Art review: A painter is a painter, regardless of whether they are in prison

“High Walls,” the current group exhibition at RedLine Contemporary Art Center, explores the topic of incarceration through a unique setup: It makes no distinction between artists who have direct experience with the subject matter — those who are, or have been, in prison — and those who have not.

Some views are from the inside, some from outside. Others are in the middle, with several of the best offerings in the show created by artists who have visited prisons, perhaps to work with inmates through programs that teach art to people jailed there.

But in a sense, it does not matter. A painter is a painter, this exhibit argues, and each one’s work and viewpoints are valid, regardless of skill level, school background or personal story.

In that way, “High Walls” goes a long way toward humanizing everyone involved. It demonstrates the compassion of artists who care about their communities while telling the stories of people jailed in a country where mass incarceration is a serious, ongoing and radically unaddressed problem.

There are, of course, varying opinions out there on the value of putting convicted criminals in jail, regardless of the numbers. This exhibition does not take a stand on that as much as it attempts to raise awareness, including in its accompanying written materials, which point out that “Colorado alone incarcerates about 614 per 100,000 people in its prisons, jails, immigration detention centers and juvenile justice facilities.”

“High Walls” has a lot of art and many collaborators, including community groups that advocate for incarcerated people. It also has a team of four curators — Katja Rivera, Tya Alisa Anthony, Sarah McKenzie and Geoffrey Shamos — who all come to the project with different experiences working with marginalized groups via art. McKenzie, for example, has painted scenes of prisons across the country as well as worked directly with inmates on art classes. Shamos, the in-house curator at the University of Denver, has collaborated with the school’s Prison Arts Initiative.

The group effort may explain why the show has so many viewpoints on its walls. The curators allow visitors a lot of ways into their goal of asking us “to consider how space constrains, and how art might transcend those constraints.”

For the most part, the concept works. In many cases, visitors have to read the labels to know who did the work and the nature of their connection to incarceration. Yet all of the objects in the show have strong opinions, and some are expressed with urgency.

Take, for example, Ricardo Kirven’s “Slavery 2.0,” from 2025. The acrylic on panel painting positions three iconic buildings as if they existed next to each other: Alcatraz, the White House and the New York Stock Exchange headquarters. On their shared front lawn is a cotton field with a male figure in prison garb picking the crop.

“This painting depicts the prison industrial complex — an updated version of chattel slavery. Human beings have been turned into numbers for profit,” Kirven’s artist statement reads.

Other paintings by those presently or formerly incarcerated reflect on the agony of prison itself. Mario Rios’ acrylic on panel painting “To Grip Freedom Through Hopelessness” depicts a prisoner’s hand gripping a bar on a window. The bright, blue sky in the background appears to exist in another dimension.

“Because I am serving life without parole, freedom is forever out of reach for me and others like me,” Rios writes.

Other works present an outsider’s view, many capturing how prison architecture and the systems of their operation create stark conditions for people who reside there. One of the show’s centerpieces, Maria Gaspar’s 2016 “On the Border of What Is Formless and Monstrous,” is a five-channel sound and video installation that runs 14 minutes and 52 seconds.

The video captures a single scene, the exterior wall of dormitories at Chicago’s  Cook County Jail, which was torn down in 2022. The colorless, endless walls speak of separation and desperation, without actually showing a human being who might be held there.

Among those pieces made by artists with experience in the middle is Molly Ott’s fascinating series of printed photos, titled “Parking Lot Meals,” from 2023. The piece is a diary of sorts, documenting the packed lunches Ott ate in a prison parking lot before entering the building to lead an art program. The photos of sandwiches and salads packed in neat plastic containers are set up in a gird on a gallery wall.

Ott got herself in synch with her cohorts by eating the same meals they did every time she visited. She got advance listings the prison menu and prepared her own lunch accordingly, though she was forced to eat outside and alone in her car. The exhibit also includes print-outs of the menus. There is a relentlessness to this art project that captures the daily, planned-out routines of prison life.

What all of the works document in “High Walls” is the sheer enormity of the prison system, not just in numbers but in the intensity of structure and emotions that exists within the operations themselves. Prisons are oppressive places, by design, and this show paints a clear picture of that — one that does not allow those on the outside to ignore the plight of those on the inside.

The exhibit does not suggest that prisons shouldn’t part of a democratic system, but it does demand an awareness of prisoners’ lives. By saying all artists are artists, it reminds us that all people are people. They exist, free or not, and cannot be forgotten. It is an argument for compassion.

Ray Mark Rinaldi is a Denver-based freelance writer specializing in fine arts.

IF YOU GO

“High Walls: Artists Navigate Structures of Confinement” continues through Oct. 12 at RedLine, 2350 Arapahoe St.Info: 720-769-2390 or redlineart.org.

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