IN THE GALLERIES: Fine Line By Mary Voelz Chandler , Rocky Mountain News ( Contact ) Published November 20, 2008 at 7 p.m.

Fine Line

* What: Works that address the concept of the horizon line

* Where and when: Museo de Las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive through Feb. 15

* A fine lineup: The horizon line is an immutable part of many pieces of art, but this division between earth and sky also has an impact on how we view our surroundings.

This conceptually based exhibition certainly addresses both arenas. Chief curator and executive director Patty Ortiz asked five artists Carlos Capelan, Maximo Gonzalez, Mauro Ariel Koliva, Lucas Monaco and Ricardo Rendon to offer their interpretations.

To put it mildly, the results are diverse, but anchored to the Museo walls by a faint blue chalk line that stands in for the horizon.

Capelan's pieces are complicated tangles of lines and faces that investigate clarity and color, while Monaco creates futuristic aerial "maps" of urban life, dramatic views of visionary environments. Koliva draws pieces of clothing for conjured up monsters, objects and artifacts that test the imagination. Koliva also made a "world" for such creatures along one wall in the back gallery, part mess and part mystery, to be honest. But that "landscape" centers two other monumental and stunning installations: Rendon's Trabajo Mural/Action Field, giant circles of dry wall screws that play with light and perspective, and Gonzalez's ethereal waves of dots that are actually bits punched out of pesos.

The theme here might be oblique, but the ingenious Trabajo Mural stays with a viewer, as do the many definitions of the line.

* Information: 303 571 4401 museo.org Mary Chandler is the art and architecture critic. chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303 954 2677 Carlos Capelan's untitled 2008 work on paper.