Rex Ray’s paintings exude a California vibe. They are hip, laidback and fun.
While their seeming lack of depth might turn off certain curators and critics, the exuberant colors, groovy patterns and unabashed playfulness make these works an almost immediate hit with everyone else.
Ray, a military brat who spent much of his early life in Colorado Springs before moving to San Francisco in 1981 when he was 25, is receiving the most attention of his career in what he considers to be his home state.
In a big vote of confidence in the artist, the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver is showing his largest painting ever — a massive four-panel work on linen that measures 9 by 25 feet. A boisterous festival of floral forms, pinwheel patterns, draped chains and bright colors converge to form a merry, make-believe landscape.
The work, titled “Discolazia,” is displayed on a wall covered with wallpaper that Ray designed especially for this installation. This backdrop consists of a repeated series of drops arrayed on white, each decorated with different colors and patterns.
Together, the painting and the wallpaper offer a jolt of visual pleasure — the artistic equivalent of biting into a banana split.
Complementing the museum offering is a second exhibition at Gallery T, with five smaller yet still sizable paintings in a similar vein, as well as a wall arrayed with dozens of the artist’s compact wood-panel paintings with gleaming resin surfaces.
Career in graphics
Although Ray has pursued fine art nearly his entire life, most of his professional career has been devoted to the applied arts, especially graphic design.
Fascinated by California’s underground culture and an early fan of punk and new-wave music, he found his first jobs with underground bands and independent publishing houses.
“Those people don’t have a lot of money, so they allow you a lot of artistic freedom,” he said.
He has designed album covers and concert posters for musicians such as Radiohead, Björk, Nine Inch Nails and Deee-Lite and has had an especially close relationship with David Bowie.
As Ray’s stature grew, so did the demand for his talents, and he branched into other realms. Apple commissioned him to design gift wrap for its stores, and Elson & Co. hired him to create a line of carpeting.
But because of the increasing dominance of the Internet and a concurrent breakdown of the recording industry, he increasingly turned his attention to fine art in the late 1990s, and that has been his principal focus since.
“More and more people were asking me to design websites, and I’m too old- school and enjoy a much more tactile experience than the ether of the Internet,” he said.
Ray’s extensive design background inevitably suffuses his art. He can be seen as a kind of 21st-century extension of the pattern and decoration movement, which gained prominence in the mid-1970s.
Indeed, his work can appear so decorative, so seemingly eager to please, that it generates skepticism in certain sectors of the art world.
“Because I have this design history, having been a commercial artist, they sort of approach it as though I am a wannabe or something, so I get a little resistance from galleries,” he said.
But to not take Ray’s work seriously would be a mistake. He is well aware of his decorative tendencies, and he knowingly deploys and manipulates them to serve his art.
In addition, there is a formalist rigor and a deceptive complexity to his work. This is especially true in the large paintings, which are really elaborate collages of carefully choreographed sections of cut paper that he has painted, silkscreened or otherwise manipulated.
The background of the painting at the MCA, for example, is a blue wash painted directly onto the linen, but every other element has been adhered to the surface — an extraordinarily painstaking process.
Ray uses a similar approach for his smaller works, collaging cut paper on wood panels. But he coats these pieces in a clear resin, wanting them to have a machinelike sleekness but still show evidence of being handmade.
“I wanted to do something that was an absolutely finished product — not a print or a photograph that somebody bought and had to take to get framed,” he said. “I wanted them to take it off the wall and hang it on their wall.”
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
Wood panels reflect “my entire personal history”
Influences abound in Rex Ray’s work, especially his epoxied wood-panel paintings, with their loopy, biomorphic forms, penetrating colors and 1960s pop flavor.
“It’s my entire personal history,” he said. “I’ve taken all the things that I loved — abstraction, organic abstraction, hard-edged abstraction, pop art, psychedelic art, op art — and incorporated them into my work.”
These pieces — most of which range in size from 9 by 10 inches to 16 by 24 inches — are the centerpiece of the artist’s exhibition at Gallery T.
Breaking from convention, the three dozen or so such works are carefully spread nearly top to bottom across an entire wall. Such an arrangement can all too easily come off as a cacophonous jumble, but these patterned, abstract works complement and reinforce one another.
While all of the pieces can be enjoyed on their own, they come together in this unusual installation as an integral, compelling whole. Kyle MacMillan
Rex Ray
Art. Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, 1485 Delgany St. Ray’s largest painting ever9 by 25 feet — is on display against a backdrop of wallpaper custom designed by the artist. Through Jan. 31. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. $10, $5 seniors and students; first Saturday of each month, admission for all is 1 cent. 303-298-7554 or
rex ray. Art. Gallery T, 878-2 Santa Fe Drive. A complementary solo exhibition, including a wall assembly of dozens of the artist’s smaller works. Extended through May 30. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays. Free. 303-893-0960 or
