The Reel Thing

While it’s not unusual these days to find an artist moving from medium to medium with ease, Paul Sietsema seems to do it in a completely original way, says MCA Denver curator Nora Burnett Abrams, who has just finished pulling together the exhibition Paul Sietsema: Films and Works. The show will fill all of the MCA’s darkened second floor with room upon room of silently looping film. In those moving pictures, viewers can expect to experience the sensation of seeing an artwork develop within an artwork, as Sietsema records both the tools and the process of art-making through time and historical art movements.

And if you’re looking for answers amid these dense, rolling visual statements, don’t expect to get far, she notes. “Only a strong and sharp, brilliant artist can pack in all these questions and not actually answer them,” Abrams says. “Paul is so the opposite of flash, so very deeply thoughtful.”

Films and Works opens tonight with a public reception from 6 to 9 p.m. and runs through October 12 at the MCA, 1485 Delgany Street. Regular museum admission is $5 to $8 (or free for members and teens or children ages eighteen and under). Go to mcaden-ver.org or call 303-298-7554.

Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: July 2. Continues through Oct. 12, 2014