Best Gallery Show — Group 2013 | The Other Primary Colors — White Black Grey | Best of Denver® | Best Restaurants, Bars, Clubs, Music and Stores in Denver | Westword
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Best Gallery Show — Group

The Other Primary Colors — White Black Grey

Two separate themes connected the artists in The Other Primary Colors, a group show at Space Gallery. First, as indicated by the title, all of them used neutral shades. And second, they all created pieces in the context of contemporary abstraction, with everything owing a debt to either minimalism or pattern painting. Guest curator for this show was Marks Aardsma (who dropped her first name, Jo, for the outing), who invited a wonderful roster of fellow travelers to join her in the realm of conceptual abstraction. That list included Tonia Bonnell, Nancy Koenigsberg, Carlene Frances, Corey Postiglione, David Sawyer and Space owner Michael Burnett. Elegant and impressive, the show lent an unexpected contemplative quality to the sometimes raucous gallery.

Best Gallery Show — Solo

Place

Michael Brohman, who teaches sculpture at the University of Colorado Denver, is known for being outrageous. For his solo Place, mounted in fall 2012, the longtime Pirate co-op member presented some never-before-seen works that he'd done during a residency at the Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming. The works, mostly made of found materials, represent contemporary takes on Western themes, like the screen door with the missing cross brace that brilliantly expresses its title, "Horizon." Brohman's often been on the cutting edge, so even if Western-style contemporary art is one of the latest crazes, it's important to remember that he's been at it for more than five years.

Best Gay Bar

Tracks Nightclub

Keith Garcia

Tracks is more than just a gay bar — it's a veritable multiplex of GLBTQ-centered activities. The decades-old nightclub has it all, from Denver's largest ladies' night (First Fridays) to RuPaul's Drag Race watching parties to DJs from across the globe rocking its multiple dance floors. The adjoining EXDO Event Center space allows Tracks to offer the best live drag shows in Denver — when it's not serving as the premier party destination for corporate events, nonprofit fundraisers, weddings and more. At both venues, the door and bar staff are friendly and efficient, and the sound system keeps every party going, no matter the size of the crowd. From spring-break underwear parties to Pride weekend blowouts, Denver's vibrant GLBTQ community is in the spotlight at Tracks.

Best GLBTQ-Spotlighting Film Festival

Cinema Q

Giving movies that might otherwise never be seen a chance on the big screen, the Sie FilmCenter's ongoing Cinema Q series and annual film festival focuses on the wide-open world of GLBTQ cinema. I Want Your Love, which screened last year, might have been too pornographic for any other festival, but at Cinema Q, it got the attention it deserved. Programming director Keith Garcia continues to seek out topical and often controversial narratives, booking films by gay writers, directors and producers, documentaries about pivotal GLBTQ figures, and romantic comedies with complex plots, removing any notion that these are simply "gay" movies.

Best Graphic Novel by a Local Artist

The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, by Noah Van Sciver

Don't think we're crowing just because Noah Van Sciver's work appears in these pages: The cartoonist would have made a name for himself in the comix world with or without our help — he's that good. Known to the rest of the world as the creator of the Blammo comic book and an accomplished old-school comic artist with a dense, heavily cross-hatched style, an ironic sense of humor and a slight taste for the macabre, Van Sciver has had work published in several compilations, in Mad and The Best American Comics 2011. But he reached his pinnacle — so far — with 2012's The Hypo: The Melancholic Young Lincoln, an impeccably drawn graphic novel published by Fantagraphics. Mining a little-known period in the life of Abraham Lincoln, when he was treated for a deep bout of depression resulting in a nervous breakdown, the book, which revisits the now-antiquated treatment options of the nineteenth century, is dark, but a glimmer of Lincoln's future can also be detected in the denouement.

Best Group of Shows by a Bunch of Kids

Estee Fox, David Sole, Harry Kleeman and Daniel Nilsson

This past winter, four young upstarts transformed Edge Gallery into a very edgy place. First was Estee Fox, represented by videos, disturbing performances and some great figurative works on paper. Then David Sole turned one space into an artificial back yard that included a gouged and graffiti-covered wall. Next up was Harry Kleeman, with some super-successful hybrids of paintings and sculptures that hung on the walls. Finally, there was Daniel Nilsson, who was all over the map with oddball attractions like silvered Coke bottles, a fur-covered ladder and some very elegant sculptures that relied on fluorescent lights. It's apparent that the next generation of Denver's art world has already arrived.

Best Group Show by a Bunch of Grownups

Stephen Batura, Edie Winograde, Jerry Kunkel and Gary Emrich

In anticipation of Continental Drift at MCA Denver, Jennifer Doran curated a quartet of solos by well-known Colorado artists that focused on new art about the West. Stephen Batura was made up of the artist's casein-and-acrylic paintings based on historic photos, like his famous train-wreck paintings. Edie Winograde mashed the past with the present through the artist's remarkable color shots of nerdy re-creations of historic events. Jerry Kunkel featured the painter's photo-realist pieces depicting Western scenes as though they were placemat images. Finishing things off was Gary Emrich, which combined a video with digital prints of mid-century Western-kitsch knickknacks. The strong foursome presented further evidence that contemporary art in the West is an up-and-coming national trend.

Best Hip-Hop Weekly

Club Level Sports Bar

Hu$$la Entertainment's Saturday-night hip-hop party at Club Level attracts hundreds of people every week. One of the secrets to the night's continued success is its organizers, who treat every week like it's the first. They further foster goodwill with customers by treating them with grace and respect: While DJ Juanito and DJ RX spin the tunes, host Thomasito Vasquez greets each customer with a smile and MC Money keeps the crowd entertained. There's usually a line around the building by 11 p.m. — and it's easy to see why.

Best Homage to Elvis

Jonny Barber

On the 35th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, Jonny Barber — the artist formerly known as the Velvet Elvis, who channels the King perhaps better than anyone else in the world — chose to honor Elvis Presley in the most memorable and fitting way possible. While the rest of the world was in Memphis last August, Barber had the foresight to book some time at Sun Studios, where the King once recorded, and performed ten of the original Sun singles, along with an original of his own and a tune by Willie Lewis, the founder of Denver's Rock-A-Billy Record Company.

Best Homemade-Instruments Show

Gorinto

Kurt Bauer (Super Secret Messengers and Animal/Object), a fixture in the Denver avant-garde going back to at least the '80s, curated this event. He asked people in the scene who'd built their own sound-making devices to put together a set showcasing the capabilities of those home-crafted instruments. With numerous performances that included entomologist Aaron Spriggs's portable theremin, a piece performed by Mark McCoin and a partner called "In Utero," and Jacob DeRaadt's amplified piece of metal, this wasn't your typical concert. Not since S/O/A (bject) and the Carbon Dioxide Orchestra last performed has anything like it been seen in Denver. Gorinto was proof that outsider art of the sound variety is alive and well in our city.

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