What to See: Best Exhibitions in Aspen 2023  

If you’re in town for ArtCrush and other happenings during Art Week, be sure to visit these top Aspen exhibitions, featuring names like Nairy Baghramian, Cy Twombly, the Haas Brothers, Phillip K. Smith III, and more.

Nairy Baghramian, Florian Krewer, and More
Through October 22
On view at the Aspen Art Museum is a major exhibition of the artist Nairy Baghramian, who will be the honored this week at the annual ArtCrush fundraising gala. Coinciding with the fundraiser and Aspen Art Week, Baghramian—who will be awarded the Aspen Award for Art at the gala on August 4—is showing new and existing works from the past decade in the exhibition “Jupon de Corps.” On view through October 22, the show lives inside and outside of the museum, alongside other noteworthy shows and programming happening during Aspen Art Week—including features of artists like Florian Krewer, Zeinab Saleh, Chase Hall, and Issy Wood.

“In Repetition, There is Difference”
July 1—August 12, 2023
Carpenters Workshop Gallery and Calodney Art Advisory have collaborated on a pop-up on the second floor at 601 East Hyman Avenue for Aspen Art Week with the exhibition “In Repetition, There is Difference.” The nuances of repeated form and practice sit centerstage in this thought-provoking presentation of contemporary art and collectible design, which looks to the philosophies and thoughts of Gilles Deleuze and Samuel Beckett. From sculpture to furniture to canvas, works made through various processes of repetition include featured artists like Cy Twombly, Yayoi Kusama, Rick Owens, David Hockney, Atelier van Lieshout, Maarten Baas, Judy Chicago, and more.

Phillip K. Smith III: “Outside In / Inside Out”
July 12—August 12
Phillip K. Smith III’s first solo exhibition with Hexton Gallery features a series of new sculptures revealing a more intimate side of his practice, which is most frequently noted for large-scale installations employing color, light, and reflection. Entitled “Outside In / Inside Out,” the show features a series of smaller hanging wall sculptures, which mesmerize viewers and inspire stillness with their slowly shifting rings of muted, colorful light. Almost like portals into another existence, the works on view take on two forms: the round disk Sky Torus series and the oblong Lozenges.

“Part II”
July 26—September 4
The second installation of Marianne Boesky Gallery’s Aspen summer programming, the gallery’s temporary space in the picturesque mountain town is sharing the work of the Haas Brothers, Sarah Meyohas, and Celeste Rapone. Open during the occasion of Aspen Art Week, the exhibition highlights work with inventive qualities in the way of material, formality, and technicality. From the Haas Brothers, a selection of Bronze Accretions and Microslimers follow their humorous, whimsical practice that blurs the lines between art and design. By Rapone is a series of new paintings depict life in strangely-flattened dimensions. And new from Meyohas is a photography series Light Speculations that creates illusory imagery of light, voids, and tunnels, born from the artist’s interest in cryptocurrency and the blockchain.

“Field of Flowers”
July 10—August 6
In the exhibition “Field of Flowers,” the works of Nick Moss and Danielle Procaccio complement one another in a whimsical display exploring forms of flora. Welding flowers onto steel, Moss’s primary-hued poppies (appearing like glossy paintings on slabs of metal) juxtapose ideas of human creativity and industrial materials against the elegant, graceful forms that occur naturally in the world. These are intermingled with Procaccio’s painted petals, which are quite similar in composition—they are the sole focal point against a minimal background—though painted with smooth brushstrokes to represent ideas of resilience, renewal, growth, and hope.