Most art shows are orderly affairs — paintings or sculptures carefully arranged in galleries that are meant to quietly recede into the background.
A daring exhibition set to open Saturday at the Denver Art Museum upends such conventions, in many cases taking work out of galleries entirely and putting the Hamilton Building’s unconventional architecture front and center.
The show is titled “Embrace!” because the 17 participating artists from around the world were asked to create custom-made pieces that physically and figuratively embrace the three-year-old wing’s slanting, angled walls and oddly shaped spaces.
Working on-site through the summer and into the fall, Denver artist John McEnroe and the other participants have done just that, staking claim to walls, corners and unexpected, overlooked nooks throughout the building.
Suspended in a cherry-picker basket 60 feet above the floor, German artist Katharina Grosse, for example, used a spray gun to paint an energetic, abstract mural on one wall of the Hamilton Building’s soaring, 118-foot-high atrium.
Brooklyn artist Nicola Lopez pain- stakingly pinned tiny hand-printed roadways to the walls and ceilings of an empty gallery, creating a dizzying yet graceful kind of web that encompasses the viewer.
Collaborating with the African Community Center and Emily Griffith Opportunity School, German artist Rupprecht Matties converted community-relevant words into visual objects arrayed in a space that formerly housed the museum’s shop.
The 17 large-scale works, spread across the four floors of the Hamilton Building, combine to form what is easily the largest and most ambitious contemporary art exhibition at the museum since “Landscape as Metaphor” in 1994.
“Embrace!” has already grabbed the attention of the international art world, and museum leaders hope it captures the imagination of area visitors as well.
“Embrace!”
Art. Denver Art Museum, West 13th Avenue between Bannock Street and Broadway. Curator Christoph Heinrich invited 17 artists from around the world to create works that respond to the distinctive architectural character of the museum’s Hamilton Building. Saturday through April 4. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays; 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fridays; and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission for Colorado residents: $10, $8 students and seniors. 720-865-5000 or .
