The Museum of Contemporary Art/ Denver has moved one step closer to its future – literally and figuratively.
After eight years in a former fish market at 1275 19th St., in Sakura Square, the museum has moved into temporary quarters – a three-building complex across from where workers are laying the foundation for its permanent home at 15th and Delgany streets.
“It’s an incredibly positive move,” said Cydney Payton, the museum’s executive director/chief curator. “The organization has grown over the last 10 years, and so has the staff and just the operating needs.
“And the campus allows us to continue that pattern of growth. We have more space. We have appropriate space. And I think it’s a real bonus that we get to literally be on the front steps of our construction.”
To mark the move and celebrate the museum’s 10th anniversary, it is presenting the first of two exhibitions designed to bridge the time the institution expects to be in the interim space before shifting to its new building next year.
“You have to be cautious, because anything can happen,” Payton said. “So we’re cautiously optimistic that we will be opening late in 2007.”
This first exhibition, running through March 11, features a light installation by New York artist Erwin Redl. Artists such as Dan Flavin and James Turrell began using light and space as their primary media in the 1960s, and a new generation of artists, including Redl, Olafur Oliasson and Tatsuo Miyajima, is building on their accomplishments.
The Austrian native’s work has been featured in books such as the “Art of the Digital Age,” published earlier this year, and exhibitions such as “Ecstasy: In and About Altered States” at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2005.
This installation, titled “Fade, Denver,” is the fourth installment in Redl’s “Fade” series. Previous permutations have been displayed in Munich, New York City and the Conduit Gallery in Dallas.
“But they all looked extremely different from what you see in Denver,” Redl said. “The Denver piece is the first one in which people are basically trapped in that elliptical shape.”
The work, which consists of 15,222 tiny, red light-emitting diodes (LEDs) arrayed on a 14-foot-tall wire gridwork configured in the shape of an ellipse, is 39 feet long and 34 feet wide.
“It’s so novel,” Payton. “It’s something that just really hasn’t been shown in Denver. And it foreshadows, perhaps, some of the architectural ideas of our building – talking about light. It’s experientially very different.”
Viewers walk into the darkened gallery and then enter the ellipse, where they watch as the light’s intensity gradually rises and falls, causing the surrounding gallery walls to come vaguely in and out of view.
Although seemingly simple in concept, this ever-changing installation offers an otherworldly sensorial experience that will differ for each viewer. The computer-controlled cycle of changing lights only takes a minute or so, but it can seem much longer, as the eyes adjust to the darkness and the mind questions its own perceptions.
“The absolute time doesn’t
really count,” Redl said. “That piece is completely subjective time that changes depending on how long you are in there or how often you have been exposed to that kind of slow-motion experience.
“For me, it almost felt too fast. I’m so attuned to that kind of slowness. But for other people, it might be almost too slow to perceive the movement.”
Borrowing the name the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art famously used for a renovated warehouse building it used as an interim exhibition space in the 1980s, the MCA/ Denver is calling its complex the Temporary Contemporary.
Not only do the museum’s new quarters in three former commercial structures at 1840 15th St. provide much-needed room for the museum’s growing staff, they offer the added benefit of being close to the site of the institution’s new building.
Museum staff easily can monitor construction progress and get a sense of the institution’s new neighborhood. At the same time, the proximity is a big help as the museum works to raise the remaining funds needed for the project and future programs.
“People can come down here and look at the construction site,” Payton said. “They can see the exhibition, and then we can talk to them about supporting our efforts.
“That’s a huge advantage. In our prior location, we had to draw a map and point. People had to make that extra effort.”
Fine arts critic Kyle MacMillan can be reached at 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com.
“Fade, Denver”
ART EXHIBIT|Light installation by New York artist Erwin Redl|Temporary Contemporary, Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, 1840 15th St.|$5 general public, $3 students and teachers|11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays; noon-5:30 p.m. Sundays. Through March 11. 303-298-7554 or mcadenver.org.
