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Sarah McKenzie: Displays of Power

Past exhibition
29 March - 3 May 2025
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  • Works
  • Installation Views
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Overview
Container, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 in. (106.7 x 106.7 cm)
Container, 2025, oil and acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 in. (106.7 x 106.7 cm)
In Displays of Power, works created in the prison and art environments she frequents will be presented in conversation, shining a light into places kept dark, exposing the quiet politics embedded into the architecture of prisons and museums alike.
EXTENDED BY APPOINT THROUGH SATURDAY, MAY 17TH.
 
Sarah McKenzie is known for her paintings that analyze the aesthetics of institutions, often esteemed art venues, which offer a lens into the psychology of architecture. Through their design, buildings communicate the values of the society in which they were created. Through myriad elements, architecture reflects social codes and priorities—guiding, restricting, or enabling behavior, and controlling how bodies move through space, gather, or commune. The art gallery or museum’s pristine white walls, meant to be interpreted as neutral or blank, communicate control over space, guiding the viewing experience of visitors.
 
In 2021, McKenzie was the recipient of the Marion International Fellowship for the Visual and Performing Arts, which brought her into correctional facilities to research prison architecture. In the same year, she became involved with the University of Denver Prison Arts Initiative (DU PAI), where she began teaching visual art to incarcerated individuals. While working in prisons, McKenzie noted similarities between prison and museum architecture.
 
Since beginning her work in carceral settings, McKenzie has cofounded Impact Arts, a 501(c)(3) volunteer program through which she continues her work teaching art to residents at Sterling Correctional, Colorado’s largest men’s prison. Her work in prisons has become an integral part of her artistic practice, which has led her to create new bodies of work in addition to curating exhibitions of work by incarcerated artists.
 
In these institutions designed to bend the perception and will of users, over the course of several years, McKenzie’s practice has expanded to include social practice as a vital part of her artistic research. In Displays of Power, works created in the prison and art environments she frequents will be presented in conversation, shining a light into places kept dark, exposing the quiet politics embedded into the architecture of prisons and museums alike.
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Download List of Works
Works
  • Sarah McKenzie, Container, 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, Container, 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, Visitation (Alcatraz), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, Visitation (Alcatraz), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, Sight Lines, 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, Sight Lines, 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, A World Away, 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, A World Away, 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, Implications of Scale (Yard, Sterling Correctional), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, Implications of Scale (Yard, Sterling Correctional), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, Window Blinds (Administrative Segregation Unit, Sterling Correctional), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, Window Blinds (Administrative Segregation Unit, Sterling Correctional), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, Some Days the Sky is Just a Ceiling (Yard, Sterling Correctional), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, Some Days the Sky is Just a Ceiling (Yard, Sterling Correctional), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, Guidelines (Museum of Modern Art with Ellsworth Kelly), 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, Guidelines (Museum of Modern Art with Ellsworth Kelly), 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, View From the Second Tier (Alcatraz), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, View From the Second Tier (Alcatraz), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, Cordoned Off, 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, Cordoned Off, 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, Empty Boxes, 2024
    Sarah McKenzie, Empty Boxes, 2024
  • Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 1, 2023
    Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 1, 2023
  • Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 3, 2023
    Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 3, 2023
  • Sarah McKenzie, Threshold, 2024
    Sarah McKenzie, Threshold, 2024
  • Sarah McKenzie, Curtained, 2025
    Sarah McKenzie, Curtained, 2025
  • Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 2, 2023
    Sarah McKenzie, Isolation 2, 2023
  • Sarah McKenzie, Corridor (Closed Facility, San Diego Youth Campus), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, Corridor (Closed Facility, San Diego Youth Campus), 2022
  • Sarah McKenzie, When the Frame is a Cage (Common Room, Denver Women’s Correctional), 2022
    Sarah McKenzie, When the Frame is a Cage (Common Room, Denver Women’s Correctional), 2022
Installation Views
  • Mckenzie Displays Install1 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install2 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install3 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install4 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install5 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install6 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install7 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install8 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install9 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install10 Web
  • Mckenzie Displays Install11 Web
News
  • Relentless realism: One artists paints Colorado's prisons

    Relentless realism: One artists paints Colorado's prisons

    Sarah McKenzie | Ray Mark Rinaldi, The Denver Post April 27, 2025
    'Neither her prisons nor her museums have people on view or obvious signage. It's just walls, doors, windows, iron bars, cells, solitary confinement rooms —...
    Read more

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  • Sarah McKenzie

    Sarah McKenzie

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David B. Smith Gallery

1543 A Wazee St. 

Denver, CO 80202 

info@davidbsmithgallery.com

303.893.4234 

 

 

Open for your viewing pleasure

By appointment May 4 – 17, 2025

 

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