{HEADER_TEXT}
Suchitra Mattai
Re-Imagine Historical Narratives
Suchitra Mattai, a multi-disciplinary artist of Indo-Caribbean descent, uses a mixed-media approach to explore how memory and myth allow us to unravel and re-imagine historical narratives.
Andrew Jensdotter - Artist as Explorer
Andrew Jensdotter’s paintings and drawings depict the visual static of collective imagery. Mining the glossy pages of magazines and online search queries, the artist transforms sets of related photographic content into physical layers of representational paintings on a single surface. This transfer from dematerialized imagery into physical layers of stacked paint serves as a means to a larger end. Upon building up numerous rendered layers onto a single canvas, the artist eviscerates the thick surface revealing a highly energetic composite made from a chosen subject matter’s accumulated color palette. Where once the eye had a specific subject to focus on, what remains is an all-over composition devoid of any focal point, forcing the eye to either race across its surface or relax into a psychedelic trance. The relationship between additive and subtractive processes, and the disintegration of the specific into the abstract presents a visual analog for the nature of processing information in the age of mass media.
Jonathan Saiz #WhatIsUtopia and Colorado Costal
Artist Jonathan Saiz and Denver Art Museum Curator Becky Heart discuss His concurrent exhibitions , “Colorado Coastal” at K Contemporary and #WhatIsUtopia at the Denver Art Museum
The often-apocalyptic themes in Jonathan Saiz’s work reflect the duality of the artist’s fascination with optimistic irreverence and a foreshadowing of darker things to come. Man-made climate-change, supernatural unknowns and all the social and spiritual upheaval that accompanies them.
His varied subject matter, explored like an intuitive stream-of-consciousness with scores of miniature paintings, drawings and sculptures, add up to glossy, candy-coated visual narratives imbued with existential dread.
“Saiz makes our terrors tangible in his artwork. By acknowledging fears in the periphery of our daily lives or the dark corners of our minds, the mechanisms of control — whether god or government — are disrupted. The gaze is powerful.” - 2016 @hyperallergic.com
Daisy Patton - This is Not Goodbye / A Rewilded Arcadia
Artist Daisy Patton and CU Art Museum Director Sandra Firmin offer exclusive insight about Daisy's work and her upcoming exhibitions at the University of Colorado Boulder and at K Contemporary.
Kevin Sloan - A Wanderer's Garden
Artist Kevin Sloan discusses the concepts behind his Solo exhibition "A Wanderer's Garden" at K Contemporary. His work is ongoing inquiry into whether a painting can hold the qualities of wonder and awe amid the mundane and overlooked. This duality is reflective of our contemporary condition, one marked by dislocation and loss in the midst of the overwhelming and spectacular.
Additionally, he is interested in what it means to be a painter of the natural world in a time of such extraordinary change environmentally, politically and socially. Remaining aware of all happening around while avoiding topical reportage and editorializing, he assumes the role of a compassionate witness. Sloan’s hope is that compassion allows for empathy, which pushes away cynicism, which in turn allows curiosity and wonder to find a place in the work.
Sarah Winkler / Moment
“We need the experience of being romantically and poetically lost in the wilderness, and being found again” -Sarah Winkler
MOMENT was Directed and edited by Jesse Brass
Cinematography by Jesse Brass & Tim Brass
Music courtesy of Kai Engel, Lee Rosevere and Pictures of a Floating World
MAKING ART FILMS
Thank you Tom Vasselli, Diane McGregor, Nina Tichava, Rachel Doniger, Jennifer Perlow, Alex Wade
and special thanks to Sarah Winkler, K Contemporary and Gallery MAR for making this film possible.