Plus: A round of fine shows that opened earlier in December are still going strong at Pirate: Contemporary Art, the BRDG Project, William Havu Gallery, Michael Warren Contemporary and RedLine, which is honoring Green Fellowship awardees Chelsea Kaiah, Laura Shill and Max Maddox.
Consider this list a holiday gift from us to you:
Merry and Bright Holiday Party and Art Show
Blue Tile Gallery, 3944 South Broadway
Exhibition: Thursday, December 14, through December 30
Party: Thursday, December 14, 4 to 8 p.m.
Join Blue Tile for a holiday soirée with refreshments and art, including sculpture and paintings by Susan Bell, music and cat-inspired silkscreen monotypes by studio resident artists Timi Biermann, landscapes from Dorene Stander, Tracey Russell’s oils, and paintings and more by Blue Tile’s resident manager, Courtney Cotton.
Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum: Anna Uddenberg, Useless Sacrifice
Online on Black Cube’s YouTube Channel
Thursday, December 14, 7 p.m.
Here’s one you can watch from home: Black Cube Fellow Anna Uddenberg, a Swedish artist, is known for her grotesque sculptures of women grappling with furniture and apparati, bound by sexualized social assumptions of domesticity and femininity perpetuated by consumer culture. For her latest work, Uddenberg turned to filmmaking, and the result, Useless Sacrifice, makes its U.S. premiere Thursday via Black Cube’s YouTube channel. The film, created in collaboration with Thyago Sainte and part of a concurrent exhibition, Home Wreckers, at the Perimeter in London, was co-commissioned by Black Cube, the Perimeter and Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler.
Small Works Show and Sale
Spark Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
December 14 through December 23
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 14, 7 p.m.
Spark joins the holiday rush with other Denver co-ops by mounting a small works show of its own. Affordability and diversity of media themes are what set this holiday exhibition apart from the member shows you’ll see the rest of the year.
John Chamberlain among his raw materials at Stanley Marsh 3’s ranch, Toad Hall, Amarillo, Texas, 1972.
Leo Castelli Gallery records, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Cauleen Smith: Mines to Caves
Lena Henke: You and your vim
Aspen Art Museum, 637 East Hyman Avenue, Aspen
Friday, December 15, through April 7
Head for Aspen’s slopes and ogle some fine art, too, when the Aspen Art Museum debuts three new winter exhibitions this weekend. The headlining John Chamberlain: The Tighter They’re Wound, the Harder They Unravel offers a survey of the late sculptor’s raw, twisted and crumpled works, some of them monumental, comprising metal, foam, plastics, air ducts, melted Plexiglas and other commercial materials. Created using a three-dimensional brand of collage techniques, Chamberlain’s work is thoughtfully constructed, often brightly colored and sometimes partially painted. AAM’s Chamberlain exhibition takes up a lot of space across three floors, demanding that attention be paid to the artist’s elegant technique in fitting pieces together.
In addition to Chamberlain’s show, the museum shares interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Cauleen Smith, whose installation Mines to Caves re-creates her projections of animated hieroglyphs on the walls of Aspen’s Smuggler Mine in a setting lit by a layered-wax candle sculpture and decorated with botanical wallpaper. The third work to debut is New York-based artist Lena Henke’s kinetic rooftop installation, “You and your vim,” which is surrounded by four leather paintings hung from outer walls and windows.
Gail Wagner, “Undaria” (detail), 2023, acrylic, wax resist, paint marker on Arches paper.
Gail Wagner
Talk Gallery, 4382 South Broadway
Friday, December 15, 6 to 10 p.m.
Talk Gallery opens the house for a one-night pop-up by Denver co-op artists Mark Brasuell, Leo Franco, Alane Holsteen, Gayla Lemke, Emily Oldak, Phil Potter, Barbara Veatch and Gail Wagner. Curated with gifting in mind, the show will be accompanied by holiday cheer and artsy conversations.
Coloradans and Our Shared Environment in Times of Challenge and Change
Locals Live, Work, Create
Old Masonic Hall, 136 Main Street, Breckenridge
Through January 7
Opening Reception: Friday, December 15, 5:30 p.m.
Breckenridge’s Breck Create community-focused arts program offers two shows to complement the early winter ski season. Coloradans and Our Shared Environment in Times of Challenge and Change, the product of a hands-on collaboration between Colorado Art Science Environment (CASE) and the CU Boulder Office for Outreach and Engagement, is tied to the signs of climate change in the Colorado high country, including fire, drought, and water and air quality. Locals Live, Work, Create, on the other hand, is all work by Breckenridge locals and Breck Create resident artists, instructors and staff.
Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios, “Me resisto a terminar esta obra / Sweet potato or yam, no better yet dead nature V,” 2023, oil on canvas.
Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios, courtesy K Contemporary
Andrew Jensdotter, SeventyThreePointTwo
K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee Street
Saturday, December 16, through February 3
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 16, 3 to 6 p.m.
Artist Conversation: Thursday, January 25, 3 p.m., Tivoli Community Theatre, Auraria Campus
Artist Reception: Saturday, January 27, 3 to 6 p.m.
K Contemporary debuts a much-awaited solo show by Cuban-born artist Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios. Already presaged by the smaller exhibition Ikebana, at the Emmanuel Gallery at Auraria, which centers on Rios’s monumental inflatable artwork and a few of his paintings, Fruits of Passion is an expanded collection of paintings of organic shapes in space, some of them floral, and all rendered with a sense of explosive movement in slow motion.
Rios will be in town the week of January 22, with some events already scheduled, including an artist talk (and a chance to visit (or revisit) Ikebana at Auraria before it moves on. In contrast, Andrew Jensdotter’s thickly layered and carved acrylic paintings are more contemplative, and, in this show’s case, tied to the slow drag of time in the shadow of mortality.
Cut and Spray (an international stencil group show)
Rising Gallery, 4885 South Broadway Street, Englewood
Saturday, December 16, 6 to 10 p.m.
Rising Gallery is known for supporting street artists, and opens up for the holiday show of stencil work by an international group of artists in the urban/graffiti mold. As Banksy says, “Stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.”
Emily Wilcox: Paintings From the Local Honey Picture Box
Valkarie Gallery, 445 South Saulsbury Street, Lakewood
Through December 31
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 16, 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Valkarie’s last full show in 2023 is devoted to a half-decade project by artist Emily Wilcox, whose Paintings From the Local Honey Picture Box comprises images created for a new oracle deck, some of them sporting familiar faces about town. The 14 x 21-inch oil paintings are not that big, but they pack a lot of life force.
Yumi Janairo Roth and Emmanuel David, We Are Coming Art Action
Oriental Theater, 4335 West 44th Avenue
Sunday, December 17, 3 p.m.
Yumi Janairo Roth’s art practice is both personal and political, public and performative, drawing from issues of immigration, race and displacement. Her latest, We Are Coming, is part of Cowboy, MCA Denver’s current exhibition redefining stereotypes of the Wild West, but it’s by no means a done deal. Inspired by the inclusion of three Filipino Rough Riders who performed in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Roth and collaborator Emmanuel David are working with vintage movie houses across the country to place the riders’ names on marquees.
They’ll be right here in Denver at the Oriental Theater on Sunday afternoon, where they plan to commandeer the marquee to honor those Filipino Rough Riders, alongside the words “We Are Coming,” which were often announced on Wild West show posters. Along with this and similar previous outcomes at the Cody Theatre in Buffalo Bill country (Wyoming) and the Eagle Theatre at Vidiots (Los Angeles), Roth and David will be heading east to the Center Theatre in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
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