As unlikely — or likely — as it might sound, trash is hot in the art world.
Incorporating found objects into artworks is not exactly a new idea. After all, early in the 20th century, Pablo Picasso was turning an old bicycle seat and handlebars into an iconic sculpture.
What is different now is the growing ubiquity of such art and the changing intentions that accompany it.
Today’s artists are incorporating every kind of recycled object imaginable into their work, often drawing on such materials to comment on a range of contemporary issues, from excess to environmentalism.
As Kim Levin points out in a cover story in the June issue of ARTnews magazine, artists in the 20th century saw what they were doing as making the old and unwanted new and desirable.
“But now,” Levin writes, “with a subtle but crucial shift in attitude, trash has become a subject with ecological and environmental importance.
“Context is everything — should we call it ironic that in our society, suddenly aware of greenness and zero-carbon coupons, garbage is suddenly coming to the fore?”
Riding the wave of this art-world trend is “Reclamation,” a soon-to-close exhibition at Metropolitan State College of Denver’s Center for Visual Art.
It features works by six artists who live in Colorado or show in galleries here: Sabin Aell, Terry Maker, Jon Rietfors, Brian Cava- naugh, Yumi Janairo Roth and Ann Weber.
Rather than try to break new ground and engage some of the themes raised in today’s new brand of trash art, this show takes a much less ambitious, and in some ways disappointing, tack. It settles for simply showcasing the artists’ works with little in the way of context or connection.
That said, the works themselves are generally strong enough on their to own to sustain interest.
Among the most attention-grabbing are those by Weber of Emeryville, Calif. She uses colorful strips of corrugated cardboard from discarded boxes, weaving it like a basketmaker to form a surprising array of globular, sometimes biomorphic forms.
She mounts some of these sculptures on the wall, including a few that look like cake molds, while others are free-standing. They include two 15-foot-tall towers, which are impressive for their structural scale alone.
Roth’s freight pallets, which she gracefully decorates with inlaid mother-of-pearl using traditional patterns taken from Filipino furniture, have been shown frequently and recently here.
But this exhibition adds interest by including some of the Boulder artist’s preparatory drawings for these works, as well as photos of the industrial sites where she has reintroduced her pallets, blurring the history and function of these repurposed artworks.
Rietfors of Glenwood Springs begins with a surprisingly simple idea but achieves compelling results, combining photography with his accumulations of everything from film canisters to beer cans.
In “View of Sky and Clouds with Disposable Coffee Cups,” he has mounted tiny, circular sections of cloud photos into the ends of a few dozen paper cups. The cups are glued together to form a concave sculpture, with the photos creating a kind of mosaic effect.
While “Reclamation” plays it safe and offers little that is especially new, it nevertheless provides a taste of what happens when trash becomes art.
Kyle MacMillan: 303-954-1675 or kmacmillan@denverpost.com
“RECLAMATION.”
Metropolitan State College of Denver, Center for Visual Art, 965 Santa Fe Drive. This soon-to-close exhibition features works by Sabin Aell, Brian Cava- naugh, Terry Maker, Jon Rietfors, Yumi Janairo Roth and Ann Weber. Through Aug. 13. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday. Free. 303-294-5207 or
