Why do art galleries often feel like bank lobbies? Their gold fixtures, shiny floors and couch-matching art seem to exist for the pleasant exchange of funds, making the sparkling commercial spaces that constitute many of Boulder's art galleries seem a great distance from the starving-artist or gritty-art scenes.
Ready for a gallery that won't suggest business suits, male ponytails or gold cards? Head to Denver's Revoluciones, an aptly-named cooperative gallery hosting Inferno, a provocative show of aerosol art, a.k.a. graffiti.
Originally, Revoluciones operated as a mobile gallery, hosting art and openings in various locations throughout Denver. This migrating collective now has a space and growing legitimacy in Denver's "golden triangle" of alternative art spaces. Since they don't have grants or rich patrons to finance their visions, the owners must sacrifice. Four young artists live at the gallery in order to make rent, while opening up their living/gallery space to the public each weekend. Their dedication is impressive. They not only finagle contracts with artists-who often pay nominal fees for display-but make improvements, adding luxuries such as ceilings, walls and outlets to the warehouse space.
Inferno is an impressive display of the area's finest graffiti. Curated by Voice, one of Denver's most established aerosol artists, Revoluciones suggests an artistic legitimacy for graffiti, showcasing not just colorful tags but the subversive potential and dedication of the artists. (They prefer the term "aerosol artists," since "graffiti" carries so many negative connotations.)
How, you ask, does graffiti art suffer under the preconceived notions of vandalism and anti-establishment criminality? While artists were designing the exterior of the Revoluciones building, they had their paint confiscated; gallery owners had to go down to the Anti-Graffiti Task Force office to discuss zoning and city ordinances. Eventually, the paint was returned, no charges were filed, and the exterior walls of the 8th Avenue gallery became a work of art themselves.
Displaying aerosol art, which engages and often exists on social structures, Voice and Revoluciones capture subversive elements while collecting a variety of expressions into one gallery experience. Several walls, including fixtures, are completely tagged, painted red and covered with graffiti. The works on paper and canvas make reference to the scope of aerosol art's media. One painting depicts a "photo" of train-side graffiti, and then offers the actual photograph for comparison. Other works use maps, mirrors, binary numbers, and pages of text as graffiti ground. In one piece, an aerosol tag looms over a huge aerial photograph, colonizing space from above. This art competes for space as part of its expression-tidy works on white paper simply miss the point. Inferno captures the comic book menace of the colorful tags which overwrite the official version of events and spaces. The winding space of the gallery, and its transformation with each show, creates a sub-version of the art gallery with Inferno's red walls and tagged halls.
Inferno will come down gradually, with the works on paper and canvas being replaced in the first week of December and the spray-painted intricacies of the interior and exterior walls remaining for another month. The first Friday in December, there will be another of Revoluciones' famous openings. On these Fridays, the gallery pulses with records spun, poetry read, breakdancing exhibited, and art experienced until everyone is sweaty. The final room of the gallery hosts not just vibrant aerosoled walls, but state of the art turntables and a dance floor. The heart of this gallery combines disciplines and makes for the hot intensity of a dance party melded with the über-cool of cutting edge art.
This is a scene rather than scenery.