Denver Art Meets Mexico at the McNichols Building in the Biennial’s Vis-á-Vis

The main Biennial of the Americas event is at MCA Denver, but there’s another official show, Vis-à-Vis, at the McNichols Building. It includes installations by four selected “ambassadors” – two from Denver, two from Mexico City. The Denver artists, Melissa Furness and Matt Scobey, did a residency in Mexico City, while...

By Michael Paglia

July 21, 2015

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The main Biennial of the Americas event is at MCA Denver, but there’s another official show, Vis-à-Vis, at the McNichols Building. It includes installations by four selected “ambassadors” – two from Denver, two from Mexico City. The Denver artists, Melissa Furness and Matt Scobey, did a residency in Mexico City, while the Mexican artists, Cristóbal Gracia and Daniel Monroy Cuevas, came here to work.

The effort was sponsored in Denver by ArtPlant and by SOMA in Mexico. Vis-à-Vis, which shows off the efforts of the four, was conceived of and co-curated by Adam Gildar and SOMA’s Carla Herrera-Prats.

Furness created dozens of quickly done paintings and then stacked them into both a tall pile and a short platform. Scobey created thousands of tiles based on casts he made in Mexico, making a partial floor. Gracia muses on Herbert Bayer’s “Articulated Wall” and its twin in Mexico, likening them to a stack of French fries. And Cuevas is showing a video in an enclosure that poetically examines an abandoned drive-in the San Luis Valley.

Through July 31 at the McNichols Building, 144 West Colfax Avenue, 720-865-4220, biennialoftheamericas.org.

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Michael Paglia is an art historian and writer whose columns have appeared in Westword since 1995; his essays on the visual arts have also been published in national periodicals including Art News, Architecture, Art Ltd., Modernism, Art & Auction and Sculpture Magazine. He taught art history at the University of Colorado Denver.

Contact: Michael Paglia