
Courtesy Currents New Media Festival
Catch 'The Garage,' an experimental documentary by Steve Summers, at the Currents New Media Festival This June.
It's artsy in Santa Fe all year 'round, but we seem to really pull together as a city once the days get longer, the nights get hotter and people feel more inclined to get up and out of their homes. Galleries, museums and more save some of their best for this time of year—aren't we lucky?
Susan Beiner: Sugar Fields
435 S Guadalupe St., 216-1256
May 31-July 13
Everybody's favorite progressive downtown gallery showcases Beiner, whose modular floral wall sculptures merge the natural and the human-made into one gallery-wide installation. According to the artist's statement, recognizable patterns begin to emerge the longer we observe the work. We can't wait to find out what that looks like.
Judy Tuwaletstiwa: The Dream Life of Objects
1050 Old Pecos Trail, 982-1338
June 7-Sept. 15
The longtime Santa Fe resident unleashes her multimedia ruminations on the unpredictable nature of objects (we caught an informal
Tuwaletstiwa talk recently, and she attributed the concept to her friend Tom Joyce, a kickass blacksmith/artist). Tuwaletstiwa's weavings alone are worth a visit, but in the periphery of the show lies stranger and more fascinating pieces. Not only that, but the CCA celebrates 40 years in 2019.
Currents New Media Festival
Various Locations: Info
June 7-23
The new media powerhouse may have opened a permanent brick-and-mortar on Canyon Road (which rules, btw), but the annual festival is still going strong each year across Santa Fe. From AR, VR and all things interactive to dizzying feats of videography, coding, sculpture and the intersection of all those things, find special events from the world's most innovative, provocative and evocative contemporary artists; plus maybe a few local names as well.
Artist Lecture Series: Erin Currier
544 S Guadalupe St.,954-9902
June 11
SFR fave Currier discusses her body of work—a Blue Rain mainstay—and how her travels from Beijing to Buenos Aires have impacted her style and paintings. Currier's art is often about individual people, though it errs into deeper territory as well, from the political to the sublime and all points in between.
People on the Fly
231 Delgado St., 995-0231
June 14
The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation's dedicated contemporary arts space stuns with Austrian-based artists Laurent Mignonneau and Christa Sommerer's US debut of the 2016 interactive piece People on the Fly. The work makes use of a proprietary algorithm that causes digital versions of flies to "swarm" visitors' captured images. On a surface level, it sounds super-rad, but such programs may also help AI scientists determine how lifeforms make and enact decisions on a particle level. What?!
Gallery Conversations: The Great Unknown
107 W Palace Ave., 476-5072
June 14
Celebrated counterculture expert and Norteño music hound Jack Loeffler speaks as part of the museum's ongoing lecture series, which ties into the current exhibit The Great Unknown: Artists at Glen Canyon and Lake Powell, a collection that examines the locale's odd but vital role as artistic catalyst. If you don't know already, Loeffler is a treasure.
When Worlds Collide
142 Lincoln Ave., 557-9574
June 14
HR Giger, the mastermind behind the art direction of the Alien films, shows alongside a bevy of other invited artists at KEEP's biggest show of the
summer.
Brandon Maldonado: Identidades
125 Lincoln Ave., 820-0788
July 5-August 31
Painter Maldonado returns nearly a year to the day after his stellar and critically praised Neo-Picassoism exhibit at Pop with contemporary new-brow pieces rooted in Flemish painting style, Catholic iconography, Spanish traditionalism and beyond. With six new paintings, Maldonado retells the story of the Spanish conquest of the New World with roots in fact but also some in myth. Ummm, sold.
Rebecca Mir Grady: Underneath
501 Franklin Ave., Ste. 4
July 13-August 31
Jeweler, photographer and all-around artistic maven Grady teams up with Show Pony Gallery—a project of Curate Santa Fe's Niomi Fawn—for colorful abstractions and geometric shapes on black paper. Given Grady's wide swath of media, there's no telling what other surprises might be in store. And anyway, Show Pony might be one of the most important galleries to keep an eye on at this moment.
Ian Kuali’i
830 Canyon Road, 916-1341
July 26-August 24
One of Canyon Road's newest galleries welcomes Hawaiian/Apache artist Kuali'i, a self-taught creator specializing in large-scale hand-cut paper, murals, prints and more. According to gallery owner Frank Rose, Kuali'i's work always has a specific origin and intent alongside subtler and outright hidden meanings.
GvG Contemporary 10-Year Anniversary
241 Delgado St., 982-1494
August 2-September 15
GvG founders Blair Vaughn-Gruler and Ernst Gruler celebrate a decade in the Santa Fe arts world this year—no small feat given the hustle and bustle of our gallery scene. As part of the celebrations, the Grulers party hard with a two-person show honoring dedication, collaboration and passion within the
art-o-sphere.
Figurations Group Exhibit
670 Canyon Road, 988-3888
August 9-25
From the bizarre and surreal to the dreamlike, realistic and all places therefrom, painters Michael Bergt, Erin Cone, Matthias Brandes and John Tarahteeff come together at one of our all-time favorite galleries for a group show that we're so excited by that we might pass out. Jay kay—but it is definitely stellar work.