projects. Its rotation sequence means that for returning visitors, there’s always something new to see.
Past exhibitions have included paintings by the German artist, Jonas Burgert, whose “Second Day Nothing” recalled the apocalyptic work of Hieronymus Bosch. David Altmejd, a sculptor from Canada, has become well-known for using dazzling, mirror-like surfaces in his “quest for the sublime, wondrous and fantastic.” His installation in the Large Works Gallery brought to life “souls reflected in nature.” Taiwan-born Yu-Cheng Chou has drawn inspiration from wide array of sources, including computer game animation, advertising photography and classic East Asian landscape painting. His work for the MCA deconstructed the superficiality of fashion and glamour magazines, even as it highlighted the dehumanizing effects of computer-generated graphics.
One of the current exhibitions is the work of Rex Ray. Influenced by Abstract Expressionism, the Arts and Crafts Movement and Op Art, he uses media such as painting and collage to playfully create “beautiful things.” New York-based Arlene Shechert, in the Paper Works Gallery, “presents a new series of brilliantly constructed and multi-dimensional cast-paper works that blur the line between drawing and sculpture.” And if you like photography, take a look at what Kevin O’Connell has done. A native of Colorado, he has been invited to create a body of work that explores renewable energy resources in the American West. That’s not something a museum in a cow town would have ever thought of!
Posted on May 17, 2011 by David Zindell
