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by Travis Egedy

FM: Plus is kind of this upper level gallery, yet you choose to embrace and concern yourself with some more lowbrow ideas.
Ivar Zeile: I just think about it as embracing real talent and real creativity—but that can mean highbrow, lowbrow, or everything in between. The one thing that we have capitalized on is the emerging market. I want that young talent to be given an opportunity and to flourish.
FM: I definitely see this weird conservative vein of Denver that infiltrates all avenues of everything, but especially the art scene. Why hasn’t that changed? You know, someone to come through and totally turn it up on its ass and really be successful with a new idea.
IZ: Well, the problem is that anyone can come up with a new idea and give it power. But I think back on our first three years and we didn’t sell shit and we were doing some of the most cutting edge shows and drawing attention to us.
But I believe that can burn itself out very easily, unless there is a future vision of how to continue that. And most people aren’t going to be willing to do that if it is all coming out of their own pocket.
FM: That seems to have happened with Stay Gallery.
IZ: Absolutely. I remember when they first started and how cool a vision it was, but do they realize that you can’t sustain that unless you sell? I was talking to Michael Paglia (Westword art critic) about it the other day. He says that for their first show, which was Harry C. Walters, Stay called him up and berated him for not coming to review the show. And his stance was, “How could you even think to do that?” Because anybody can start an operation and think it’s the greatest gift to the community, but most people in positions of critical authority—or even buying authority—need to see how those operations carry themselves in the early stages.
FM: Yeah, Stay wanted to be top dog right off the bat.
IZ: Exactly—without wanting to prove themselves over time.
FM: Yeah, but that is also so shitty, the whole idea of art as an investment. People don’t buy if they feel an emotional attachment to the piece anymore, which I feel art should be about. It shouldn’t be about, “Oh, this person is going to be really hot in a couple years, so I should buy this now.”
IZ: I really view that as something that isn’t really affecting Denver right now. I’ll talk to the majority of my clients who will say they do not buy because of the investment; they say they buy because of an attraction to the work. And I believe that. I actually wish that it wasn’t that way, because I think you can create some genuine interest in the idea that part of elevating an artist’s career is creating that special interest.
FM: The art world is so inflated now. One day you will have an artist selling work for millions of dollars and then the next week no one is talking about them anymore.
IZ: Yeah, honestly, I used to want to be an artist, and I am so glad that I am not now an artist or that that is how I am trying to make a living. Early on in the business, I met guys in the community that were big business people with money who I thought had a real ability to support the art market. And then I learned that they studied as artists! And that they couldn’t make it and because of that I sensed somewhat of a backlash against the art market [from them].
FM: Wow, that’s crazy.
IZ: Because they couldn’t make it as artists, they said fuck the art market. The thirty- to forty-year-old age group here in Denver are a bunch of fucking meatheads, honestly. That is the problem with the market. There are very few of them with vision or a genuine interest in culture and community. Those are the people that have ability to elevate the market into something that it is not right now.
FM: Think about if all those people started going to openings and buying shit, pumping money into the system, and how much it would expand.
IZ: Absolutely, absolutely. All it takes is someone of power or community recognition to change the idea and value of that. I believe that I know a lot of people in the community who are at that level, and they refuse to do so.
Or they will do it to where it’s still not about this transcendental idea that contemporary art really matters. I mean, even most of the people that support the Denver Art Museum or the MCA, I don’t think they appreciate or recognize what the scene is about and what their role in it actually is. It’s like, “Oh, yes, I’ll put money into this new really cool museum, but not really care about the community.”
FM: Exactly! What do you think can be done to create an interest for these so-called meatheads to actually want to spend time thinking about or purchasing contemporary art within the community?
IZ: I don’t even know if there is an answer to that question. I mean, an interview like this, if people were to read it and think about it, that’s great, but where do they change their mind? The fact that this age category in New York is all over artwork and interested in it, that’s a function of New York as a progressive city that people want to go to.  People come to Denver because they want an easy environment.
FM: They want to go skiing.
IZ: They want to party and they don’t want to be challenged. Which is weird because I think that the most exciting place for anybody to find interest is in the art scene. So how is it that there is such a disconnect here?
FM: In Denver people my age will say, “Oh, I like art, that painting rules” or whatever, but that’s where it stops. They don’t have any idea or interest in anything further. Same thing with these so-called meatheads. They just don’t know and they probably don’t care because they don’t know or want to know.
IZ: Even if you expose them to it, I still think they will question it. One thing that bothers me about the art market is that you have to understand that in order for people to support it monetarily, they have to have money. And there is a certain amount of people who would say, okay, I don’t have a lot of money but I would rather buy artwork than an automobile—but most people don’t think that way. The people that really can afford it, there are too few of those people. And then of those people who have the money, most of them are completely dead-brained when it comes to contemporary art.
FM: Totally.
IZ: And that is Denver. I don’t know how you change that. You need visionaries to come in and say, “I am not going to hire a designer to secure artwork for my home. The best thing is for me to go out and buy from good galleries and support them.” You know, cut out that whole layer of designers that have no understanding or interest in art.
FM: I would love to see that happen. There seems to be this interest in bumping up the local scene—with the new art museum and the new MCA—these are ideas to bring a national, if not international, attention to Denver. Do you think that’s working?
IZ: Well, I don’t want to say it’s not working. [Laughs.] I think, in the long run, it has to work, but in the here and now, it is a fallacy.
FM: You had mentioned before that when the new art museum opened, the word was that it was going to be so great for all the galleries in town, and that all these people would be coming around buying everything, and you said also that you hadn’t seen shit from that.
IZ: Yeah, I can attest to that. In the last two years that all this supposed buzz on Denver transpired, I didn’t have anyone from outside of Denver visit my gallery. In fact, the local population seemed to take less of an interest in the local gallery scene because of all of the push going on. If people that like art are putting their money into the museum, they are putting less money into the gallery scene.
FM: Do you have a positive outlook for Denver? In the long run, do you see Denver changing for the better?
IZ: Oh, yeah, definitely. I absolutely feel positive about it. There has got to be some point at which people realize what Denver has and not let it go by the wayside.
FM: Well, just the fact that you have been around for six years, I would say that that is a good sign.
IZ: Yeah, that has to be a positive reflection of Denver. The only thing that I lament over Denver—and that I know would make it more positive—would be for the scene to be more cohesive and that the people within understood what it really needs. Denver is so spread out with its gallery scene that there is almost no way to make sense of it. I think the strongest scenes are where all of the best operations are close to one another.
FM: There is Santa Fe Avenue, but that is all crap down there. It’s horrible.
IZ: If anything it is more detrimental to Denver than anything positive. All of it is mostly…
FM: …fluff.
IZ: My biggest worry is that someone comes to Denver and they hear either through asking randomly, or even through the mayor’s office—I know they spout this all the time—that Santa Fe Ave is the art scene in Denver. And no! That’s horrible. You don’t want people walking out of Denver thinking that is the place to go. Because then they will go home and be like, “Yeah, Denver, it’s a nice place, but, man, it has got a shitty art scene!” And they would have taken in the smallest percentage of what is actually here.

+ This article originally appeared in FM02 | FEB-MAR 2008.