Critical Focus: Monique Crine highlighted recent work by the Denver-based artist. Working from her own photographs, Crine created arresting paintings that explore different American archetypes. For this series, she focused on the professional football player, creating both heroic and tragic representations of these (literally) larger-than-life figures. Her paintings are strikingly indebted to film — especially the classic, Hollywood cinematic spectacles of the mid-twentieth century. The drama of lighting, pose, and costume transforms individual players into filmatic characters. This tension between stylized characters and real people parallels precisely how perceptions of celebrities frequently skirt the boundary between reality and fantasy.

Monique Crine was born in Heidelberg, Germany. Her work has been exhibited at Goodwin Fine Art, Denver; Pirate: Contemporary Art, Denver; The Dairy Center, Boulder, Colorado; Hartell Gallery, Cornell University, New York; and Tjaden Gallery, Cornell University, New York. She lives and works in Denver.