Best Gallery Show -- Solo

The smart-looking Clark Richert: Recent Paintings, at Rule Gallery on Broadway, showcased a small but significant group of the latest geometric pieces by Clark Richert, a former hippie and current art guru. Richert first came to fame in this area in the 1960s, when he designed and helped start Drop City, an art commune just outside of Trinidad in southern Colorado. And though decades

have gone by, Drop City is still on his mind. A number of paintings based on some of the buildings he designed there -- riffs on Buckminster Fuller's geodesic domes -- were featured at Rule. It was Richert's recent work, which indicated a new and innovative shift for the artist, that was the truly captivating part of this show, however. Instead of being dense and complicated, like many of his earlier pieces, those displayed here are quite spare. It looks like Richert has dropped back in. Kudos to the artist and gallery owner Robin Rule for giving Denver the best solo-artist exhibit of the season.