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Best Display of Abstraction's Feminine Side

Directions in Abstraction

Mark Brasuell was a member of Edge for more than two decades before defecting last year to rival co-op Spark. Before he decamped, however, he gave over his Edge solo slot to a group show that he curated. It included four of Colorado's most noteworthy abstract artists, all of whom happen to be women: Sue Simon, known for her science-based abstractions, which often include formulas and equations; Terry Maker, who embraces the use of unusual materials, in this case sawed stacks of painted canvas; Ania Gola-Kumor, a painter working in an abstract-expressionist vocabulary; and Virginia Maitland, a master of color-field abstraction. It's interesting that Brasuell would select these particular artists, as their varied approaches are admittedly distinct — but he established the roster based solely on his admiration of and respect for each.

Best Display of Abstraction's Feminine Side

Directions in Abstraction

Mark Brasuell was a member of Edge for more than two decades before defecting last year to rival co-op Spark. Before he decamped, however, he gave over his Edge solo slot to a group show that he curated. It included four of Colorado's most noteworthy abstract artists, all of whom happen to be women: Sue Simon, known for her science-based abstractions, which often include formulas and equations; Terry Maker, who embraces the use of unusual materials, in this case sawed stacks of painted canvas; Ania Gola-Kumor, a painter working in an abstract-expressionist vocabulary; and Virginia Maitland, a master of color-field abstraction. It's interesting that Brasuell would select these particular artists, as their varied approaches are admittedly distinct — but he established the roster based solely on his admiration of and respect for each.

Best Magic-Realist Show

Frank Sampson

Frank Sampson: New Paintings highlighted recent efforts by the well-known eighty-something Boulder artist, who, despite the rise of abstraction and conceptualism, has devoted his entire output to figurative painting. But his approach to his depictions of people, animals and birds has been anything but traditional, instead falling into the magic-realist camp. Sampson has created an oddball body of work that's one part storybook and one part dream — with some of those dreams being nightmares. There are weird hybrids of animals with human qualities, and frequent appearances by scary-looking jesters and clowns. Set in Old Masterish surroundings, these characters are either whimsical and childlike or ominous and threatening. It might not be possible to teach an old painter new tricks, but it's also impossible to keep one like Sampson down.

Best Contemporary Representational Show

David Menard

The new Point Gallery, the brainchild of co-directors Frank Martinez and Michael Vacchiano, specializes in contemporary representational art. And that was the subject of David Menard: Urban Grotesque. To create his pieces, the artist began by scanning photos — both his and those of others — and then used Photoshop to combine different images into single ones. The resulting computer files, which were titanic in size, were printed, then attached to boards and sealed in resin. The results were prints that read like paintings, with Menard being particularly adept at capturing atmospheric effects. Most strikingly, he used photos to push representational imagery to its abstract breaking point.

Best Sculpture Show — Solo

Michael Brohman

One of Denver's most outrageous sculptors was the author of a surprisingly somber show, Michael Brohman: Horizons. The standout, "Borders," was made of salvaged twelve-foot-long boards that Brohman stacked up in order to reveal the ghosts of lines from the lathe strips that were once attached to them, and from the joints between the boards, which also formed lines. These stripes represent prison uniforms and even bars to Brohman. On top of the stack, Brohman installed a monumental bronze element that comprised scores of simple armless human figures that face the viewer but seem to be held in place as though behind a fence. The piece is meant to refer to imprisonment and evoke the Holocaust, the deportation of immigrant children across the southern border, and other events in history. With this show, Brohman has taken a new, more contemplative tack.

Best Sculpture Show — Group

Unbound: Sculpture in the Fields

The Arvada Center

The Arvada Center's Collin Parson and Kristen Bueb have put together one great exhibit after another, but their finest effort to date has been the combination of shows that included Unbound: Sculpture in the Fields, for which they tapped the expertise of Cynthia Madden Leitner of the Museum of Outdoor Art. Not only is it a cogent survey of some of the top abstract and conceptual sculptors active in Colorado, but it also marks the artistic activation of a formerly empty lot next to the center — which appears to be the perfect space for giant sculptures. The works will remain there through September.

Best Gallery Show — Solo

Emilio Lobato

Longtime Colorado artist Emilio Lobato spent the last few years caring for his terminally ill wife, Darlene Sisneros, who ultimately died. Afterward, sadness over her loss was combined with doubts about whether or not he had done enough to help her. The result of these contemplations was Emilio Lobato: The Measure of a Man, a spectacular solo comprising some sixty works. Taking a literal approach to the show's title, many of the pieces incorporated measuring devices, such as yardsticks and rulers. While the signature pieces subliminally conveyed the fact that the artist was healing from his grief, the dark palettes of the last few years were eventually replaced by vivid color schemes, as if Lobato was lightening his spirits by brightening up his art.

Readers' choice: Lauri Lynnxe Murphy

Best Gallery Show — Group

Natural Surroundings

The swanky new neo-modernist building that houses Michael Burnett's Space Gallery provides the ideal setting for the kind of neo-modernist abstraction that is the venue's mainstay. For the ambitious Natural Surroundings, Burnett invited ten artists from Colorado and elsewhere, most of whom did paintings that employed encaustic, a paint made by mixing pigments with wax, resulting in a viscous substance that may be applied in extremely thick layers. When dried, the encaustic is translucent, and that quality, combined with the material's thickness, lent these paintings a rich and intriguing three-dimensionality.

Readers' choice: Momentum, Space Gallery

Best Conceptual Show

Dmitri Obergfell

Conceptual art is usually more about thought than beauty. Not so for Dmitri Obergfell, who creates credible idea-pieces that are also gorgeous. On an intellectual plane, all of the offerings in Yinfinity: New Works by Dmitri Obergfell at Gildar Gallery were based on ancient or familiar symbols like the yin-yang circle, or the double profile of a bust of Janus. What made them beautiful was the artist's use of a custom-car finish called interference paint which, once applied in a mirror-smooth layer, caused the pieces to actually change color as viewers passed by them. It was a tremendously cool effect.

Best Abstract Show — Solo

Joseph Coniff

Wes Magyar

When longtime Denver art dealer Robin Rule died last year, a trio of faithful assistants — Valerie Santerli, Rachel Beitz and Hillary Morris — decided to resurrect her namesake gallery and carry on her legacy. The new Rule Gallery, inside Hinterland, is small and informal, but it meets the minimal requirements for an exhibition space for first-rate art. One of the earliest shows there was Joseph Coniff (in parenthesis), an elegant affair made up of the artist's chic-looking post-minimal paintings. Though his color choices were unnatural, the paintings conceptually evoked landscapes, as each was divided into three broad horizontal bars that easily stood in for foregrounds, mid-grounds and backgrounds. This was in spite of the fact that the Coniffs were utterly flat, with no illusion of depth whatsoever. Because of the high quality of its presentations, the new Rule is a worthy successor to the old one.

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