Beyond the Deck and Into the Future

RemainReal Fine Art

901 Santa Fe Drive, Denver, CO 80204

October 4-26, 2024

Admission: free

Review by Madeleine Boyson

It’s been unreasonably warm this autumn in Denver. Climate doom has had me flailing about for something to anchor the season. One of my grounding techniques is tarot: seventy-eight cards in Major and Minor Arcanas, all of which use symbolism to guide self-reflection. I’m nothing if not an amateur practitioner, but if my growing deck collection is anything to go by, tarot is a foundational ritual that has helped me see my world in new and provocative ways.

An installation view of *Beyond the Deck* at RemainReal Fine Art. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

It feels fitting, then, that RemainReal Fine Art has a fall show devoted to this symbolically weighty art form. Beyond the Deck is open through October 26 and invites audiences to reimagine tarot “through the eyes of Colorado’s most visionary artists.” [1] Each of the twenty-two works in this feature exhibition interprets a different Major Arcana card from The Fool (0) to The World (XXI) and reflects the internal (cards I to VII), external (VIII through XIV), and mystical (XV to XXI) powers at play in the human experience.

With a heavy emphasis on personal style, the show contemplates tarot’s deeply subjective nature. And though not every work “transcend[s] traditional depictions” as the gallery’s text suggests, Beyond the Deck has an offbeat vibe highlighting raw, local talent. The exhibition also welcomes a curiosity that is fundamental to any good card pull and even provides visitors with a limited edition tarot deck available for purchase.

Jini Kim Veenker, *Judgement*, ink drawing with gold leaf. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Context is helpful, but not required, to appreciate Beyond the Deck. Tarot was invented for gaming in 15th century Italy and practitioners shifted from gambling towards divination and the occult in 1781 thanks in part to Protestant pastor Antoine Court de Gébelin. Modern tarot is now used in the pursuit of spiritual, esoteric, and philosophical knowledge. [2]

Lauren Wholey, *The Hierophant*, acrylic on canvas. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Most Western tarot decks also draw upon similar symbols. The Hierophant (V) often depicts a person with two fingers pointed at the sky, surrounded by two crossed keys and a triple cross, while Strength (VIII) frequently personifies a lion, the symbol for the astrological Leo. These emblems are evident in both Lauren Wholey’s The Hierophant and Alice Riley’s Strength, which use classical symbols as a springboard for their interpretations.

Alice Riley, *Strength*, acrylic on canvas. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Beyond the Deck is not curated in numerical order of the Major Arcana, nor is it grouped via any of the above subdivisions. But this reflects a more honest approach to a tarot pull—after the cards have been shuffled and intentions set, one chooses cards at random from the pile.

Sabina Espinet, *The Emperor*, acrylic on canvas. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Visitors are therefore free to gravitate towards what resonates and leave the rest, which is a popular admonition that resounds in tarot and witch communities. Sabina Espinet’s The Emperor, for instance, stuns in the gallery. Interpreting a masculine presence as the fifteenth century Inca emperor Viracocha in vibrant yellows, oranges, and purples, this work is a refreshing departure from the medieval European character in the Rider-Waite cards (one of the most popular modern decks).

Trinh Nguyen, *The Chariot*, acrylic on canvas. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Elsewhere, Trinh Nguyen’s The Chariot plays off of a Lisa Frank-esque pastel palette and features a long-haired and winged feminine character with two unicorns. Her sword has been replaced with a glowing scepter, and she hails from the clouds as though she is the feminine embodiment of a solar god.

Olga Kolusenko-Braico, *The Hanged Man*, ink and acrylic on paper. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Tom Van Der Sloot, *The Fool*, acrylic on canvas. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Other provocative works include The Hanged Man by Olga Kolusenko-Braico, which replaces the figure’s upside-down cross with red Shibari ropes, emphasizing the card’s “translation of sexual energy into higher energy.” [4] Tom Van Der Sloot’s jaunty The Fool and the stained-glass effect of Judgement by Jini Veeker similarly create intriguing vignettes for each card, drawing viewers into their sophisticated and sometimes contradictory allegories.

Sista Luna, *Wheel of Fortune*, strike matches and India ink on paper. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

But it is Sista Luna’s Wheel of Fortune that best embodies transcendent and non-traditional interpretations. Here burned and unburned matches fan out underneath an “X” of double-sided matches and dark India ink bleeds in from the corners and from within the circle. This card usually symbolizes the cyclic nature of the world, with the spiritual forces at the wheel’s center. But with roiling ink and burned wood replacing a more wheel-like hub and spokes, Luna’s Wheel complicates the card’s “calm center of spiritual reality” and questions which cycles we must truly release ourselves from. [5]

Works by Shane Bryant in *Into the Future* at RemainReal Fine Art. Left: *Astronaut’s Dream*, gouache, 40 x 50 inches. Right: *The Astronaut’s Window*, gouache, 40 x 47 inches. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

In other rooms, RemainReal also features an ancillary exhibition titled Into the Future, which invites viewers into “the boundless potential of tomorrow” featuring intersections of “ancient wisdom and future possibility.” [6] Inspired in part by tarot and astrology, this exhibition leaves more room for artistic license, and viewers can expect looser thematic threads throughout.

Steph George, *Future Phase: Equational*, multimedia linocut, 5 x 7 inches. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Hector Sector, *Where the Ideas Lie*, acrylic on cardboard, 11 x 15 inches. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Steph George’s Future Phase: Equational incorporates dried flowers, moon phases, and linear factorial mathematics, while Hector Sector takes inspiration from Roman statues in Where the Ideas Lie, an acrylic and cardboard work featuring green skin and red eyes.

Shane Bryant, *Astronaut’s Dream*, gouache, 40 x 50 inches. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

But it is Shane Bryant’s large works Astronaut’s Dream and The Astronaut’s Window—the former a conceptual piece about droids aiding an ailing astronaut and the latter from a science fiction magazine cover—that shine on RemainReal’s workshop walls.

Shane Bryant, *The Astronaut’s Window*, gouache, 40 x 47 inches. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Bryant brilliantly combines science fiction and fantasy in simultaneously horrifying and hope-filled dreamscapes that imagine human futures in space and investigate how we can continue moving through a (seemingly) indifferent universe.

Together, Beyond the Deck and Into the Future are a welcome combination of artistic expression, genre, and the multilayered contextual allegory found in the fecund and fabled practice of tarot and other mysticism. Both exhibitions also harken to various times in history when artworks were read like texts, relying on symbolism to convey complex meanings to viewers. And though the works on view vary widely in medium, interpretation, style, and skill level, RemainReal has brought something new and interesting to Denver’s art scene. Viewers can visit both exhibitions through October 26.

Madeleine Boyson (she/her) is a Denver-based writer, poet, and artist. She holds a BA in art history and history from the University of Denver and makes her living as a communications and editorial coordinator and arts writer.

[1] From the exhibition wall text.

[2] Mike Sosteric, “A Sociology of Tarot,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology / Cahiers canadiens de sociologie 39, no. 3 (2014): 360.

[3] Craig Junjulas, Psychic Tarot: Illustrated with the Aquarian Tarot Deck (U.S. Games Systems, Inc.: Stamford, CT, 1985), 9.

[4] Ibid., 52.

[5] Ibid., 51.

[6] From the exhibition wall text.