What to See at Aspen Art Museum

Whitewaller is in Aspen, Colorado this week, giving you the best of the mountain town during the 15th iteration of Aspen Art Museum’s (AAM) annual ArtCrush fundraiser. While you’re in town, we recommend making time to visit these Must See exhibitions, presented by the museum.

Erika Verzutti: Venus Yogini
Now—October 6
Presented outdoors, on the museum’s Crown Commons, is a new large-scale bronze work by Erika Verzutti, Venus Yogini. A large-scale work that serves as an extension of Verzutti’s recent smaller sculptures, the commissioned piece incorporates organic forms to aid in depicting the goddess of fertility. Known for creating anthropomorphic works formed by blending together a hybrid of objects, the Brazilian-born artist’s playful creations come from a practice grounded in ordinary objects and the everyday.

Etel Adnan: Each day is a whole world
Now—October 6
“Each day is a whole world” is an intimate solo show of works by Etel Adnan, presented in AAM’s galleries five and six. Featuring a total of 1 works (including five paintings created for the exhibition) each of the show’s three larger tapestries and eight small-format paintings were made by the 94-year old Lebanese American artist and poet within the last four years. Through pieces like Le poids de la lune 18 [Weight of the Moon], the exhibition is a powerful meditation, suggesting that the places we occupy may become the means by which we understand our own standing in life.

Walter Price: We passed like ships in the night
Now—October 6
In AAM’s gallery four, visitors will find Walter Price’s “We passed like ships in the night”—a series of seven new works created during the artist’s residency at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Florida’s Captiva Island. The pieces on view embrace abstraction and figuration, depicting the landscapes of Captiva Island through washes of intense color, reminding the audience of the symbols and memories we use to construct our collective cultural landscape.

John Armleder: Spoons, moons, and masks
Now—October 27
Swiss artist John Armleder has challenged the traditional boundaries of art through his diverse practice since the 1960s. In the exhibition “Spoons, moons, and masks,” AAM presents a selection from the artist’s Pour and Puddle series in gallery one, as well as a site-specific wall painting, made directly on the gallery’s exterior. The show includes a number of process-based techniques (reminiscent of the practices of modern masters like Larry Poons or Helen Frankenthaler), like pouring and splattering paint on canvas.

Rashid Johnson: The Hikers
Now—Novermber 3
On view in the museum’s galleries two and three, Rashid Johnson’s “The Hikers” features a series of new and existing works, including three large-scale collage-based paintings, a site-specific video work (shot in Aspen), and a one-time performance of the artist’s premiere choreography project, which debuted on July 3. Presented in conjunction with a solo show at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, the works on view were created along the usual premise of Johnson’s practice, which challenges collective notions of blackness through a personal investigation of African American cultural and intellectual life.

Oscar Tuazon: Fire Worship
Now—December 1
Oscar Tuazon has created a site-specific sculpture—Fire Worship—which he named after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s written work of the same name. Displayed on the museum’s roof, in the Deck Sculpture Garden, Fire Worship was created out of an interest in minimalist structures that evoke communal interactions and dialogues based on their surrounding environments. Los Angeles-based Tuazon revisits ideas he recently explored in his project Burn the Formwork (Fire Building), contemplating themes like social activity, activism, and the intersections of sculpture and architecture, and using a combination of design elements from a public fire pit and a stage to conceive the piece.