Current Exhibition
Plus Gallery ushers in the new year 2012 with the group exhibition “Apocalypse? HOW!” featuring new works on paper by artists Drew Englander, Donald Fodness, Paul Nudd and Larry Bob Phillips. Dubbed “The Four Horsemen” in recognition of the New Testament's interpretation of the Last Judgment, and presented in relationship to 2012's historic recognition as the possible convergence of forces that could lead to the apocalypse, the exhibition delivers a distinctly visceral impact unlike any ever presented in Denver. The exhibition is accompanied by an original text by esteemed local arts-writer Nancy Hightower.
Drew Englander and Donald Fodness represent two of Denver's premier up-and-coming artists, both distinguishing themselves through their graphic abilities and distinct voices within Denver's scene in recent years. Englander is a recent fine-arts graduate of the Rocky Mountain School of Art and Design and no stranger to the contemporary exhibition field. His first involvement with Plus Gallery was inclusion in the 2008 three-person exhibition “Trickle Down,” the final intern-curated show to be hosted at Object + Thought and certainly the most provocative. Englander presented a more expansive view of his work at Denver's Illiterate Gallery in 2010, one that started to render a signature feel to his output, which consisted of almost microscopically detailed renderings of explosions (or “Growths” as the artist named them) as well as body parts and figures merging into one another. Englander has been involved in multiple performance works with his RMCAD compatriots and in 2011 started to develop national recognition for his music entity “Real Magic.”
Donald Fodness, the lead inspiration for “Apocalypse? HOW!” has certainly achieved a level of distinction that is rare amongst emerging artists not only in Denver but anywhere in the country. Three of his last four exhibitions since 2010 were invitations from the areas most prestigious curators, including his major installation piece for last year's groundbreaking “Blink!” new media exhibition at the Denver Art Museum. Fodness was fresh from receiving his MFA in painting from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and showing all the brashness of youth with works that defied painting per-se and ranged more into the extraordinary, merging painting, installation, video, and just about everything along with the kitchen sink. But at the heart of his output are works on paper that read like high-school journals, featuring a largely indescribable random quotient. According to Fodness, "I use seemingly benign, somewhat enticing, imagery to draw my audience into a layered and unsettling world of complexities. Among the kitsch and banal I cram the gross, grotesque, obnoxious, and weird." That, along with a haze of spray paint, maybe just to affirm that it's use needn't be relegated to the sides of buildings.
Completing the quartet of Horseman are two of the more premier emerging artists on the national level, Albuquerque's Larry Bob Phillips and Chicago's Paul Nudd. With drawing as his primary medium for the last ten years, Phillips utilizes a mature cartoon-based language that responds to psychedelic impulses to “create a form that has plasticity and transformation as its explicit focus, allowing the viewer to experience the paranoid formalism of the image where nothing is anything, but everything is something.” The result is a densely wrought explosion on paper and panel rendered in dark-black ink that has a steady focus positioning humanity at its most base instincts in natural settings that are no-doubt influenced by his New Mexico surroundings. Like many artists of today, Phillips has successfully expanded his context beyond the traditional “work on paper”, having realized major installations and full-wall drawings that brazenly expound the surreal impact of his work. The psycho-sexual nature of his latest drawings for “Apocalypse? HOW!” affirm his desire to mimic the “violent pregnancy within modern painting” that French painters like Bonnard, Braque and Van Gogh instilled at the turn of the last century.
In less than ten years, Chicago artist Paul Nudd has truly pushed the envelope of the subversive in contemporary art, with a wide-ranging output that includes sculpture, video and works on paper of all dimensions and mediums. What pulls them together is their extremely grotesque nature that is densely wrought and successfully engages a wide-variety of colors and textures that have been aptly referred to as “icky.” With solo exhibition titles such “Vomitromiton” and “Pus Lust,” one might wonder what the visual appeal might be in the artists work, but there is no doubting the high artistic level that Nudd achieves in making the icky appealing. His 9' tall “Brainiac Cack” will stand perhaps as the ringleader of the apocalyptic vision put forth by the rest of the artists in the exhibition.
Plus Gallery artist Mike Whiting will have works on view in “Suburbia” along with Phil Bender, Christopher Coleman and Michael Salter at GOCA121, UCCS downtown Colorado Springs location from February 10th through April 13, 2012. Whiting has produced a number of new small-scale sculptures for the exhibition, all in his clean, distinct style that has made him one of the most popular artists to collect from the Plus Gallery stable and beyond. For more information visit www.galleryuccs.org.
Plus Gallery artist Jenny Morgan will have nine recent paintings from private Denver collections on view in the CVA exhibition “Out FIGURED” alongside works by John Coplans, the Corvo Brothers, Irene Delka McCray, Marie Vlasic and Christina West from February 2nd through April 7th. The new Plus Gallery produced video “Jenny Morgan: Self Portrait” will also be on view during the exhibition. For more information visit www.metrostatecva.org.
This year's New American Paintings Annual Prize has been awarded to Plus Gallery artist William Betts. Betts has appeared in editions #60, #72, #84 and most recently as an Editor's Pick in #96. The panel for the Annual Prize consists of three previous NAP jurors including Bill Arning, Director, The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH), James Rondeau, Curator and Chair of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, and Peter Boswell, Senior Curator, Miami Art Museum. Betts will be featured with a solo exhibition at Plus Gallery in April of 2012.
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Plus Gallery has enriched Denver's contemporary art scene since 2001, providing one of the leading, reputable platforms for prestigious artist representation and exhibitions of note in the region. The gallery recently relocated to the corner of 25th and Larimer in North Downtown Denver, into a unique renovation of a remnant parcel of the Benjamin Moore Paint Factory. This singular redevelopment adds a two-story gallery space to the dramatic architecture of the historic Benjamin Moore complex, serving as a visual anchor for the entrance to the Upper Larimer corridor and River North Arts District. The gallery was named "Art Space of the Year" in 2009 by the Denver Post and has been hailed as the "Best New Gallery" by the Westword Weekly the same year. Plus Gallery is a member of the Denver Art Dealers Association.
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Plus Gallery has released its first major publication "Jenny Morgan: New Territory," a 240 page book featuring a comprehensive view of paintings by Jenny Morgan from the time she debuted in 2003 through her 2009 Plus Gallery and NYC exhibitions. To preview the book or order a copy visit blurb.com
