LAKEWOOD, CO.- The Laboratory of Art and Ideas at Belmar will examine the changing history of the American West with two multi-media exhibitions premiering in January 2008. The Plains of Sweet Regret, a five-channel video installation by internationally-acclaimed artist Mary Lucier, explores the seismic demographic shifts that are forever changing the rural, social and psychological landscape of the Northern Great Plains. Phil Bender: Last Place, an exhibition of new and established works by Phil Bender, complements Lucier�s installation with an alternative investigation of history in the American West. Bender catalogues evidence of recent human settlement in the Denver area through collections of discarded and secondhand objects. Brought together at The Lab, these exhibitions offer new reflections on change and loss in the Western United States. Both exhibitions will open on January 19, 2008 and will remain on view through May 1, 2008.

�In their own ways, Mary Lucier and Phil Bender each unpack the layers of social and cultural meaning behind the everyday,� said Adam Lerner, founder and executive director of The Lab. �They see a changed West emerging around us by looking at the residue of human settlement and migration. Their art looks at the overlooked. The Lab�s programs always seek to provide new vantage points on art, culture, and community�and often by incorporating the quotidian. We have scheduled these exhibitions to coincide with the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo in Denver, a celebration of Western lifestyle that now takes on new significance in light of Lucier�s and Bender�s work.�

The Plains of Sweet Regret is Mary Lucier�s poignant response to the legacy and loss of the Great Plains. As the lands of the northern plains are increasingly consumed by agri-business, family farms are rapidly disappearing and small towns are fading away, threatening to take with them an entire way of life. Eighteen minutes in length, the video installation examines both what has perished and what can be preserved in the physical, cultural, and human expanses of the Plains. The video begins with texts that reflect the words and thoughts of the local population, followed by images of vast landscapes and abandoned settlement that in turn fade into the faces of individuals who remain determined to survive on the land. Lucier turns her camera to such disparate scenes as empty roads and crowded rodeos, engaging the viewer with the contradictions of fecundity and decline, abundance and hardship, beauty and cruelty embodied in rural life and the moment of its passing. The video installation is accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Earl Howard, Lucier�s long-time collaborator.

Lucier created The Plains of Sweet Regret in 2004 as her contribution to �The Emptying Out of the Great Plains,� a series of projects commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art to address the region�s recent drop in population. The series also included work by documentary filmmaker Kathryn Lipke as well as photographers Jim Dow, Robert Polidori, and Jon Solinger.

While Lucier captures the abandoned remains of the past as they exist embedded in the landscape and communities of North Dakota, Phil Bender: Last Place removes disregarded and discarded objects from their everyday environments to provide an alternate approach to local history.

Bender is best known for collecting everyday objects�crushed hubcaps, macram� clothes hangers, backgammon game boards�and arranging them in massive geometric grids, suggesting both nostalgia and scientific classification. For this exhibition of existing and new installations at The Lab, Bender will gather objects from Denver�s and the surrounding region�s thrift stores, garage sales, and street sides, documenting the history and character of the region by way of the objects that have passed through it. Bender�s objects convey a sense of archeology, and his installations reveal historical patterns of behavior and usage in the home, workplace, and outdoors. Visitors are offered the chance to look into the attic of the American West and reflect on the significance of cultural loss.

Mary Lucier - Mary Lucier was born in Ohio in 1944 and currently lives and works in New York. Her practice includes a wide range of media, including sculpture, photography and performance, with her primary interest focused on the integration of video and installation. Hers were among the first video installations to be acquired by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Floodsongs (1998), Lucier�s previous video installation commissioned by the North Dakota Museum of Art, traveled to the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and was voted the Best 1998-99 Video Exhibition in a US Museum by the International Art Critics Association.

Phil Bender - Born in St. Louis in 1947 and raised in Dallas, Phil Bender has lived in Denver for almost four decades. He graduated from Metropolitan State College and the University of Colorado, and subsequently joined forces with likeminded Denver artists to found Pirate: A Contemporary Art Oasis, one of the first cooperative galleries in the region. Bender, who remains founder, president, and co-director of Pirate, received the AFKEY award in 1988 from the Alliance for Contemporary Art. Bender has exhibited nationally, including a 1996 solo exhibition in the Close Range Gallery of the Denver Art Museum. In the catalogue for that exhibition, Bender said that he wants to pull off what he calls the artist�s ultimate scam: �I�d like to make a living doing what I love to do. I dream of having the freedom to play all the time.�