Southwest Contemporary‘s handy roundup of choice spring 2022 art exhibitions includes shows in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah.
Here are twelve exhibitions of note—ranging from a first-time show for a Mexican fashion icon to a fundraising exhibition for Ukrainians in need—that are currently taking place or will open soon in the Southwest.
Arizona Art Exhibitions
Brad Kahlhamer: 11:59 to Tucson
Tucson Museum of Art
March 17–September 25, 2022
In 11:59 to Tucson, Brad Kahlhamer, who’s based in Mesa, Arizona and New York, will divide his life into three realms: one illustrates his Indigenous heritage, which remains unknown to the Tucson-born artist; the second discusses his experience growing up in a German American family; and the third shows his output as an artist and musician. Kahlhamer, who was adopted shortly after his birth to Indigenous parents, “Seeks to connect to a spiritual and communal sense of belonging as well as to a culture that has eluded him in the past” through mixed-media works.
Beverly McIver: Full Circle
Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
February 12–September 4, 2022
Beverly McIver presents a survey of more than fifty works that showcases the artist’s heft and variety in contemporary painting over the past twenty-five years. The African American artist is often known for her trailblazing portraiture work. “Her self-portraits explore expressions of individuality, stereotypes, and ways of masking identity, while portraits of family members provide glimpses of intimate moments, in good times as well as in illness and death,” writes the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.
Colorado Art Exhibitions
Carla Fernández Casa de Moda: A Mexican Fashion Manifesto
Denver Art Museum
May 1–September 5, 2022
Carla Fernández Casa de Moda: A Mexican Fashion Manifesto will mark the first exhibition looking into the career of Mexican artist and fashion designer Carla Fernández, who founded the Mexico City-based brand in 2000. The fashion house, which is big on social and ethical change, works with Indigenous communities throughout Mexico, including women-led co-ops that produce handmade textiles and clothing.
Ken Gun Min: Wounded Man, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
K Contemporary, Denver
March 26–April 30, 2022
In this exhibition—its title is a nod to Japanese writer Haruki Murakami—South Korea-born, Los Angeles-based artist Ken Gun Min will show more than twenty new works in a variety of media, including mixed-media paintings and drawings, artist books, found objects, garments, and traditional Korean painted folding screens. According to K Contemporary, “Cartoon figures, birds, and tigers share space with anatomical drawings, flowers, western drapery, and lush Asian landscapes, creating a new universe with its own logic and language” in an exhibition that’s a commentary on Min’s push-pull relationship with Eastern and Western traditions.
Nevada Art Exhibitions
The Art of Jean LaMarr
Nevada Museum of Art, Reno
January 29–May 29, 2022
The Nevada Museum of Art is currently showing a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of more than 100 works and a short film by Jean LaMarr, a community activist artist of Paiute/Pit River ancestry. The show includes LaMarr’s recognizable prints that address cultural stereotypes, representations of women and Native American people, and the traditions of her ancestors, as well as paintings, assemblages, and installation work.
New Mexico Art Exhibitions
Alejandro Sanchez: Skate Night
Foto Forum Santa Fe
March 11–May 25, 2022
Alejandro Sanchez, an artist and educator based in El Monte, California, started photographing the Black roller-skating community in Southern California following the 2013 closing of World on Wheels in Los Angeles. (Thanks to the since-passed and still-iconic rapper Nipsey Hussle, the rink reopened in 2017 but closed again in 2020.) Sanchez’s silver gelatin prints capture the spirit of communities that have faced racial discrimination and prejudice.
Sam Scott: New and Timeless Paintings
Pie Projects, Santa Fe
March 12–April 16, 2022
Painter Sam Scott, who has lived in Santa Fe for more than fifty years, presents a new body of work that Pie Projects describes as cemented in lyrical abstraction. “I wanted to create a luminous doorway in a rich field of energized, sumptuous, almost operatic color. A great painting must tremble. If you sit with it, it starts to acquire its own life. I want my paintings to become beautiful slowly, and then stay beautiful,” writes Scott, who says that he’s learned from Grace Hartigan, Clyfford Still, and Philip Guston.
Texas Art Exhibitions
Marfa Invitational
Saint George Hall, Marfa
May 5–8, 2022
This invitational art event in West Texas—self-described as part contemporary art fair, part exhibition, part experience—enters its third year and features worldwide exhibitors such as Darren Flook from London, England, Lora Reynolds Gallery in Austin, Texas, The Valley from Taos, New Mexico, and Half Gallery, which has spaces in New York City and Los Angeles.
The Tap: Visioning the Ogallala Aquifer at the Llano Estacado
School of Art at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, and At’l Do Farms, Shallowater
March 21–April 24, 2022
M12 Studio, a collective of creatives featured in Southwest Contemporary’s latest print issue, presents an exhibition that the group calls a meditation on the Ogallala Aquifer at the Llano Estacado, one of the world’s largest groundwater sources. The show comments on the region’s water health and sustainability through a multi-dimensional installation and a cast polished brass water tap that M12 installed in Shallowater.
Texas Artists: Women of Abstraction
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi
February 4–May 8, 2022
Centered around Texas modernist Dorothy Hood—119 of whose artworks are in AMST’s permanent collection—this group exhibition presents abstract works by thirty Texas woman artists including Toni LaSelle, Pat Colville, Sharon Engelstein, Mary Frances Doyle, and Bethany Johnson, who are working in painting, sculpture, collage, mixed media, and installation.
Utah Art Exhibitions
Jesse Meredith and Ron Linn
Finch Lane, Salt Lake City
March 11–April 22, 2022
Solo exhibitions by Utah artists Jesse Meredith and Ron Linn launch today at Finch Lane. Meredith’s photographs, sculptural works, text, and installations tackle “white, patriarchal structures that isolate and separate us, empowering viewers to address their own biases and (dis)comforts.” Meanwhile, drawings by Linn, who currently teaches painting and drawing classes at Brigham Young University in Provo, are engaged “in issues of place and the connection between human and non-human nature through an examination of memory, myth, and both personal and imagined histories.”
marginalia
Office Space, Salt Lake City
March 6–May 31, 2022
The group show of digital and ready-to-print artworks by Patrick Winfield Vogel, Sumire Skye Taniai, Chunbum Park, and Melissa Prosser doubles as a fundraiser for Ukrainians in need. Works by participating artists were made in an open edition of archival inkjet prints that are available for purchase at the brick-and-mortar gallery in downtown Salt Lake City as well as online. Twenty percent of the gallery’s profits will be donated to various non-profits supporting Ukrainian families and children.
