In one quick year, Doug Kacena has turned Denver’s commercial art scene on its head, upending many of the current, common assumptions about where for-profit galleries are headed in the 21st century.
His new K Contemporary gallery downtown is thriving after just 12 months in business, and along the way it is revitalizing the careers of local artists and giving the city a fresh place to see, and shop for, some of the most interesting new art around.
No doubt, K is bucking the trend. Denver’s galleries are in sharp decline these days, squeezed by rising real estate prices locally and the international shopping trends that have moved commerce online and away from brick-and-mortar retail shops. Just this month, the Golden Triangle’s Goodwin Fine Art, a stalwart of the scene with 40 top-tier artists on its roster, announced it was closing its doors at the end of the year. Rumors are flying about which gallery might be next to go.
Kacena certainly isn’t unaware of the retail realities. He’s both a veteran of the local gallery scene and a victim of it, having worked at other shops that went out of business in recent years.
But he’s undeterred, moving forward in the belief that the right roster and an eager sales effort can survive the times. He’s also got a solid business model as a member of the 1412 Gallery Collective, which has three enterprises — K, Abend Gallery and Gallery 1261 — sharing exhibition space and overhead expenses at their combined headquarters at 1412 Wazee Street. It’s a smart-looking place and a wise financial arrangement.
And it has given Kacena the ability to recruit serious talents, both established artists and newcomers. Among them: Monique Crine, Kevin Sloan, Scott Young, Daisy Patton, Suchitra Mattai, Michael Dowling, Michael Gadlin, Jonathan Saiz, Mario Zoots and Melissa Furness. He has 21 names, so far, and is hopes to sign up double that.
The current exhibition, “As of Now,” brings them all together into an entertaining group show meant to celebrate year one. For the public, it offers a convenient sampling of local talent. All of K’s artists have contributed at least one piece to the effort.
It is particularly strong in painting, though it comes in all varieties and levels of abstraction. At one end, there’s Furness’ oil-on-canvas “Caput Mortuum,” which weaves together two dozen, nearly-naked Renaissance-era figures into an orgy of overwrought emotions. At 6-by-8, the piece has a monumental tone, capturing the light-and-dark style of master paintings while updating the subject matter to evoke both the sinewy bodies and the sort of dark inner dialogue associated with the comic book superheroes that are so trendy right now. The piece feels ancient and current at the same time.
At there other end, there’s Trey Egan’s “Spark and Flicker,” a mash of colorful gestures that has bold yellows, greens and blues coming together on a canvas that’s left intentionally white in the background. It’s one of those pieces that will stop and hold you as you examine its mix of solid, flat fields of color mingling with expressive, textured marks that keep it in constant motion.
More current, perhaps, are multimedia pieces by Zoots, Patton and Mattai, who do that thing young artists do these days, which is to take existing found materials and re-conceive them into something new.
Zoots is a collage artist, and his six-part, framed “Floating Features” series has cut-outs from magazines and photos, hyper-reduced to simple shapes and reassembled into complex arrangements with entirely new meanings.
Patton does the opposite. Instead of reducing, she adds, embellishing vintage photos, by enlarging them and adding colors, complex backgrounds and strings of flowers. She brings the dead to life, taking these anonymous characters from long ago and projecting new and quite engaging personalities upon them.
Mattai has her own recycling methods, using assemblages of found objects to tell personal narratives. Her piece “A Reliquary for Unfathomable Fear” combines, among other things, a 19th century print, fluorescent pink paint and a tiny porcelain bathtub into a three-dimensional diorama that feels both timeless and urgent.
“As of Now” doesn’t have a cohesive thread but it offers visitors an economical way to survey a number of players on the scene and to see what they are doing to succeed right now. There are trademark moves all over the show: painter Kevin Sloan’s reimagined views of the animal kingdom, Jonathan Saiz’s power-packed 2-by-2-inch miniatures, Scott Young’s clever quips rendered in neon.
There are also a few surprises from artists a bit lesser-known around here, notably Kuzana Ogg’s free-form oil painting “Chromium,” and Robin Hextrum’s “Breaking the Pattern,” which has a mass of colorful flowers cascading over a grid of pure blue and white; it manages to be romantic and mathematical all at once.
Most of the artists in this show, and in K’s stable, were previously floating on the edges of the art scene here. Some were displaced from their long-time galleries because of the economic shake-ups, others just simply didn’t fit with the limited number of existing galleries in Denver, or couldn’t figure out a way to get their names out there. All of them work at a level that warrants representation from a professional gallery, though each of them was, in a professional sense, homeless.
K Contemporary has given them a place to land, an attractive center where they can display their wares and connect with serious collectors. Because the level of talent is high, everybody’s reputation gets a boost just by being on the roster.
The artists also get an aggressive advocate in Kacena himself. Every successful gallery has to be centered around the personality of the gallerist whose name is on the door — it’s what brings people in, allows them to trust in a certain level of taste, builds a community of sellers and buyers.
Kacena has emerged as that kind of force. He’s naturally likable and consistently on message. He’s obviously investing significant capital in the operation, and he’s out there pushing the product, representing the gallery at events around town, taking the work to art fairs, building a base that he can expand over time.
And, importantly, he’s helping artists build their careers. He comes to the table with a wealth of experience — he’s an artist and designer himself, he collects and he’s a salesman; he knows how to talk to clients. He also knows how to nudge artists into making work that’s true to their vision and, yet, commercial.
That’s the delicate work of a gallerist. But it’s the most important thing they can do, develop talent and careers simultaneously. That’s what makes them worth the 50 percent commission galleries typically charge. When they do it right, everyone thrives.
Including the city the gallery calls home. Denver’s art scene desperately needs stability — it ought to be a place where artists can make a solid living and where the public can gather to see good work. K is helping to make that happen.
“As of Now,” the one-year anniversary exhibit, continues through Dec. 29 at K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee St. It’s free. Info at 303-590-9800 or kcontemporaryart.com.
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