Materiality is grounded in a dialogue between contemporary artistic practices and Aspen's unique cultural history. By placing emerging and mid-career artists in conversation with influential figures of the twentieth century, the gallery examines how ideas evolve across generations and how artistic innovation continues to find new forms of expression.

This ongoing exchange between past and present reflects Aspen's longstanding identity as a place where creativity, experimentation, and intellectual inquiry converge. This intersection provides the foundation for Materiality, an exhibition bringing together works by Larry Poons, Thomas McDonell, Ernesto Burgos, and Christo.

Materials are often understood as passive tools in service of artistic ideas. The works gathered in Materiality suggest otherwise. Across painting, sculpture, and installation, Poons, McDonell, Burgos, and Christo treat materials as active agents capable of shaping perception and generating meaning. Whether working with paint, fabric, resin, cardboard, or canvas, each artist pushes materials beyond their conventional roles through acts of accumulation, concealment, preservation, transformation, and recontextualization.

Familiar forms become unfamiliar, revealing tensions between permanence and impermanence, control and chance, concealment and revelation. In each case, material is not simply a vehicle for expression. It becomes the subject itself.