Located at 15th and Delgany, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver inhabits a building that proudly boasts architectural lines that were contemporary in 1977
Next time you're in Denver, take a drive west on 15th towards My Brothers Bar in the Hyland neighborhood. As you pass the intersection with Delgany, you'll notice a four-story gray-glass monolith with a 3-dimensional realization of an old-timey sailors pierced heart tattoo rotating on a sign stanchion in front of it.
That building houses the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. While the building itself may look like what a 1970's era BBC-produced sci-fi television show thought the future was going to look like, you can tell it is a new and modern museum featuring new and modern contemporary art from it's name.
It is not the much more pedestrian entitled Denver Contemporary Art Museum, but rather, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.
The Cheery greeting at the entrance to the MCAD
Another hint that you're in for some mighty fine new and modern contemporary treats is the entrance to MCAD. The wall to your right as you walk up the ramp towards what you hope is the entrance suddenly starts to recede from where it abuts perpendicularly to the wall at the top of the ramp.
Step through the opening and enter the world of tomorrow!
But first you have to pony up $10.00. Unless you used public transportation, biked or walked to the museum - then you only have to pay $9.00.
Being as how there is no parking whatsoever (the MCAD does not have a parking lot or parking garage, and there are maybe three spots on the street to park within three city blocks) and it is very possible you will have to park six city blocks away (say, across from My Brothers Bar), the discount should go to everyone, because you are going to walk to the MCAD whether you want to or not.
Oh, after you get to the MCAD, exhausted from your quest to find a close parking spot and finally giving up on that dream and parking deep in the heart of Hyland, when you're paying the admission...then they will tell you that there is public parking available at the parking garage that serves the Gates Company headquarters across the street.
So, you know, you can walk back the six blocks to the Hyland neighborhood, get your vehicle, and drive to the convenient, signage-free parking garage.
The work of Los Angeles based artist Frohawk Two Feathers AKA Chicago born artist Umar Rashid.
As a veteran visitor of well over a hundred museums ranging from the ultra-Frank-Gehry-would-piss-himself modern to the Vatican-ain't-got-nothing-on-us archaic, I immediately identified this particular museum of contemporary art as the type that tries too hard to be, well, contemporary.
Contemporary art by definition is exceedingly hard to define. Better minds (and sensibilities) than mine have wrestled with the question of what constitutes art in the realm of contemporary art for decades now. In this little diatribe, I will not attempt to define whether the pieces on display constitute contemporary art, or art at all.
I will simply state what I like, and what I don't. Just my constitutionally protected opinion is all.
As a disclaimer, I will state that I consider myself a Stuckist.
Which does not mean I do not find contemporary art enjoyable. There are a considerable number of modern artists that I respect and admire.
That being said, there are also a number of modern artists who are simply purveyors of junk.
MCAD is featuring the work of a young artist who currently resides in Los Angeles, but hails from Chicago. His name is Umar Rashid, but he utilizes the pseudonym Frohawk Two Feathers for this particular work, which collectively is being shown as We Buy Gold, We Buy Everything, We Sell Souls.
The artwork is all based on a fantastic narrative that Rashid created based on a re-imagining of history. It will remind many of the Steampunk genre of literature, and other such blends of historical fact and fiction, but it holds it's own very well.
Frohawk Two Feathers, Blanca, The MotherFucking Queen Of Spain (In Plain Clothes) 1790 Umar Rashid, Acrylic and tea on paper, 2011
The narrative imagines a fictional alliance in the 18th century between the French and British, known as Frengland, and the artwork created depicts characters and moments during the imagined century of Frengland's rise and fall. It is an engaging work, and I highly recommend it to one and all.
The second floor (take the stairs, it's good for you) features an exhibition entitled Continental Drift. The featured artists are Christina Battle, Scott Johnson, Jeanne Liotta, Sarah McKenzie, Adam Milner, Yumi Janairo Roth, and Edie Winograde.
There are a number of criteria that I use to judge art, but two important factors reign above all others:
Originality and vitality.
I look for those two key elements in all art, not just that pigeon-holed as "Contemporary Art.'
I can forgive a lot when it comes to originality. After all, museums have been hosting exhibitions of up and coming artists for almost a couple of hundred years now, and since Duchamp and his stupid urinal, the Cognoscenti have been stuck in a gotta-find-the-shockingly-new frame of mind.
There is only so much that can be done with the elements at hand
Hell, by the end of the '80's, video had been played out, and the '90's saw digital driven into the dirt.
As a whole, this particular exhibition was a little lacking, and a lot derivative, when it came to originality.
As I walked about taking in what graced the walls (and floors) of the spacious galleries, I could hear Charles Saatchi's voice in my head repeating "Seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it, used it in an ad, seen it, seen it, rejected it, seen it..." Ad infinitum.
The large sign naming the artists and describing the theme stated that these seven artists were chosen from over 300+ artists. Really? Were the other 300+ submitters all first year Otis-Parsons students relishing their first experiences with weed?
Because where this exhibition fell flat was in the vitality department. I had just walked upstairs from an exhibition that wasn't very original in conception (artist, writers, filmmakers, etc. have been creating alternate histories and realities for generations. Every single month, comic book writers and artists create alternate realities - so no, the concept wasn't what made Umar Rashid's work sing - it was the vitality evident in the execution of the concept).
Ever try to carry on a conversation with a really, really stoned person? Lack of focus and inability to keep up gets to be irksome, no?
These are supposedly explorations of the idea of place in diverse and thoughtful ways. Let's take a look at a few of these explorations.
Sarah McKenzie gets quite a bit of wall space for her oil and acrylic paintings on canvas of industrial blight. I like her work, as she obviously has a gift for composition and is a technically proficient artist, but all I could think as I took the room in was "Hmmm...Hopper, both Edward and Dennis."
Dennis Hopper, the actor. One hell of a gifted visual artist. but I digress.
The particular pieces displayed in the photo above are by Adam Milner, he of this weekend's bedroom installation at the less pretentiously named Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. This young man should walk around wearing a shirt that proclaims him to be the Rob Liefeld of contemporary art, as everything I have ever seen of his is a derivative hack of some other far more talented and clever artist.
Like Rob Liefeld, he will no doubt become quite a bit more successful than those he steals from (note: not pay homage too. He steals ideas as blatantly as Marilyn Manson ripped off Cooper).
Look at the pic above. That's a little tighter view of the wall featuring Milner's Bed Drawing series. Yes, those are little spots of ink on paper, each one given the title Drift along with the date the were created.
Edie Winograde is a damn fine photographer. She has been exhibited nationally, is commercially successful, and teaches photography at Metro State.
Are these photographs contemporary art? In what sense? Are they different than anything else on display at CPAC?
I'm just asking.
Frequently, what is featured as contemporary art is simply everyday items given a twist, or modified in some way that is considered out of the ordinary. Take a stroll through any art district anywhere, from Anchorage to Aberdeen, and you will see galleries full of fire hydrants covered in mosaics, parking meter robots, church pew flower beds, stoplight Christmas trees, forklifts covered head to toe in papermache dragons, traffic barricades painted in Australian aborigine stipple...Man, that horse died under the whip a long, long time ago.
And yet, MCAD saw fit to place three of the pallets that Yumi Janairo Roth had carved with ornate filigree patterns in this particular exhibit.
I like them, they are visually interesting. But they are not much different than the old carved wire-spool-reclaimed-as-a- table sold in Tijuana souvenir shops in the mid-'80's.
What contemporary art installation worth it's salt would be complete without a video depicting a decaying element of the past? The 135 second video loop of scenes found in the ghost town of Dearfield, Colorado fills that requisite like the Pinto filled the economy-car niche for Ford in the '70's.
And by that, I mean it doesn't.
The artists and their work selected for this particular exhibition are, if anything, a living cliche. It's not hard to imagine the selection committee discussing the criteria.
"We're going to need a few notable names in here, and of course an up and comer. Anybody have any contacts with people in Aspen? Find out what they've been looking at. And how about a recent art grad? Someone precocious, who's considered edgy with a fresh re-interpretation of what should and should not constitute art - C'mon people, let's go, we've got a show to put on!"
Climbing up to the third floor one encounters an exhibition that makes the second floor exhibition look like highlights from the Sistine Chapel.
Every so often I come across something shown as art that I strongly feel constitutes fraud. The last time I saw anything that met my definition of art fraud was back in 1997, when the Turner Prize went to Gillian Wearing for her video, 60 minutes of Silence.
Today I saw a number of works by Tercerunquinto. Tercerunquinto is a collective of three artists from Mexico City, Julio Castro Carreon, Gabriel Cazares Salas, and Rolando Flores Tovar.
These three may possess amazing talent and ability that is simply beyond the keen of my intellect to appreciate...or not.
The work depicted above is from the Real Estate project. This project is genius in conception, but not so much in terms of actual artistic creation.
The genius part is that the collective approached patrons of the MCAD with the proposal that they would create works of art that would have to be purchased by a participating patron and added to their personal art collection, displaying it for an unlimited period.
Read that again. They will create what they will determine is art. It has to be purchased. It has to be displayed forever.
Fcuking genius. Makes Warhol look like a piker.
They do state that half the purchase price proceeds are donated to the museum. I will assume the other half goes to them. Considering a generous gallery gives an established artist 30%, that's not a bad deal...for the artists.
The piece in the photograph is one of the pieces created and sold. Take a close look at the ground beneath it - see the outline? That's part of the art.
I did not waste too much of my valuable time on this exhibit.
On the roof of the MCAD there is a small restaurant, and alongside it a rather pleasant landscape. Unfortunately, I could not find attribution. I liked it very much though, and wish whoever created it would put something together like it for my backyard.
For those of you with an eye for contemporary art, the MCAD can be a delightful short little stop. It would greatly aid your appreciation of the works on display if you have never been exposed to contemporary art prior to your visit, but if you have been, eh, it may still be an enjoyable visit.
After all, art is in the mind of the beholder.
No comments:
Post a Comment