Star Power:

Museum as Body Electric

STAR POWER: Museum as Body Electric was MCA Denver’s inaugural exhibition and explored the body and its relationship to art and space. It featured a combination of established and important emerging artists.

The subtitle, Museum as Body Electric, was a direct homage to Walt Whitman’s poem “I Sing the Body Electric.” Whitman’s uniquely American poetics observe the temperate and brutal fringes of nature and mankind. Known as a voice of compassion, Whitman also possessed a truly modern sensibility of innovation and creativity. STAR POWER also reflected a Conceptual Brief, designed by Cydney Payton to bring forward the site conditions for the building as a Golden Proportion, the ideal spatial model for the convergence of architecture, humanity, and nature. The Brief illustrated the Museum’s desire for an architectural program that created a balance between five principles: art, architecture, light, nature, and human experience.

The exhibition included artwork by Carlos Amorales (b. 1970, Mexico City), David Altmejd (b. 1974, Montreal), Candice Breitz (b. 1972, Johannesburg, South Africa), Rangi Kipa (b. 1966, Christchurch, New Zealand), Wangechi Mutu (b. 1972, Nairobi, Kenya), Chris Ofili (b. 1968, Manchester, United Kingdom), Collier Schorr (b. 1963, New York, New York), Kim Dickey (b. 1964, White Plains, New York), Tim Noble & Sue Webster (b. 1966, Gloucester, United Kingdon & b. 1967, Leicester, United Kingdom), Clark Richert (b. 1941, Wichita, Kansas), and Karla Dakin.