Art Attack: From Rat Fink to Flemish Art, Here’s Denver’s Weekly Gallery Lineup

click to enlarge Ed Roth’s first “California Cruiser” trike. Courtesy of the Rat Fink Museum
click to enlarge Carlos Vargas Pons, “Homenaje a Luis Barragan.” Courtesy of Carlos Vargas Pons
click to enlarge Alfredo Cardenas, “Matriarch,” welded steel. Courtesy of the artist
click to enlarge Heather Link-Bergman, “Acquired Tastes,” 2022. Courtesy of CVA MSUD
click to enlarge Dylan Griffith, “End of the Night,” 2022, acrylic, Flashe, spray paint and sand on panel. Courtesy of Dylan Griffith
click to enlarge Sarah Winkler, “A Matter of Time. Horseshoe Bend,” 2022, acrylic on panel. Sarah Winkler, courtesy of Visions West Conttemporary
click to enlarge Grant Pound: “WTF Bunny and Severance.” Courtesy of the artist
click to enlarge A sampling of Catrinas on Parade at the Firehouse. Courtesy of Firehouse Art Center
click to enlarge bunny M, “the butterfly in the armoire,” 2022, acrylic and tears on panel, corresponding 1/1 nft. Courtesy of the artist
click to enlarge Lisa Luree, “Mushroom Mosh,” and Jane Falkenberg, ”Darkling: Henrietta.” Courtesy of the artists
click to enlarge Jan Massys, “Rebus: The World Feeds Many Fools,” about 1530, oil paint on panel. © The Phoebus Foundation, Antwerp
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From Ed “Big Daddy” Roth’s iconic bad-boy Rat Fink to 300 years worth of Flemish masterpieces, this week’s art openings and events travel far and wide without leaving town. Hispanic Heritage Month continues with another barrage of shows with Latinx artists and themes, and an enigmatic, wandering street artist, who doesn’t reveal where she’s from, returns to Leon Gallery embracing NFTs and butterflies.The fall season is yet to reach its peak, but it already feels like there’s lots of new life in Denver’s cultural art sector. Stick to this list for the best art finds this week.Like so many cultural events in Denver and everywhere, the Rat Fink show at Emmanuel Gallery, a pet project of gallery director Jeff Lambson, had to be pushed back many months. But this fall, the Rat Fink character, invented in 1958 by hot-rod gearhead and comic artist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth in response to Disney’s clean-living Mickey Mouse, is installed in the chapel in multiples, along with works by a host of famous (and not so famous) pop, street and graffiti artists influenced by the rise of Roth’s iconic cartoon thug. Some might say it was a bad influence, but Lambson shows its better side: In all its unruly nastiness, the Rat Fink gave permission to artists to incorporate lowbrow popular culture into works of fine art.To research the show, Lambson and a crew of students traveled in June to the Rat Fink Museum in Manti, Utah, for the annual Rat Fink Reunion, where they met with members of the Rat Fink inner circle, including his widow, Trixie Roth, and were allowed to select items for the exhibition right from the source. Roth’s lowbrow trove of decorated hot-rods, toilet seats, t-shirts, skateboards and toys makes for hardcore visuals from Rat Fink culture, displayed alongside art by Keith Haring, Takashi Murakami and Andy Warhol, as well as such Colorado artists as Carlos Frésquez, Donald Fodness, Kevin Hennessy and Gregg Deal.Jann Haworth, a contributor to the cover art for the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” will speak before the reception, and Trixie Roth will be in the house.Luis Barragán was a father of minimalist modern architecture in his native Mexico, through work inspired by Le Corbusier but realized with dramatic ideas of his own, including a powerful use of solid colors. For, five Mexican artists — Carine De Limelette, Karla de Lara, Luis Alfonso Villalobos, Carlos Vargas Pons and Jorge Jurado — created their own interpretations of his aesthetic influence in the visual arts. Curator Artemio García Uribe and the artists will give a talk on Friday evening for further insights.Sculptor Al Cardenas, a longtime member of the city’s Chicano artist community and a graduate of Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, works with welded sheet metal using the blue-collar welding skills he first learned in high school and perfected later in the military. The results, ranging from calacas in zoot suits to iconic Mestizo figures that might have jumped out of a painting by Diego Rivera or David Alfaro Siqueiros, are stunning.A group of Colorado artists commented on food insecurity lurking in our own backyard through their artwork for Cultivate, the second of two current exhibitions at CVA dealing with food justice in general. Five of them — Tsehai Johnson, Viviane Le Courtois, Sammy Lee, Heather Link-Bergman and Cherish Marquez — will flesh out the concept with their personal views and a discussion of their individual politicized artworks. RSVP for the free event at Eventbrite Union Hall curator Esther Hz and some of the participating artists will host a walk-through and discussion of, a show that lives visually in the shadows of the afterlife. It’s free to attend, either in-person or online at YouTube Painter Sarah Winkler brings a new batch of her elegantly modern mountain landscapes in acrylic on panel, rendered in earthy hues to realize the dark shadows and sun-shot peaks of the West in flat layers. Winkler’s painstaking compositional plotting is a tribute to nature’s way of contrasting textures, colors and light., a group show juried by art scholar Rose Fredrick, opens this week at Artworks with a twist on the usual old Western tropes. Fredrick chose works for their divergent, updated subjects, use of explorative processes and diverse points of view when it came to addressing both the past and the future. Also opening is, a display of large scale fabric collage by Eleanor Anderson, who is interested in overlapping shapes, mark-making and the use of found objects.It’s that time of year at Firehouse, when Longmont arts organizations team up to celebrate Dia de los Muertos in a big way. Longmont already threw a street festival downtown last weekend, but there’s more to come, including this weekend’s formal Firehouse receptions. The annualshow comprises representations by local artists and community members of the classic “La Calavera Catrina” captured by Mexican printmaker José Guadalupe Posada. These are being auctioned off online through October 28 as a fundraiser for Firehouse programming. In the South Gallery, Jamie Chihuan, a Longmont native of Mexican and Peruvian heritage, will show paintings and, at the reception, will also share, a short film dealing with personal identity. Adriana Paolo Palacios Luna, who will lead mini workshops in Mexican art techniques, is an overall creative and fiber artist.International urban artist bunny M is back at Leon Gallery for a second stint, bringing a new series of 54 butterfly paintings telling a personal story about chasing beauty and losing it in the end. Symbolically, the fluttering beauties represent the psyche — now, imagine them as elusive NFTs. It’s for real: Fifty of the bunny M butterfly paintings are matched by 1/1 NFTs; the images can be bought individually, or at a discount as sets. Where is this leading? Leon’s next step is to host an NFT workshop with IndieDAO on Thursday, October 20, offering insights into the true value of NFTs as artworks and how collectors can create an online wallet to be part of the revolution. At Leon, it’ll all be at your fingertips.As a group, the Denver artist collective Los Fantasmas is one part creative, one part activist, one part community-minded, and completely Latinx. If there’s a mentor in the group, it’s Carlos Fresquez, an older artist who’s always lent a helping hand to the younger ones. While the artists vary in age, they do all share a love for shared heritage, preservation of traditions and a modern point of view. Los Fantasmas will represent Saturday with a show in the Hideout Gallery, in the basement at ABC Custom Framing in the University Hills Plaza (ABC owner Justin Maes is a member, too).Lisa Luree and Jane Falkenberg pair kooky psychedelic paintings of skeletons, creatures and all-knowing eyeballs with luscious oils of bright-eyed forest animals in nature for this shared October exhibition. Guest artist shows by Karen Watkins and Emily Lamb continue, as does the most current member showcase.counts as an extraordinary opportunity to follow the development of Flemish art through 300 years of corresponding European history. A DAM collaboration with the Phoebus Foundation, which contributed a 120-painting package including work by Hans Memling, Jan Gossaert, Jan and Catharina van Hemessen, Peter Paul Rubens, Jacob Jordaens and Anthony van Dyck, to name a few, the blockbuster exhibition arrives Sunday and runs through next January on the second level of the Hamilton Building. Admission to the ticketed exhibition ranges from free to $25; museum admission is included in the price.