Sketches

The Modern Muybridge Series. This is a clever show that features recent work by Rodney Wallace, who runs the gallery with the oddball name of KOUBOU a Deux, an invented Franco-Japanese phrase that means "artist workshop for two." The show's title refers to Eadweard Muybridge, a pioneer of scientific photography who took sequential photos of people and animals in motion. Free association connects them to Warhol's repetitious imagery, and Wallace references both sensibilities simultaneously. Particularly Warholian are Wallace's bright colors. Also compelling is Wallace's gritty take on city life: His pieces include depictions of a woman loaded down with luggage, a homeless man pushing a shopping cart and an assault in progress, among other contemporary urban scenes. To do the paintings, Wallace took digital photos, some of them staged using models, and then projected the images onto blank canvases. Tracing the images with watercolor pencils, he painted in the forms using acrylics that melted the tracings so that no outlines were left behind. Through November 5 at KOUBOU a Deux, upstairs at 7571/2 Santa Fe Drive, 720-203-1944. Reviewed October 13.

Patti Cramer. Artist Patti Cramer is a Denver icon. The Westword contributor has been the subject of innumerable solos over the past twenty years, and her work is in many collections in the region. In the past few years, Cramer has kept a lower-than-usual profile, making the self-titled Patti Cramer at Open Press LTD a rare opportunity to see what she's been up to lately. The show includes paintings, monotypes and etchings, the latter two mediums created at Open Press, which is more of a printmaking facility than a gallery. Cramer's signature pieces look like a cross between Old Master paintings and New Yorker cartoons. Cramer's world is made up of fashionable people socializing in restaurants and out on the sidewalks. There are also portraits and landscapes, as well as her characteristic depictions of horses. Cramer's horses are linear and are more abstract than any of her other subjects. Though the Open Press exhibition space is fairly small, Patti Cramer is a large show of nearly fifty pieces. Through December 10 at Open Press LTD, 40 West Bayaud Street, 303-778-1116. Reviewed on October 20.

Revealing the Muse and Colorado Innovators. Hugh Grant, founder and director of the Kirkland Museum on Capitol Hill, curated both Revealing the Muse and Colorado Innovators both at the Lakewood Heritage Center using pieces borrowed from his institution's permanent collection. The Kirkland Museum has an impressive assemblage that includes paintings by Kirkland himself, work by other Colorado artists and an extensive group of decorative arts. Colorado Innovators provides a survey of mid-twentieth-century artists working in Denver. Most of the objects included have either never been exhibited or haven't been seen in living memory. Revealing the Muse is a Vance Kirkland retrospective that begins with his work from the 1930s and ends with pieces done right before his death in 1981. I think it could be argued that surrealism was Kirkland's most important influence, and one of his most important innovations was the mixing of oil paint and water poured onto the surfaces of his pieces. Beginning in the 1950s, this mixture led to some of his greatest paintings ever. Through February 10 at the Radius Gallery, Lakewood Heritage Center, 801 South Yarrow Street, Lakewood, 303-987-7850. Reviewed September 8.

Step Right Up! In this two-part exhibit at Studio Aiello, Denver artist David Seiler has installed a conventional art show up front and something very unusual in the back: a circus-looking tent filled with sculptures that recall sideshow attractions. A depiction of a barker with a sound track draws viewers into the tent. Seiler antiqued the sculpture so that it appears to date from the early twentieth century, which the hypothetical time frame of his carnival, which is called "Circus of More." Seiler is dead-on in conveying the look of agedness, with everything in the show -- even the tent itself -- appearing to be antique. The yellow- and red-striped tent was draped from the ceiling, completely transforming the room into a creepy place -- a feeling that's enhanced by the dim lighting. Arrayed around the tent are various devices such as "Phrenitiscopes" -- motion picture contraptions that are hand-cranked -- as well as a fortune-telling machine and a wheel of fortune. Through November 4 at Studio Aiello, 3563 Walnut Street, 303-297-8166. Reviewed October 20.