After quietly revving up the past couple of months, RedLine has announced its presence to Denver and the art world at large with a coming- out exhibition that reflects the big ambitions behind the new $2.5 million studio and exhibition space.
Setting its sights high for its first major show, it turned to German freelance curator Jenny Schlenzka, who has worked at the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York and elsewhere and possesses an obvious sense of what is happening on the international art scene.
Given Denver’s role as the host of the Democratic National Convention and the opening of this exhibition just weeks before the election, Schlenzka decided it would be impossible to ignore the increasingly heated national debate roiling across the country in the days leading up to Election Day.
“This is a really, really crucial moment in the whole world but especially in America,” she said. “So, to me, it was obvious that I wanted to do something about America and the current state of America, because it would have felt wrong to do a show on beauty or, I don’t know, color.”
The curator has brought together sociopolitical works by six artists, including Annette Roberts-Gray of Glenwood Springs, in an exhibition that carries the metaphorical title, “through a glass, darkly,” a much- borrowed phrase from the New Testament.
Drawing on this notion of an obscure or imperfect view of reality, Schlenzka focuses on how an ever-increasing barrage of images on television, the Internet and elsewhere can be as much an impediment as an aid to clearly understanding issues and the world around us.
Reflecting key trends in vanguard contemporary art, Schlenzka has put the stress on concept over craft (the two often seem to be weighted in reverse in Colorado art) and emphasized video, photography and installations — the three most influential media of our time.
But because of the diversity of approaches and subject matter, including Iraq, patriotism and Columbine, and the sometimes jarring differences in tone, the exhibition feels a bit disunified, even scattershot.
It’s hard, for example, to reconcile the graphic nature of Taryn Simon’s “Redacted Girl,” an overtly staged photo of a grievously wounded Iraqi, with the lighthearted irony of Douglas Gordon’s “Self-Portrait as Us,” a takeoff on the famous family portrait from the 1980s television show “Dynasty.”
It’s easy to wonder if Schlenzka’s expansive curatorial vision doesn’t outstrip the offering’s small scale. In her defense, she was asked to assemble the show in June, which gave her little time to pull it together.
The presentation seems spartan in RedLine’s 5,000-square-foot display area, despite the works having been spread out as much as possible. It likely would deliver more punch in a more compact, contained space.
Two of the most effective selections conceptually and visually are installations — “Flag Girls,” by Jen DeNike of New York (probably the most widely seen piece on view), and “In Honor, In Memory: A Reminder of Individual Sacrifice and the Cost of War,” by Roberts-Gray.
The former consists of a 90-second video based on an arresting 1918 postcard photograph, in which six young women wrapped themselves in American flags and stood side by side in such a way that they create a kind of flag mosaic.
In DeNike’s video version, the women sing the national anthem as they one by one throw off the flag wrapped about them, leaving it bunched on the floor as they walk off naked. Is it a pointed renunciation of America or an elegy to those who have died for the flag? Both interpretations seem possible.
Less ambiguous but equally if not more powerful is Roberts-Gray’s moving tribute to the American soldiers who have died in Iraq. She has created nearly 1,000 small white ceramic vases (a portion of which are on view here), each incised with the name of one of the deceased.
Roberts-Gray, who has gained more attention for this project than anything else she has done, had hoped to create one vase for each of the war’s dead, but the numbers — now more than 4,100 — eclipsed her ability to keep up.
RedLine clearly means to join the Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar, Denver Art Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver as a major venue locally for high-level contemporary art exhibitions — certainly a worthy goal.
It will be fascinating to see what offerings the space has planned next and whether it can sustain the scope of this first effort.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“Through a Glass, Darkly”
Art. RedLine, 2350 Arapahoe St. A multimedia exhibition featuring sociopolitically themed works by six artists. It was organized in conjunction with the P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. Through Jan. 16. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Free. 303-296-4448 or .
