Visiting scholars explore range of art

Six visiting artists will present a series of public lectures this spring highlighting their areas of focus, which range from finding “beauty in the grotesque” to hope and redemption, pain and loss.

The appearances are all part of the Visiting Artist Program, which has been a vital component of the Department of Art and Art History since 1972. Each year, eight to 10 nationally recognized artists present diverse ideas and their body of work during their visit to the University of Colorado’s Boulder campus.

During their stay, artists give a public lecture, teach a seminar class, participate in a recorded interview and provide individual critiques with graduate students.

Following is this spring’s line-up of visiting artists:

Feb. 16: Joel Peter Witkin

“All important art represents the change of physical into the spiritual. The making of art is a vocation. The most difficult and joyous work of the humankind.” Godard has said, “there are two kinds of cinema, Flaherty and Eisenstein. There is documentary and theatre, but ultimately, at the highest level, they are one and the same.” The same can be said for still photography. At its highest level, a new vision of life and consciousness occurs. These are the very things which contribute to civilization.” Witkin’s extraordinary visual sensibility produces shocking yet undeniably compelling tableaux that enact macabre deviant dreams that find beauty in the grotesque, the different or the unusual.

March 2: John Jota Leanos



John Jota Leanos is a social-art practitioner who utilizes media to engage in diverse cultural arenas through strategic revealing, tactile disruption and experimental documentary. His practice involves a range of new media, animation, film, public art, installation, radio and performance focusing on the convergence of memory, social space, masculinity and decolonization. This talk will focus on his work in social documentary as a form of democratic practice, community building and witnessing through aesthetic experimentation in a variety of public spheres. Leanos is currently an assistant professor of social documentation at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

March 16: Dario Robleto



“A central tenet of my work is that all story topics and materials be based in fact real-world experience while pressing towards the fantastical edge of belief, doubt and hope. I am interested in asking art to embrace these extremes, and by extension I have to ask the same of myself.” I am concerned with the historical nature of grief and mourning and how it has fueled new leaps in logic and aesthetics. I look to these topics as starting points to discover how hope and redemption continually seem to counteract the pain of loss. I look as deeply into loss as possible to find the truly extra-ordinary aspects of humanness. This leads to a last broad theme in my work, which is, the nature of belief, faith and doubt in relation to loss and materials.”

March 30: Garrison Roots

“My works solicit the viewer's participation and understanding, while attempting to show the universally precarious nature of our positions within the world. My intent is to seek new meaning through the study of my past and memories, and then to confront the viewer with a charged aesthetic.” Roots is currently a professor and chair of the Art and Art History Departments at the University of Colorado.

April 13: Rosalie Favell

“To date, my work has centered on issues of identity and drawn inspiration from my Metis heritage. On one level, my work draws upon a number of religions and beliefs, in particular Buddhism. My work shows how self-representation incorporates desire and imaginary roles as well as elements that have occurred in the past. To be a modern explorer, as an aboriginal person, is to engage in acts never imagined by past generations. I see aboriginal peoples as engaged in acts never imagined by past generations. I see aboriginal peoples as engaged in many new explorations, and entering into territories that will prove challenging. I also see this situation as not without its contradictions. It is this very uncertain space that proved exciting to artistic practice.”

April 27: Dennis Oppenheim

Dennis Oppenheim has been a pioneering artist in conceptualism, video and sculpture since the late 1960s. He is most interested in imperfect and chaotic manifestations of dialogue and tension, danger and discomfort. His work references the mind, the body, and the sensory shell as avenues of description as well as states of being. His current work addresses public space through his manipulation of familiar architectural icons.

He received his B.F.A. from the School of Arts and Crafts and an M.F.A. from Stanford University. He has been a recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.

All lectures will begin at 7 p.m. in room 1B20, in the basement of the new Visual Arts Complex. For more information, see www.colorado.edu/arts/events or contact albicker@colorado.edu.