2008
META: BFA Thesis Exhibition
Nov 21-22 – Dec 3-11, 2008
Opening Reception | Friday, November 21, 6-10pm
The graduating students from the Department of Art at Metropolitan State College of Denver are proud to present a collaborative creation, Meta. The BFA thesis exhibition will feature a mix of twenty-eight of Denver’s up and coming artistic talents in sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, mixed media, video/digital art and ceramics.
Many pieces of artwork will be available for sale.
Christo and Jeanne-Claude:
Prints and Objects
Aug. 29 – Nov. 1, 2008
The Center for Visual Art (CVA) is proud to host the Colorado debut of Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Prints and Objects, a collection of original works by the world-renowned artists.
Exhibition | Aug. 29 – Nov. 1, 2008
Opening Reception | Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008 Members only: 6–7 p.m.; Open to the public: 7–9 p.m.
Public Lecture by the Artists | Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008, 5:30 p.m. Temple Hoyne Buell Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex Exhibition and lecture are free and open to the public.
The artists are presenting this lecture as a gift to the CVA.
CVA Supporters get the best seats in the house
Become a member of CVA at the $100 level or higher and get reserved seating for two at the Christo and Jeanne-Claude public lecture. All proceeds benefit the CVA. Inquire at the Center for Visual Art for membership info or call 303-294-5207.
NOTE: Tickets are no longer available.
All tickets to the free public lecture by Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been distributed.
To be added to the wait list, e-mail mscd-ia@mscd.edu.
The exhibition includes 130 works, numbered editions of prints and objects by Christo and photographic editions by Wolfgang Volz of works by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Works in the collection, from 1962 through 2004, represent the diversity in their oeuvre.
The works in the exhibition relate to the large projects in which Christo and Jeanne-Claude have made short-term, reversible interventions in cityscapes and landscapes. Some show completed projects, others show the artists’ conceptions of projects never realized. The act of drawing and collage is a preparatory one for Christo in anticipation of a project’s realization. Once completed the large-scale, temporary projects are recorded in photographs, books, touring exhibitions, films and videos.
Images:
Top right image: CHRISTO: The Mastaba, 1,240 Oil Barrels, Project for the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia. Lithograph, 1968-1998. Christo 1998. The indoor installation was created in 1968 at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia.
Bottom left image: CHRISTO AND JEANNE-CLAUDE: VALLEY CURTAIN, RIFLE, COLORADO, 1970-1972. Photo: Wolfgang Volz. Christo 1972.
The Metro State CVA wishes to thank Josy Kraft, Vladimir Yavachev and the following sponsors:
Exhibition Sponsors:
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Public Lecture Presenting Sponsor:
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Media Sponsors:
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In-Kind Sponsor:
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Special Thanks:
Boettcher Foundation
City and County of Denver
Colorado Council on the Arts
GBSM
Christo and Jeanne-Claude derive no income from this exhibition.
Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam
June 5 – August 2, 2008
Metro State Center for Visual Art presents Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam, the first major exhibition of contemporary Vietnamese women artists in the U.S.
Changing Identity provides an opportunity to see Vietnam through the eyes of women artists offering unique perspectives on their homeland and their gender roles in society. The exhibition explores what it means to be a woman living in Vietnam today and brings to light a viewpoint often marginalized in Vietnamese culture. Previously overlooked by the international art world, the 10 artists featured in Changing Identity challenge their traditional roles through drawing, painting, photography, performance, sculpture, and video.
To be a woman, an artist and Vietnamese is, in the words of filmmaker and scholar Trinh T. Minh-Ha, a “triple bind.” They are restricted not only in their own culture, which presupposes that women are to remain devoted to their fathers, husbands and sons, but also by the West’s perceptions of Vietnamese women as victims of war and subjects of the male gaze made familiar by such icons as Miss Saigon and the servant girl in the film A Scent of Green Papaya.
For the past two decades, since Vietnam opened its doors to the West, a booming art business has brought economic prosperity to many of the country’s artists. Most of this success, however, seems to have been bestowed upon men. Today, in light of economic changes sweeping over the country in the era of globalization, a younger generation of women find themselves in a position to critique prevailing norms and to question the status quo. The artists in Changing Identity are such women: independent and complex, their outlook on Vietnamese society displayed in their artwork is challenging and honest.
Nora Taylor, Ph.D., curator for the exhibition, is Professor and Alsdorf Endowed Chair of Southeast Asian Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago specializing in modern Vietnamese art. In 2004-2005, she was a Fulbright Scholar in Hanoi, Vietnam conducting research on Vietnamese Visual Culture in the era of globalization. She has written for many publications and lectured on this topic throughout the world.
A full-color catalogue of the same name accompanies Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam.
Changing Identity is toured by International Arts & Artists, Washington, D.C. and is supported in part by the E. Rhodes and Leona Carpenter Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation. The educational program is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation, Hanoi.
International Arts & Artists in Washington, DC, is a non-profit arts service organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding and exposure to the arts internationally, through exhibitions, programs and services to artists, arts institutions and the public. Visit www.artsandartists.org
Artist in the BFA exhibition
Show One May 2-7, 2008
Justin Bock, Kim Bone, Jacob Custer, Valerie R. Dillon, Sandra Elkind, Javier Flores, Melanie Flores, Jacqueline A. Harlow, Dana Kilcoyne, Hillary Lardie, Joel Murray, Anne Nimetz, Jordan Ourada, Thomas W. Robertson, Mike Rogers, Rhiannon Royse, Charlene Spreng, Skyler McGee, Lindsey Trout, Scott Zbryk..
Show Two May 9-15, 2008
Jessica Carey, Christine Curry, Kimberly Fletcher, David Fodel, Melanie Gerhardt, Ashley Gibson, Megan Harrison, Liz Hoffman, Justin Maes, Jaena Michali, Lola Montejo-Crowley, Joshua David Pass, Carmen C. Penny, Laura Politzki, Todd J. Robinson, Alyson Savageau, Taralyn Shepherd, Brandi Steinbach, Melanie Warner.
still 
March 6 – April 30, 2008
Metro State Center for Visual Art presents still
featuring the photography and film of Slater Bradley, Sally Mann and Nigel Poor. The exhibition was curated by Metro State Art Department Chair Greg Watts and Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography Cinthea Fiss.
Throughout the history of photography the issue of mortality has been a very present spectre in both photographic theories and practices. Early daguerreotypes of American soldiers about to leave for the Civil War were witness to their impending death. In the late nineteenth century it was common to photograph dead babies as a way to immortalize their short lives. In the latter part of the twentieth century photography’s relationship to death expanded in the writings of Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes to include the way we understand the very nature of a photograph, always a moment that has instantly past, always engaging the notion that this moment, this life, won’t last. The exhibition still considers the diverse ways in which the work of three photographers interacts with the relationship of mortality and photography.
Slater Bradley revives the traces of Ian Curtis and Kurt Cobain, left by popular imagery. In Doppelganger Bradley uses the idea of the double spirit that has attached itself to a living person to explain how he, or his own doppelganger, has been inhabited with the ghosts of dead musicians. The effect of music on a collective psyche is pervasive, but often difficult to make visible. Here we begin to understand how alive and present the dead can be.
In the work of Sally Mann, What Remains asks the question, “What is left after death?” She has photographed the Gettysburg battlefields, locations marked by death. Looking into these landscapes one can try to see what exists after these bodies that have died here, at this site, have long ago been removed. In this series she also explores the natural process of human bodies’ decomposition in photographs of a forensic study site confronting visceral emotions of life and death.
Nigel Poor collects. Her collections are a means of saying here I am, this is me, all this accumulation is who I am. In 287 Flies and Killing Season she has recorded and archived dead insects. Just as everyday moments that quickly pass can be relegated to oblivion unless somehow captured, as with a photograph, and transformed into a specific remembered instant, the dead insects are usually banished from awareness, but here are manifest into the realm of the here and now.
STORY
Brent Green,
Jill Hadley Hooper,
James Surls
January 4 – February 23, 2008
Metro State Center for Visual Art presents
STORY with New York artist Brent Green and Colorado artists Jill Hadley Hooper and James Surls.
STORY brings together three artists whose artwork has a tale to tell. The exhibition is a profound collection of works that delve into created realities and visually realized narratives of the strange and familiar. 
The works are all inspired by the written word, allegory and the paradoxes of the human condition. Each artist’s work is infused with symbolism and a complexity that requires time and thought to unlock. The three artists share a raw aesthetic, though the manner in which it manifests is unique to each.
Brent Green’s roughhewn yet poetic animated films are influenced by music and books. His stories feature bittersweet and fragmented narratives populated with human pathos and a palette of visual metaphors. Melancholy characters dwell within Green’s handmade films. Projected films along with storyboard sketches and murals will be presented.
The context of Jill Hadley Hooper’s work hovers between dreams and reality. Figures in animal or human form inhabit the indifferent environments. Muted colors inspire a pensive mood in her simple, elegant paintings. Influenced by the written word and ideas from literature, the complexity of Hadley Hooper’s work is wrapped into the scene that she sets and the story it implies.
James Surls’ graceful wood sculptures, drawings and prints ultimately embrace nature. The gentle yet menacing forms are ambiguous in their journey towards understanding the human condition. Together the works demonstrate a juxtaposition of worlds both light and dark, whimsical in their playful, energetic execution while referencing issues of transcendence. Surls injects humor into imagery or forms that are symbolic and dualistic interpretations of nature.
