Ice Cream Social

The works of Parisian artist Amande In are long on concept and fleeting in execution, but they have a way of turning a viewer’s understanding of art upside down. Cortney Stell, curator at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design’s Philip J. Steele Gallery, flipped the minute she saw them. After an introduction via a fellow curator at a conference, she worked to bring In, who has never before exhibited work in the United States, to RMCAD. And now In’s two-part show, It Will Not Be the Same Without You, will open with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. tonight.

“Amande came to Colorado with just three boxes: four hundred colors of paint in little tiny tubes, a laser level, her miniature Italian greyhound and a ruler. That’s all she brought to make this exhibition,” Stell says. “The first part of the exhibition is already solidified into one work, called A New Perspective for Perspective. Amande and I like to lovingly call it ‘Ice Cream.’” And, indeed, it does melt: “She dragged me all over to thrift stores and IKEA looking for glass vases, and once they’d been collected, she began mixing watercolors and creating layers — like layered popsicles or ice cream — in the vases.” After In creates the layered pieces, In places them on pedestals and, through a process of “performance,” turns over the sculptural objects: vases of layered paint. In the act, they become paintings in a redefined fashion. “It melts from bottom to top, creating a new approach to watercolor,” Stell explains. “In essence, she’s creating a new kind of painting.” And a second, all-new, site-specific work is still in the planning stages.

It Will Not Be the Same Without You continues through July 4 at the Steele Gallery, on campus at 1600 Pierce Street in Lakewood; tonight’s reception will also include new exhibits in RMCAD’s Rude and Alumni galleries. For details, visit rmcad.edu.

Thu., May 16, 6-9 p.m.; Mondays-Saturdays. Starts: May 16. Continues through July 4, 2013