Now Showing

Inspiring Impressionism. This is hardly your run-of-the-mill effort in which a cavalcade of big-name European artists are represented by minor works. Instead, it's an intellectually stimulating exhibit crowded with iconic pieces by some of the most significant artists who ever took brush to canvas. Curated by the DAM's Timothy Standring and London's Ann Dumas, the traveling show examines the little-explored relationship between the Impressionists and the Old Masters. The intelligent installation has been handled so that viewers are literally forced to recognize the relationships Standring and Dumas have laid out among several sets of separate pieces of widely different dates and from various points of origin. These comparisons lead viewers to make insightful observations because their conclusions have been built in to the installation itself — not through wall text, but through the paintings and drawings alone. There are a lot of important pieces, including in-depth selections of Cézanne, Monet, Renoir and others. Through May 25 at the Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, 720-865-5000. Reviewed February 21.

Out of Place. This exhibit highlights cutting-edge photography from around the world, particularly China. The Robischon Gallery has become a Denver center for contemporary Chinese art, and photography has played a huge part in the art boom there. What makes this particularly interesting is that twenty years ago, virtually no one in China was allowed to own a camera. The front gallery is completely given over to artists from China, including Chi Peng and Wang Ningde; both make reference to the idea of flying through the air, a concept of interest to conceptualists throughout the world. But what goes up must come down, and that's the topic of Li Wei's "Falls" series, in the main space, in which the artist is seen in poses meant to evoke the idea of crashing into the ground head first. Putting figures in unlikely poses is also of interest to French artist Denis Darzacq, whose subjects are breakdancers in Paris who seem to be floating. Through April 26 at Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee Street, 303-298-7788, www.robischongallery.com. Reviewed April 17.

The Plains of Sweet Regret and Last Place. The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, nicknamed the Lab, currently has two shows. The Plains of Sweet Regret, a multi-screen video installation by New York artist Mary Lucier, highlights the steep decline of rural life on the high plains as corporate agribusiness displaces small farmers and kills small towns. The arc of the piece, which definitely has a regional flavor, is a hypnotic rodeo sequence set to George Strait's plaintive ballad "I Can Still Make Cheyenne." In an interesting move, Lab director Adam Lerner decided to pair it with Last Place, a series of conceptual works by local legend Phil Bender. For decades, Bender has picked up discarded objects and assembled them in their original states to create installations or sculptural cycles. The idea is that what he does is art because he says it is, and apparently everyone agrees. It's amazing how much visual mileage Bender has been able to get out of his single revelation that art is about perception. Through May 1 at the Lab at Belmar, 404 South Upham Street, 303-934-1777. Reviewed March 6.

Still. An exhibition with the title Still might mislead viewers into thinking that the offering at the Center for Visual Art would be yet another show highlighting Clyfford Still, the pioneering abstract-expressionist. But in this case, the CVA's Jennifer Garner and Cecily Cullen have used the word to mean "stationary," as in "dead still," or maybe even "still dead." The show, which features photos and films, focuses on the theme of death as it plays out in the work of three famous artists. Slater Bradley tries to make visible the way dead musicians Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain remain alive in the collective consciousness of the popular culture. Sally Mann is represented by her series "What Remains," which combines landscape photos she took at the battlefields of Gettysburg with shots taken from the field of forensics. And Nigel Poor zeroes in on dead insects in "287 Flies" and "Killing Season." Interestingly, the show isn't the guaranteed bummer that it might at first appear to be. Through April 30 at the Center for Visual Art, 1734 Wazee Street, 303-294-5207, www.mscd.edu/news/cva.