INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS: A Retrospective of the Work of Jerry Wingren

Date and Time for this Past Event

• Thu, Oct 14, 2021 - Sun, Jan 23, 2022  

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INCREDIBLE LIGHTNESS: A Retrospective of the Work of Jerry Wingren celebrates 45 years of the artist’s work, spanning from 1976 to 2021.

The exhibition features abstract, geometrical sculptures of alabaster, granite, marble, steatite, steel, and wood as well as works on paper. It centers on a career-long attempt to lighten up, lift off, and float materials that are often heavy and ponderous. Throughout his work there is a fascinating, relational dichotomy between elemental materials of stone, steel, and wood, and how they live with and depend on the natural elements of light and time. Wingren’s art is always about light and lightness, incredible lightness.

Wingren has shown his work in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His art is represented internationally in public, corporate, and private collections.

About the Artist
Raised in a small port town in Alaska, Jerry Wingren creates sculptures that incorporate his northwest and Scandinavian heritage with Japanese aesthetics. He balances opposing elements, such as lightness and weight, curving and severe lines, and finished and raw surfaces, in intimate and monumental works. In the 1970s, Wingren apprenticed with master sculptors Otto Almstadt and Moritz Bohrmann while at the University of Bremen in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship. He has been inspired by his study of origami, the aesthetic philosophies of Japanese gardens, the mathematics in nature, and the Tlingit totems from his Alaskan childhood. Wingren has exhibited internationally in galleries and museums, including the Atlanta Sculptural Arts Museum, the Denver Art Museum, and the Kleine Orangerie in Berlin. His works are in private and public collections in the US, Europe, and Asia. Wingren lives and works in the mountains outside of Boulder.

About Karla Dakin, Guest Curator
Karla Dakin specializes in artful, environmentally bold landscape architecture with an array of national and international projects. Shaped by a career in the national art world, she continually creates work that references art. Plant-obsessed, Dakin uses vegetation in forward-thinking ways, as exemplified by her roof garden for the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver.

Dakin combines her landscape architecture expertise with 15 years of experience in the art worlds of New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, giving her insights into the creativity of art and design. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Colorado Denver. In recent years she has continued her landscape education by completing classes in green walls and green roofs, biodynamic gardening, and master gardening. Dakin has also taught garden design and architectural theory and has volunteered for Permaculture Projects in Brazil and Ethiopia.

Thank you to our generous sponsors:
Sue Schweppe, Nicky Wolman & David Fulker, Lovedy Barbatelli, Brenda & Arno Niemand, Stephanie & R. Alan Rudy, Linda Haertling & Mark Meyer, City of Boulder, Boulder Arts Commission, Scientific & Cultural Facilities District, Colorado Creative Industries, and National Endowment for the Arts.