DATELINE & RMCAD PRESENT:
REWIND: DATELINE016
AUGUST 7TH-28TH, 2015
ARTISTS:
Helen Alexandra
Justin Beard
Christine Buchsbaum
Dmitri Obergfell
Curated by Hillary Frey
ARTIST RECEPTION AUGUST 7, 7PM
DATELINE GALLERY
3004 LARIMER ST
DENVER CO 80205
ddaatteelliinnee.com
303.505.2127
HOURS:
FRIDAY: 1-5PM
SATURDAY: 1-6PM
MON-THURS: 5-9PM (APPT ONLY)
REWIND: DATELINE016
DATELINE is pleased to host this exhibition with support from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.
Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design is one of Colorado’s most influential art colleges, if not the most. The campus has been graced with art legends and explosive creative personalities from students to staff, all of which have shaped Denver’s creative world. Faculty and students possess a symbiotic relationship comparable to great historical art schools, and in the early 2000’s the college teemed with a special kind of creative discipline. Rewind presents four specific former RMCAD students focused into one exhibition. Displaying the versatile talents and profound exploration of both identity and experimental aesthetic, these artists emerged from the college able to harness a sophisticated understanding of their personal styles, depicted in raw elegance.
The significant impact left on Denver radiates in our galleries, museums, and schools. Independent venues such as Rhinoceropolis were playgrounds of creative energy for many students, and still echo it’s origins through living history. RMCAD’s influence is apparent within the local community, nationally, and internationally. The four individuals selected are excellent examples of accomplished artists the school’s incredible teachers have produced. These artists complement one another in an astounding way.
Helen Alexandra
Living and working in L.A., Alexandra’s work extracts technical methods combined with scientific principle to produce beautifully rendered graphic art. As a healer and spiritually in touch, her work applies a unique mindfulness to her surrounds. Though abstract in nature, conceptually Alexandra’s work deals in complex mathematical theory.
Justin Beard
Creating art has really opened me up to the world. It is what made me read books, listen to different music, look at politics, and just see things in a different way. It seems the more art I do, the more ideas and experiences I am exposed to. My process is a process of creation - I think of things, or stumble on things, and make things that I never thought could exist. Every time I speak to someone and divulge that I am an artist, I am immediately asked, “What kind of art do you do?” It is always a hard question for me to answer. I usually tell them, “Well I get an idea and I try to find the best way to work with it. It could be a sculpture, video, performance, installation, or a photograph. I guess you could call me a conceptualist.” That being said, the inspiration for my works and ideas are drawn from daily life. I do not feel obligated to one idea or theme, because I don’t think that’s the way life works.
Christine Buchsbaum
Colorado emerging artist Christine Buchsbaum explores a deeply felt world of her own making. Utilizing photography to document her staged surreal, eccentric and expressive performances for the camera, Buchsbaum connects the viewer to a shared dream. The camera lens frames the compelling emotional terrain – an image of a bedroom with an old world bed, stripped down to the mattress and its bedcoverings bound and suspended above – is ripe for the viewers’ interpretation as to whether it’s narrative is one of promise or not. This balance of opposites is an active pursuit in Buchsbaum’s work as the real and the fake are inexplicably linked and what is unsettling is also at its core, sensual. The artist’s hard won set-ups – at the bottoms of swimming pools or under an overpass – require time and commitment aside from the complexities of the numerous stories the artist longs to tell. In the end, each evocative image makes it clear that an underlying narrative exists – though with intent, Buchsbaum offers a kind of universal truth that the story may never need to be told. The artist states, "My work is a performance-based documentation of personal experience – a reshaping of events that shaped me – strange mysteries of a strange world; narratives of an underlying consciousness.”
Christine Buchsbaum has a BFA from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She was selected as a Visiting Artist and Artist in Residence at La Napoule Art Foundation, Mandelieu-la-Napoule, France, an award winner at Artotique Biennial in London and a juror’s pick in numerous other exhibitions. She has exhibited at Denver’s RedLine Gallery and Colorado’s Arvada Center, among others, and Buchsbaum’s work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Denver Post, Art in America, Art, Ltd., American Contemporary Art Magazine, Zing Magazine and more.
-The Eye of Photography Magazine (L'Oeil de la Photographie)
Dmitri Obergfell
Dmitri Obergfell is an artist whose work explores currents that flow through historical, political and philosophical narratives. Appropriating symbols and objects across history and cultural backgrounds, his works reconstitute their meaning to describe contemporary ideological constructs. His works have been recently included in Thief Among Thieves at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (2015), as well as an upcoming exhibition at the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs and Casa Maauad in Mexico City (2015). Solo exhibitions of note include Yinfinity at Gildar Gallery (2015) and Visigoths (2013) at Upp Contemporary in Venice, Italy. He has previously exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, California (2014) the Parco Foundation in Treviso Italy and the Futura Centre for Contemporary Art (2013), Prague Czech Republic (2012) among other venues. Obergfell is currently a resident artist at RedLine Denver.