Boulder Museum of Contemporary Artunion works gallery

UPCYCLED: Spring/Summer 2010

admin — Wed, 26 May 2010 20:59:21 +0000

UPCYCLED: Spring/Summer 2010 is a group exhibition of wearable art made from recycled materials, featuring the work of Judith Selby Lang, Sara Goldenberg, and the Wearable Shelter Project. Each of these works shows the hidden beauty and value in the detritus of our consumer society. For the past ten years, Judith Selby Lang has been collecting trash on Kehoe Beach in Point Reyes National Seashore in Northern California together with her husband Richard Lang. As a befitting representation of their shared passion, she created her wedding ensemble entirely from reused, recycled materials. Boulder-based artist Sara Goldenberg White shows an installation including several gowns with surrounding environment made from collected scrap and waste materials. A design-team at the Philadelphia University of the Arts created Wearable Shelters as a solution for a hypothetical post-disaster scenario in a metropolitan area. Constructed from repurposed thrift-store sleeping bags, exercise clothing, and performance jackets, the pieces act as protective all-weather gear in the day and insulating shelter at night.

This exhibition is curated by Jennifer Heath and Joan Markowitz in connection with Resurrections: ECO-logy and ECO-nomy, on view at the Boulder Public Library from May 1 to June 30, 2010.

Ropes / Pattie Lee Becker

admin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:15:04 +0000

In this exhibition of drawings and sculptures, Becker, a recent transplant from Brooklyn, explores the boundaries and beauty in the seemingly mundane materiality of ropes. She describes being inspired by the simplicity of a line that can become increasingly complex through tangles and knots. The artist has exhibited in New York and Colorado and will be a visiting artist at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in 2010.

The Surface and Beneath / Heather Wilcoxon

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 14:55:18 +0000

Heather Wilcoxon’s paintings lie in the intersection between folk art, outsider art and expressionism. They draw on elements of mark making, graffiti art and cartooning and bring to mind works by Cy Twombly, Jean Dubuffet, Kenny Sharf, and Jean Michel Basquiat. Masterful built up surfaces become the ground for cartoon like figures, but beneath the childlike appearance and whimsy is a mature and thoughtful body of work whose implicit message is specific to the times and targets the artist’s concerns about the contemporary human condition. Her work chronicles her view of misguided politics, greed, narcissism, power mongering, the military industrial complex, and the destruction of our planet. And yet her cynicism is mediated by a strong sense of hopefulness and faith in human nature.

Wilcoxon lives and works in Sausalito, California. She received her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is the recipient of two Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grants and has been exhibited and collected widely. Her houseboat, the Delta Queen, and intricately adorned car are the manifestations of a life of relative simplicity lived consciously and with an eye always open to aesthetics.

Pure Pleasure

admin — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 19:53:44 +0000

June 5-September 6, 2009
Opening Reception, Fri. June 5 from 6:30-8pm
Members preview from 5:30-6:30pm

After our five month closure due to building renovations, “Pure Pleasure” will highlight the rich and varied talents of a renowned group of artists well- known in the region. In diverse media, including photography, painting, ceramics, and installation, these artists explore the boundaries of varied definitions of pleasure. Bucking recent trends in contemporary art, in which work often seems incomprehensibly esoteric, shockingly grotesque, even intentionally offensive, this exhibition has been conceived to delight the senses. Through pleasures derived from beauty, spectacle, wonder, and nostalgia, while not expecting to redeem a world in pain, we can hopefully allow art to provide a counterbalance or salve to the uncertain times in which we live.

Artists in this exhibition include; Phil Bender (installation), Julie Blackmon (photographs), Deborah Dell (ceramics), Rebecca DiDomenico (installation), Ana Maria Hernando (installation), Tsehai Johnson (installation), Mark Sink and Kristin Hatgi (ambrotypes), and Stacey Steers (film).

Jezebel / Carla Gannis

admin — Wed, 14 May 2008 20:12:41 +0000

Carla Gannis’s Jezebels rail at the mythology, history and stereotypes that have shaped and defined femininity within our collective unconsciousness for many generations. This archetype is not a single woman but a compilation of multidimensional characters playing in turn the nonconformist, social beauty, revolutionary, wanton sex goddess, victim and superhero. Using appropriated iconography from classic film noir, pivotal events in Feminist history, surrealist dreams and pop culture as vehicles for her nonlinear narratives, Gannis weaves the past, present and future in each of these large scale new media works of art.

The Artist’s method of working pushes forward what has been recently termed “digital painting,” refining and personalizing the process to make it uniquely her own. Gannis begins with a story board for each work, creating a concept which weaves together references from cinematic, literary, and art historical interpretations of “the wanton woman”, and then recontextualizes them into a new tableaux in which her characters convey strength, intelligence, beauty and complexity. Next she shoots photographs that will be used as the “stage” for the character, which she then collages with appropriated film stills in Photoshop. Finally, the Artist goes over every centimeter of these newly combined images with many layers of digital painting, creating a truly unique visual language.

Gannis exhibition “Jezebel” features six large scale digital prints, each with a coinciding predella. Created in the 14th century to illustrate the life of a saint, these horizontal panels were originally attached to the lower edge of an altarpiece as a narrative for the larger panel above them. Gannis adopted this vehicle to give context to Jezebel’s historic and cultural currency, updating them to resemble a film strip which hangs below each major panel. Her subject is always dressed in red, not only as a signifier of lust and sexuality but as an expression of revolution, anger and courage.

“The agenda of a woman making art today should be as complex and mysterious as the work itself,” says Gannis. “Jezebel is a person conflicted and flawed yet forward thinking and courageous. Although I feel there is a feminist bent to this body of work, my hope is that it rises above any kind of ‘exclusive’ interpretation and takes into account a love for cinema and fascination with the history of narrative form and its new possibilities as expressed through my digital media collage.”

Carla Gannis, originally from North Carolina, currently lives and works in New York. Trained as a painter and having received her BFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA from Boston University, Gannis shifted to producing digital print and multi-media installation work in the late 1990′s.

Gannis is the recipient of several awards, including a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Grant in Computer Arts, an Emerge 7 Fellowship from the Aljira Art Center, and a Chashama AREA Visual Arts Studio Award in New York, NY. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Jezebel at Claire Oliver Gallery in New York, Everything That Rises Must Converge at Kasia Kay Art Projects Gallery in Chicago, Il, Jezebel presented by Claire Oliver Gallery at Loop Video Art Fair, Barcelona, Spain; and I Dream of Jeannie Emerging from a Fresca Bottle at Christa Schuebbe Galerie, Dusseldorf, Germany.

Features on Gannis’s work have appeared in Res Magazine, Animal Magazine, 11211, and Collezioni Edge, and her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The LA Times, The Miami Herald, NY Arts Magazine, The Daily News, The Star Ledger, and The Village Voice. She is currently on the Digital Arts teaching faculty at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and The School of Visual Arts in New York.

Ideology of Paradise / Hiroshi Watanabe

admin — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:57:49 +0000

Hiroshi Watanabe was born in Sapporo, Japan and currently living in Los Angeles. His photographic series The “Ideology of Paradise” turns its lens to the richness of North Korea, a country that is self-described as paradise. His understanding of the country was colored by stories of the political kidnapping of Japanese nationals, the governmental abuse of its own citizens, and the ubiquitous nuclear threat. Watanabe says, “I was bombarded by negative news reports on North Korea every time I went back to Japan, but I felt something uncomfortable, strange, and unsettled about the images portrayed by the media.” In 2006 and 2007 Watanabe traveled to North Korea to understand the country for himself. The resulting photography is featured in the BMoCA exhibition, capturing lush and vibrant images where Watanabe was expecting to find malnutrition and brutality. His photographs are not about politics itself, but about the people and environment that exists within the political and social climate of contemporary North Korea. Watanabe graduated from the Department of Photography, College of Art, at Nihon University in 1975. He later moved to Los Angeles and produced TV commercials. He received an MBA from UCLA Business School in 1993, and in 1995 he decided to return to photography. Ever since, he has traveled extensively, photographing what he finds intriguing at that moment and place.

Weather Report: Art and Climate Change

admin — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 21:02:04 +0000

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SEPTEMBER 14 – DECEMBER 21, 2007 — “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change” is an exhibition curated by internationally renowned critic, art historian, and writer Lucy R. Lippard. It is presented in collaboration with EcoArts.

This exhibit partners the art and scientific communities to create a visual dialogue surrounding climate change. Historically, visual arts play a central role in attracting, inspiring, educating and motivating audiences. “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change” will exhibit artwork, in the museum and our partnering venues, and in outdoor site specific locations throughout Boulder, that will activate personal and public change.

Our collaborating partner EcoArts is a new effort bringing together scientists, environmentalists, and performing and visual artists – along with producers, presenters, scholars, spiritual leaders, policy makers, educators, businesses, and people from all walks of life – to use the arts to inspire new awareness of, discussion about, and action on environmental issues, with new possibilities for envisioning a sustainable future. Its programming principles are artistic excellence, scientific accuracy, environmental effectiveness, ethical practice, and whenever possible, presenting activities that strive to follow “the middle way” of being either non-partisan or bi-partisan to reach the widest audience possible.

Participating Artists:
Kim Abeles, Lillian Ball, Subhankar Banerjee, Iain Baxter&, Bobbe Besold, Cape Farewell, Mary Ellen Carroll (Precipice Alliance), CLUI (Center for Land Use Interpretation), Brian Collier, Xavier Cortada, Gayle Crites, Agnes Denes, Steven Deo, Rebecca DiDomenico, Future Farmers (Amy Franceschini and Michael Swaine), Bill Gilbert, Isabella Gonzales, Green Fabrication (via Rick Sommerfeld, University of Colorado, College of Architecture and Planning), Newton & Helen Harrison, Judit Hersko, Lynne Hull, Pierre Huyghe, Basia Irland, Patricia Johanson, Chris Jordan, Marguerite Kahrl, Janet Koenig & Greg Sholette, Eve Andree Laramee, Learning Site (Cecilia Wendt and Rikke Luther), Ellen Levy, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Patrick Marold, Natasha Mayers, Jane McMahan, Mary Miss, Joan Myers, Beverly Naidus, Chrissie Orr, Melanie Walker & George Peters, Andrea Polli, Marjetica Potrc, Aviva Rahmani, Rapid Response, Buster Simpson, Kristine Smock, Joel Sternfeld, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Ruth Wallen, Sherry Wiggins, The Yes Men, Shai Zakai

PRIMARY EXHIBITION SITE:
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street, Boulder, 80302
bmoca.org
Tuesday?Friday, 11am to 5pm
Saturday during the Boulder County Farmers’ Market (through October), 9am to 4pm
Saturday (beginning November), 11am to 5pm
Sunday, 12noon to 3pm

ADDITIONAL INDOOR GALLERY SITES:
Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd.
University of Colorado, Norlin Library Galleries, 1720 Pleasant St.
University of Colorado, ATLAS (exhibit Sept. 13 Oct. 6, 10am to 2pm), 125 Regents Dr.
National Center for Atmospheric Research, (NCAR) Mesa Lab, 1850 Table Mesa Dr.

OUTDOOR SITES:
Boulder Municipal Campus (Along the Boulder Creek to Boulder Public Library)
Boulder Public Library, 1000 Canyon Blvd.
Central Park (park directly west from the museum)
Dairy Center for the Arts, 2590 Walnut St.
Eben G. Fine Park, 101 Arapahoe Ave.
National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesa Lab, 1850 Table Mesa Dr.
Twenty Ninth Street (Canyon St. and Broadway)
17th and the Boulder Creek Path

To view a schedule of related exhibition programs please click here

To view a schedule of EcoArts events please visit their website
www.ecoartsonline.org

Exhibiting partners: ATLAS (Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society) Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder; Boulder Public Library; National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR); City of Boulder; University of Colorado, Fiske Planetarium; University of Colorado, Norlin Library Galleries.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is grateful to the following for their support of our current exhibition “Weather Report: Art and Climate Change.”

“Weather Report” is funded in part by:
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Art & Soul Gallery, Amy Batchelor and Brad Feld, Robert and Cynthia Baxt, Boulder Arts Commission, Boulder Convention & Visitor’s Bureau, Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites, CHASE,Clean & Green, Colorado Council on the Arts, Compton Foundation, Daily Camera, Rebecca DiDomenico and Stephen Perry, EcoArts/Marda Kirn, Andy and Audrey Franklin, Felicia Furman, Mary Hey, Ann Holz, Ranae Kofford, Liquor Mart,Louis P. Singer Foundation, Lannan Foundation, Joan and Paul Lavell, McGuckin Hardware & Design Center, Lori Mitchell, Robert Morehouse/Vermilion, Madeleine Morrison & Chuck Bellock, Jim Palmer, Jared Polis Foundation, Karen Ripley and Tom Dugan, Roche Colorado Corporation, David and Janet Robertson, Dismas Rotta and Stefka Trusz, Harriet Silverman, SCFD, Twenty Ninth Street Mall, Marsha and Jack Walker.

Special thanks to the volunteers who helped
make this exhibition a reality:
Barry Barnow, Peter Birkeland, Meaghan Burrit, Jane Butcher, Parker Calkin, Jason Carey-Shepard, Sandy Ceas, Will Clift, Cathy Collins, Mary Pat Cullen, Ranee Marie Donia, Kim Dorazewski-Smouse, Jonathan Fierer, Megan Firestone, Jonna Fleming, Shemin Ge, Connie Ge, Blaise Goldman, Cheryl Griffen, Theresa Hartmann, Spence Havlick, Sara Holladay, Tracy Jennings, Sarah Kinn, Paul Kucharyson, Robin Lowry, Steve Markowitz, Elise Martin, Andrew & Gayle McArthur, Martin Mosko & Alxe Noden, Beth Osnes, Amber Patterson, Steve Priem, Cathy Regan, Diane Rehnberg, Chris Rich, Peter Richards, Andy Rising, Richard Solis, Yuka Takeda, Becky Thomas, Greg Tucker, Cam Wobis

Image by Agnes Denes, “Grand Unification Theory”, 2002

David Zimmer

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 21:14:43 +0000

JUNE 1 – SEPTEMBER 1, 2007 — Installation artist David Zimmer exhibits a new series of his intriguing sculptures that manage to be simultaneously retro and futuristic. This new work combines a Victorian sensibility with post-modern technology.

These exhibitions have been made possible by a generous donation from Faegre & Benson LLP.

My America / Christopher Morris

admin — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 22:03:14 +0000

Over the past 20 years photojournalist Christopher Morris has concentrated the greater part of his work on war, having documented more than 18 foreign conflicts. In 2000 Morris started producing a series of work, “My America,” while covering the first and second administrations of President George W. Bush for TIME magazine. Over the past six years, while taking photographs from his vantage point as a correspondent close to the center of the United States command, Morris has documented a personal vision in these photographs that reflects an America at the intersection of patriotism, politics and devotion.

Morris has received a multitude of awards for his work, including; the Robert Capa Gold Medal; the Magazine Photographer of the Year award from the University of Missouri School of Journalism; the Infinity Photojournalist award from the International Center of Photography, New York; the Visa d’Or award; and numerous World Press Photo Awards.

Society of the Spectacle (A Digital Remix) / DJRABBI

admin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:08:47 +0000

NOVEMBER 3, 2006 – JANUARY 27, 2007 – “Society of the Spectacle (A Digital Remix)” a ten-minute DVD art-loop uses source material from the writing, images, recordings, and other psychogeographical wanderings of arch-Situationist and French philosopher Guy Debord. The art work is composed by members of DJRABBI, a digital art collective of political activists, and includes visual remixes by Rick Silva, the sonic detours of Trace Reddell, and original subtitles by Mark Amerika.

Hybrids / Ligia Bouton

admin — Fri, 11 Aug 2006 16:50:34 +0000

AUGUST 11 – OCTOBER 14, 2006 — Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Ligia Bouton’s video based works emphasize performance. Within the medium of performance Bouton reenacts simple ideas such as, body language, personal space, everyday tasks and makes a parody from their repetitive nature. Her work has been exhibited throughout the country and recently, was featured in ‘Embodied: Seven Studies in Video’ at the Museum of Fine Arts, New Mexico alongside notable video artists Steina and Peter Sarkisian.

Mica Chamber / Rebecca DiDomenico

admin — Fri, 12 May 2006 16:54:13 +0000

MAY 12 – JULY 29, 2006 — Mica Chamber, Rebecca DiDomenico’s site-specific installation is made up of more than 10,000 rectangles of mica, covering 10,000 black and white images representing a variety of life, from personal to universal, from particular to general. The chamber represents the visual strata of life, a unique cross-section of an instant in time. Viewers make their own visual references as images pop to the surface, while others recess into the background. Images begin to relate to each other in an attempt to compartmentalize, and draw upon an understanding of the complex nature of a room.

Living and working in Boulder, Colorado, DiDomenico’s home is designed as an inventive sculpture to inhabit, infuse and nurture the creative process. With colored concrete pigment in the floors, inlaid Japanese stones, light fixtures from salvaged materials, church doors, and a giant fish tank as a shower wall. Sunlight pours through the windows into her studio. Within this space Rebecca explores the logical and the unknown, and finds that she is an inquisitive translator and a medium for magic.

DiDomenico studied creative writing and English literature at the University of Colorado, receiving a bachelors degree. She has also studied at Pitzer College in Claremont, California and at Tribuvan University in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her work has been exhibited at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum, Sirius Art Center in Cork, Ireland, Sangre de Cristo Art Center in Pueblo, Colorado, Long Island University, Brooklyn, NY, MCA DENVER, and the Denver Art Museum.

Maps / John Matlack

admin — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 17:24:44 +0000

JANUARY 13 – APRIL 15, 2006 — “These paintings and monotype/drawings are made up of layers that are built up, scraped off, and crisscrossed into sliding planes of color. They refer to aerial landscape patterns and tectonic geologic strata, as well as rural industrialism, industrial tourism, the power grid, and a certain latent spirituality. They represent a personal resurgence of interest in the principles of Modernism, the techniques of Expressionism, and the vernacular pleasures of pen and ink drawing.”
Matlack received a Master’s Degree in Art Practice from the University of California at Berkeley. He has exhibited widely throughout Colorado and the western states including the Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, the Denver Art Museum, The Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, the Aspen Center for the Arts and Humanities, the Yellowstone Art Center, the University of California at Davis, the Berkeley Art Center, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. He is the recipient of several awards and grants including the 2000 Dale Djerassi Fellowship, the Neodata Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, and the Boulder Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant. He has completed several arts residencies, including the Djerassi Resident Artist Program in Woodside, California, and Shark’s Ink, in Lyons, Colorado. His curatorial experience includes “Pure Painting” at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, which won Westword’s Best of Denver Award. Matlack worked as an artist assistant to Christo and Jeanne-Claude on many of their temporary art projects, including “The Running Fence Project”. Current gallery representation is, Spark Gallery in Denver, Colorado. Matlack’s work appears in many public and private collections, including the Legislative Services Building, Art in Public Places Program, Denver, Co, City of Boulder, Boulder Public Library, The Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, and the Denver Hyatt Convention Center Hotel.

Fields / Tsehai Johnson

admin — Fri, 16 Sep 2005 17:50:04 +0000

SEPTEMBER 16 – DECEMBER 31, 2005 — This July has been a busy month for Denver-based artist Tsehai Johnson. Along with finishing a new exhibition, Fields, for BMoCA, Johnson was put into the political hot seat for a body of work loosely based on sex toys produced in 2000. Weathering the storm, she will unveil a thought-provoking installation based on “domestic space” referencing human anatomy and everyday hand tools. She states, “In this work an object of beauty becomes embedded with references to the labor involved in making a beautiful, orderly and clean home. There is plenty of beauty, poetry, and drudgery in both art making and homemaking and in making these large installations, I am interested in alluding to these overlaps inherent in domestic life.” Johnson’s recent exhibitions include Anomaly at the Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, the Exhibition of the Sixth Taiwan Golden Ceramics Award at the Taipei Ceramics Museum in 2000 and Regarding Gloria at White Columns in New York in 2002. She was a recipient of the Colorado Council for the Arts Artist Fellowship in 2003.

Biography: Aging and the Grammar of Death / Alfredo De La Rosa

admin — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 19:55:01 +0000

JUNE 24 – SEPTEMBER 3, 2005 — This exhibit is a conceptual installation of 128 digital images about aging, but also dealing with the effects of cultural memory on personal memory. To achieve this he graphically tackles such issues as gender and sexual politics, race, and religion. De la Rosa describes the project as creating, not re-creating a life that he imagined he lived, supported by photography and document. As the artist is not a journalist he leaves us to ponder the questions of whether with today’s technology, we can ascertain these documents to be true or genuine.

Residing in Boulder, de la Rosa’s exhibition was enabled by grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation of New York and BCAA Addison Mini-Grant, and partially funded by a grant from the Boulder Arts Commission. Trained classically as a painter, at 75 de la Rosa is now navigating the contemporary world of digital imagery and conceptual art.