By Susan Froyd
March 8 2008

The Project Gallery As the international splash of grand opening shows fades at the new (and still sparkling) Museum of Contemporary Art/Denver, director/curator Cydney Payton is now getting down to the business of going local by featuring Denver artist Jeff Starr as the venue’s first regional artist-in-residence in the Project Gallery, a hands-on space intended to spotlight Colorado’s own as well as the internal workings of the creative process. So The Wrath of Grapes, currently on display through May 25, is more than an exhibition heavy on Starr’s often fantastical paintings (a medium he’s returned to recently, after an equally successful dabble in sculpture): It also includes a faithful replica of his working studio in one corner of the space.

How does the facsimile measure up to the real thing? “It’s very close,” Starr says, “only cleaner and less cluttered,” and, he adds, the real one is something of a health hazard. But the important thing is how well it represents his time spent at work. Starr and fellow artist/raconteur Bill Amundson will share a few personal words about that process on March 7 at 6 p.m., during an intertwined First-Friday pair of MCA’s urbane new ongoing programs, Top 10 and WITY Cocktails (WITY is an acronym for “What’s It to You?”), wherein a short talk focusing on ten art innovations tied to exhibit themes gives way to witty WITY conversations in the museum café; Open Shelf Films on Fridays, a weekly series with a March theme of Psyche, Self and Architecture, follows with a screening of Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1960 film, L’Avventura, at 7:30 p.m.

Above: Jeff Starr, Brokenborough (detail), 2007 oil on canvas 48 x 38 inches Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Allen Clutter.