The fall season has yet to reach its peak, but it already feels like there’s lots of new life in Denver’s cultural art sector. Stick to this list for the best art finds this week.
Rat Fink Revolution: Started With a T-Shirt, Now We're Here
Emmanuel Gallery, 1205 10th Street Plaza, Auraria Campus
Through November 17
Artist talk with Jann Haworth: Thursday, October 13, 3 p.m.
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 13, 4 to 7 p.m.
Like so many cultural events in Denver and everywhere, the Rat Fink show at Emmanuel Gallery, a pet project of gallery director Jeff Lambson, had to be pushed back many months. But this fall, the Rat Fink character, invented in 1958 by hot-rod gearhead and comic artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in response to Disney’s clean-living Mickey Mouse, is installed in the chapel in multiples, along with works by a host of famous (and not-so-famous) pop, street and graffiti artists influenced by the rise of Roth’s iconic cartoon thug. Some might say it was a bad influence, but Lambson shows its better side: In all its unruly nastiness, the Rat Fink gave permission to artists to incorporate lowbrow popular culture into works of fine art.
To research the show, Lambson and a crew of students traveled in June to the Rat Fink Museum in Manti, Utah, for the annual Rat Fink Reunion, where they met with members of the Rat Fink inner circle, including Roth's widow, Trixie, and were allowed to select items for the exhibition right from the source. Roth’s lowbrow trove of decorated hot-rods, toilet seats, T-shirts, skateboards and toys makes for hard-core visuals from Rat Fink culture, displayed alongside art by Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami and Andy Warhol, as well as such Colorado artists as Carlos Frésquez, Donald Fodness, Kevin Hennessy and Gregg Deal.
Jann Haworth, a contributor to the cover art for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, will speak before the reception, and Trixie Roth will be in the house.
Luis Barragán: A Legacy. New Works Undressing the Mexican Soul
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, October 13, through February 18
Opening Reception: Thursday, October 13, 6 to 9 p.m.
Artist/Curator talk: Friday, October 14, 6 to 7 p.m.
Admission: $5 to $8
Luis Barragán was a father of minimalist modern architecture in his native Mexico, through work inspired by Le Corbusier but realized with dramatic ideas of his own, including a powerful use of solid colors. For Luis Barragán: A Legacy, five Mexican artists — Carine De Limelette, Karla de Lara, Luis Alfonso Villalobos, Carlos Vargas Pons and Jorge Jurado — created their own interpretations of his aesthetic influence in the visual arts. Curator Artemio García Uribe and the artists will give a talk on Friday evening for further insights.
Alfredo Cardenas, Transcending
Fireside Gallery, Dayton Library, Regis University, 3333 Regis Boulevard
Through October 31
Opening Reception and Artist Talk: Thursday, October 13, 4 to 6 p.m.
Sculptor Al Cardenas, a longtime member of the city’s Chicano artist community and a graduate of Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, works with welded sheet metal using the blue-collar welding skills he first learned in high school and perfected later in the military. The results, ranging from calacas in zoot suits to iconic mestizo figures that might have jumped out of a painting by Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros, are stunning.
Artist Talk: Cultivating Food Justice Through Art
Center for Visual Art MSUD, 965 Santa Fe Drive
Thursday, October 13, 6 p.m.
A group of Colorado artists commented on food insecurity lurking in our own backyard through their artwork for Cultivate, the second of two current exhibitions at CVA dealing with food justice in general. Five of them — Tsehai Johnson, Viviane Le Courtois, Sammy Lee, Heather Link-Bergman and Cherish Marquez — will flesh out the concept with their personal views and a discussion of their individual politicized artworks. RSVP for the free event at Eventbrite.
Dylan Griffith, "End of the Night,” 2022, acrylic, Flashe, spray paint and sand on panel.
Courtesy of Dylan Griffith
Union Hall Gallery, The Coloradan, 1750 Wewatta Street, Suite 144
Thursday, October 13, 6 to 8 p.m.
Union Hall curator Esther Hz and some of the participating artists will host a walk-through and discussion of One Foot in the Grave, a show that lives visually in the shadows of the afterlife. It’s free to attend, either in person or online at YouTube.
Sarah Winkler, “A Matter of Time. Horseshoe Bend,” 2022, acrylic on panel.
Sarah Winkler, courtesy of Visions West Contemporary
Visions West Contemporary, 2605 Walnut Street
Friday, October 14, through November 26
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14, 6 to 8 p.m.
Painter Sarah Winkler brings a new batch of her elegantly modern mountain landscapes in acrylic on panel, rendered in earthy hues to realize the dark shadows and sun-shot peaks of the West in flat layers. Winkler’s painstaking compositional plotting is a tribute to nature’s way of contrasting textures, colors and light.
Grant Pound: “WTF Bunny and Severance.”
Courtesy of the artist
Eleanor Anderson, Intuitive Cartographies
Artworks Center for Contemporary Art, 310 North Railroad Avenue, Loveland
Friday, October 14, through December 23
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14, 6 to 8 p.m.
Transcending the West, a group show juried by art scholar Rose Fredrick, opens this week at Artworks with a twist on the usual old Western tropes. Fredrick chose works for their divergent, updated subjects, use of explorative processes and diverse points of view when it came to addressing both the past and the future. Also opening is Intuitive Cartographies, a display of large-scale fabric collage by Eleanor Anderson, who is interested in overlapping shapes, mark-making and the use of found objects.
Catrinas on Parade
Jamie Chihuan and Adriana Paola Palacios Luna, Escúchame
Firehouse Art Center, 667 4th Avenue, Longmont
Through November 6
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14, 6 to 8 p.m.
Catrina Ball and Art Auction: Friday, October 28, 7 to 10 p.m., 380 Main Street, downtown Longmont; $15 at Eventbrite, $20 at the door
It’s that time of year at Firehouse, when Longmont arts organizations team up to celebrate Día de los Muertos in a big way. Longmont already threw a street festival downtown last weekend, but there’s more to come, including this weekend’s formal Firehouse receptions. The annual Catrinas on Parade show comprises representations by local artists and community members of the classic "La Calavera Catrina" captured by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. These are being auctioned off online through October 28 as a fundraiser for Firehouse programming. In the South Gallery, Jamie Chihuan, a Longmont native of Mexican and Peruvian heritage, will show paintings and, at the reception, also share it’s based on day of the dead, right?, a short film dealing with personal identity. Adriana Paolo Palacios Luna, who will lead mini workshops in Mexican art techniques, is an overall creative and fiber artist.
bunny M, “the butterfly in the armoire,” 2022,
acrylic and tears on panel, corresponding 1/1 nft.
Courtesy of the artist
Leon Gallery, 1112 East 17th Avenue
Saturday, October 15, through November 26
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 15, 7 to 11 p.m.
International urban artist bunny M is back at Leon Gallery for a second stint, bringing a new series of 54 butterfly paintings telling a personal story about chasing beauty and losing it in the end. Symbolically, the fluttering beauties represent the psyche — now imagine them as elusive NFTs. It’s for real: Fifty of the bunny M butterfly paintings are matched by 1/1 NFTs; the images can be bought individually, or at a discount as sets. Where is this leading? Leon’s next step is to host an NFT workshop with IndieDAO on Thursday, October 20, offering insights into the true value of NFTs as artworks and how collectors can create an online wallet to be part of the revolution. At Leon, it will all be at your fingertips.
Los Fantasmas, Branches and Bridges
Hideout Gallery, ABC Custom Framing U-Hills, 2550 South Colorado Boulevard
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 15, 6 p.m.
As a group, the Denver artist collective Los Fantasmas is one part creative, one part activist, one part community-minded and completely Latinx. If there’s a mentor in the group, it's Carlos Frésquez, an older artist who’s always lent a helping hand to the younger ones. While the artists vary in age, they do all share a love for a common heritage, preservation of traditions and a modern point of view. Los Fantasmas will represent Saturday with a show at the Hideout Gallery, in the basement at ABC Custom Framing in University Hills Plaza (ABC owner Justin Maes is a member, too).
Lisa Luree and Jane Falkenberg, Déjà Rêvé
Valkarie Gallery, 445 South Saulsbury Street, Lakewood
Through November 6
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 15, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Closing Reception: Friday, November 4, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Lisa Luree and Jane Falkenberg pair kooky psychedelic paintings of skeletons, creatures and all-knowing eyeballs with luscious oils of bright-eyed forest animals in nature for this shared October exhibition. Guest-artist shows by Karen Watkins and Emily Lamb continue, as does the most current member showcase.
Jan Massys, “Rebus: The World Feeds Many Fools,” about 1530, oil paint on panel.
© The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Sunday, October 16, through January 22
Saints, Sinners, Lovers, and Fools counts as an extraordinary opportunity to follow the development of Flemish art through 300 years of corresponding European history. A DAM collaboration with the Phoebus Foundation, which contributed a 120-painting package including work by Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Jan and Catharina van Hemessen, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Anthony van Dyck, to name a few, the blockbuster exhibition arrives Sunday and runs through next January on the second level of the Hamilton Building. Admission to the ticketed exhibition ranges from free to $25; museum admission is included in the price.
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