Ascent
Floyd D. Tunson: Ascent
RedLine Contemporary Art Center
2350 Arapahoe Street, Denver, CO 80205
June 10-July 31, 2022
Curated by Wylene Carol, Daisy McGowan, and Collin Parson
Admission: Adults: $5 suggested donation, Youth and Students: $3 suggested donation
Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities
6901 Wadsworth Boulevard, Arvada, CO 80003
June 9-August 28, 2022
Curated by Wylene Carol, Daisy McGowan, and Collin Parson
Admission: free, reservations preferred
Review by Eric Nord
In early June, a pair of monumental exhibitions opened at the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities and RedLine Contemporary Art Center. They feature a prolific array of artworks, nearly one hundred individual paintings and sculptures, spanning half a century, by Colorado artist Floyd D. Tunson.
Considered a major survey of Tunson’s artistic output over the past five decades, the two exhibitions, collectively titled Ascent, were conceived by curators Wylene Carol, Daisy McGowan, and Collin Parson. They are designed to complement one another while maintaining their own autonomy. Though each exhibition contains a different collection of original artworks, they are curated so that both exhibitions contain examples of the artist’s historical practice. They can each independently impart to the viewer a comprehensive understanding of the landscape of Tunson’s career.
As such, a visitor who is only able to view one of the exhibitions will still have a rich experience and walk away with a strong sense of Tunson’s artistic excellence and creative achievements. However, considering the consistently high quality of the artist’s work, I strongly recommend that visitors plan trips to view both impressive exhibitions by one of Colorado’s most important and most relevant artists.
Born in 1947 and raised in Denver’s Five Points-Curtis Park neighborhood throughout the 1950s and 60s, Tunson became immersed in art at an early age. His older brother J.C. and his younger brother Randy, who were talented artists as well, have remained major influences throughout his life. Tunson describes his brother J.C. as having the skills and ability to build anything he envisioned. Tragically, Randy, who Floyd claims was the superior artist in the family, was shot and killed by Denver Police in Civic Center Park in 1973. That immediate personal connection to racially motivated violence became a major catalyst for Tunson, informing the critical content of much of his representational work, even to this day.
One of the earliest artworks included in the exhibition, Soweto Matches (1976), commemorates the uprising by South African school children during which protestors were met with intense police violence, resulting in the death of at least 176 people. In the 1980s, Tunson’s Black On Black and Raw Deal series fearlessly addressed issues of violence and incarceration within the Black community. And in each successive decade since Tunson has produced dynamic, critical work that has responded to the tumultuous events of the time.
From his Haitian Dream Boats and Endangered series from the 1990s, his Canary Metaphor and Remix series of the early 2000s, Gentrification and Universal Bunnies series from the 2010s, up through his more recent Racial/Facial Recognition and Redlining series from 2020, Tunson’s artistic output has consistently challenged society’s perceptions of racism and discrimination.
Though the pervasiveness of racially motivated violence in the U.S. has compelled Tunson to return to this subject matter time and time again, it does not dominate the entirety of his artistic output. There are two other, equally important bodies of work that contribute to the diverse typography of Tunson’s practice, and through which he expresses his formidable artistic abilities: abstraction and assemblage.
4th of July I (1987) and 4th of July II (1992) are exemplary in demonstrating the artist’s evolution into these other forms of expression. Representation gives way to non-objectivism and an expressiveness in the exploration of the medium, and flat, two-dimensional canvases break out into three-dimensional forms. They portend Tunson’s later evolution into his monumental Delta Queen Installation (1996) as well as his recent Synchro-Mesh series of sculptural assemblages.
The origins of Tunson’s abstract paintings can be seen in his Nubian series from the early 1990s. His use of gesture, texture, and an intuitive compositional approach create an energetic immediacy and expressive intensity. Over the past twenty years these works have developed and grown in complexity as well as size.
In 2017, Tunson premiered his monumental painting Untitled 147 during his Janus exhibition, which was the inaugural exhibition for the new Galleries of Contemporary Art at the Ent Center for the Arts in Colorado Springs. It is an enormous canvas, at ten feet high and forty-two feet in length, and it is an impressive major centerpiece for the Redline gallery space.
Over the past several decades, Tunson has been using his trifecta of talents in a manner that ensures creative sustainability. By cycling through these various disciplines, the focus of his practice shifts, and he is able to both explore and expand his technical skills and stylistic approach—like a triathlete using cross-training to develop and fine-tune different muscle groups. The result is three distinct bodies of work that continue to evolve symbiotically, informing and inspiring each other.
The schedules for the two Ascent exhibitions are different, and people interested in visiting them should take note. The RedLine exhibition opened on June 10 and is on view through July 31. The Arvada Center exhibition opened on June 9 and is on display through August 28.
In addition, to celebrate their recent acquisition of Tunson’s Hearts and Minds—a massive three-dimensional installation comprised of nine large panels—the Colorado Fine Arts Center at Colorado College exhibited the work until July 9. On June 17 and 18, they hosted live performances of Endangered, a multimedia collaboration between Tunson, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, and award-winning musician and music industry entrepreneur Tomás Doncker.
Eric Nord received a degree in Art History from the University of Denver. Previously, he served as Executive Director of the E. E. Cummings Centennial Celebration in New York City, worked for Sperone Westwater Gallery in NYC, and is currently the Director of Leon Nonprofit Arts Organization in Denver.