Sketches

Residual Memory. To come up with this show, Arvada Center exhibition director Jerry Gilmore invited photo-based artist Jimmy Sellars to show alongside ceramics whiz Marie E.v.B. Gibbons; both are longtime habitués of the Denver art scene. Having the center's capacious Lower Galleries at their disposal encouraged the two to soar, and they each created impressive new bodies of work expressly for this do-not-miss exhibition. For several years, Sellars has been using G.I. Joe action figures to stand in for human models in his digitally based photographs. In the pieces he created for Residual Memory, Sellars used the figures to refer to his own memories. Gibbons is a talented ceramics artist who is especially good at surfaces, using a variety of techniques to achieve them. Each of the three Gibbons spaces has been conceived as an installation, with two of them anchored by bathtubs meant to reinforce her water theme. All of the sculptures are part of her "My Ocean" series, which refers to her childhood love of the sea. Through April 1 at the Arvada Center, 6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, 720-898-7200. Reviewed March 15.

2007 Faculty Exhibition. Lisa Tamiris Becker, the director of the CU Art Museum, organized this exhibit as one of the last in the old fine arts building, which is to be torn down to make room for a new Visual Arts Complex. The exhibit has pieces by full-time professors as well as adjuncts, and it demonstrates that the art teachers at CU embrace a range of mediums and a variety of styles. Despite all this diversity, the show looks good and, more surprisingly, holds together. Becker began by making studio visits to each of the artists, and together they chose the piece or pieces to be incorporated. The standouts include a work by the late Antonette Rosato, along with creations by Yumi Janairo Roth, Chuck Forsman, Ken Iwamasa, Kay Miller, Chris Lavery, Scott Chamberlin, Alex Sweetman, Albert Chong and Mark Amerika, among others. The CU Art Museum will close in May, and the new complex will take two years to build, so it'll be a long time before the CU faculty has a chance to show again. Through March 23 at the CU Art Museum, Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building, 303-492-8300. Reviewed March 8.

Weekend in So Show. Making a striking aesthetic statement is not of paramount importance to Liam Gillick in Weekend in So Show, now at the still-nascent Laboratory for Art and Ideas at Belmar (aka the Lab). Gillick is more interested in telling some kind of story about politics, society and culture, and he uses language along with visual elements to do it. Gillick emerged in the 1990s as part of a generation of artists showing in London dubbed the "YBAs," which stands for Young British Artists. Lab director Adam Lerner invited Gillick to come to Belmar as a visiting artist. While in residence there, he worked with around a dozen students from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design, which is also in Lakewood. Despite this seeming collaboration, the resulting piece is signature Gillick, right down to the miles of wall text and the elegantly simple three-dimensional elements that recall the work of Donald Judd. Gillick used a documentary made by agitprop collective the Medvedkine Group about a strike in France as the starting point for his intriguing installation about rising expectations. Through April 1 at the Lab at Belmar, 404 South Upham Street, 303-934-1777. Reviewed February 15.