DARIA Art Magazine

Welcome to DARIA: Denver Art Review, Inquiry, and Analysis, a publication devoted to art writing and criticism focused on the Denver-area visual art scene. DARIA seeks to promote diverse voices and artists while fostering critical dialogue around art.

All in Review

Nov 2

Nov 2 Land Lines

Courtney Lindly

Walker Fine Art’s latest exhibition Land Lines, showcasing work by six of their Denver gallery artists—Christopher Hassig, George Kozmon, Ellen Moershel, Heather Patterson, Ben Strawn, Christopher Warren—dives into the various aspects of and concepts surrounding cartography. The artists draw influences from the natural world via reinterpreting mechanisms of record keeping and maps, displaying the landscape of invented worlds, examining the history of Colorado, looking at Polynesian methods of mapping navigation, and more.

Oct 19

Oct 19 Phase Change

Jillian Blackwell

Phase Change, at the Curtis Center for the Arts in Greenwood Village, is the fruitful result of a collaborative effort between K Rhynus Cesark, Andrea Gordon, Annakatrin Kraus, Bruce Price, Sara Ransford, Chandler Romeo, Martha Russo, and Tina Suszynski—a group of ceramic artists who completed the “Artists Invite Artists” residency at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana. The title of the exhibition, Phase Change, nominally highlights the artists’ investigation of ceramic materiality, surfaces, and firing styles. However, the scope of their exploration is much more holistic, encompassing the treatment of the gallery space and the way the objects were made as well as how they interact with the viewer.

Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Oct 13

Oct 13 Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

Derrick Velasquez

Marsha Mack and Lindsay Smith Gustave are masters of expansion and collapse. Their exhibition Animal, Vegetable, Mineral at Leon Gallery in Denver sheds light on the microscopic, constituent cells of natural and unnatural objects and uses imagery that alludes to our contemporary experience of dwelling. The title of the exhibit comes from the 1950s British television show that asked archeological experts to identify ancient objects without any prior information.

Held in Suspension

Oct 2

Oct 2 Held in Suspension

At the Foothills Art Center in Golden, Colorado, artist Mattie O.’s solo exhibition Held in Suspension represents the lives of women caught within strictly prescribed ways of how to present themselves. Made up primarily of sculptures of dresses, the exhibit displays a range of feminine attire from traditional gowns to revealing, fanciful costumes. The dresses are constructed using wire armatures covered in a paper produced by the artist with abacá—a fiber created from the leaves of wild banana trees. Though this natural material is fragile, the dresses represent women in their solid being.

Sep 16

Sep 16 Blue Smiles

Madeleine Boyson

Once spotted amidst the mess of brick on Walnut Street, the delight of Lane Meyer Projects’ newest window installation draws in a beleaguered mask-wearer like a moth to flame. A single print called Blue Smiles and a handful of hanging plexiglass “stickers” by the artist Shadow, from her project Shadows Gather, decorate the LMP PDA space as part of an ongoing window series curated by Brooke Tomiello and Rose van Mierlo. Blue Smiles recalls the bustling Denver nightlife of the “Before Times” and reminds viewers that even in the midst of global meltdown, there is still joy to be found in the city and in each other.

Sep 15

Sep 15 Lullaby

Mary Grace Bernard

The connection of care between parent and child is what inspired Denver artist Tiffany Matheson to create her installation Lullaby at Pirate: Contemporary Art. Matheson was born and raised in Denver. Her work is generally based in geometry and mathematics with an emphasis on human interaction and perception. Many of her works speak to our senses of sight, sound, and touch and incorporate light, texture, color, and nature.

The Walls Between Us

Sep 11

Sep 11 The Walls Between Us

Dani/elle Cunningham

Center for Visual Art’s newest exhibition The Walls Between Us depicts not only the literal and metaphoric walls in our contemporary world, but also the experiences that happen in the space between those walls. Featuring work by The Artnauts, an international social justice-oriented collective, the exhibition includes nearly 40 artworks ranging from traditional drawings and paintings to edgy installations and sculptures. Many works express the artists’ relationships to walls and boundaries, establishing an empathetic environment that is aesthetically diverse yet conceptually similar.

Somewhere in the Future I am Remembering Today

Sep 4

Sep 4 Somewhere in the Future I am Remembering Today

Mary Voelz Chandler

A visit to view Letitia Quesenberry’s work at David B. Smith Gallery in Denver is particularly appealing. This is one of her few exhibitions west of the Mississippi, and she brings with her the unusual ability to create a different world. Recently, she received a 2020 Southern Prize and a grant from the South Arts program as one of the nine winners who submitted works for an exhibition in Columbus, Georgia. Her work is all about space, color, and light.

Rhythm and Ritual

Sep 2

Sep 2 Rhythm and Ritual

Courtney Lindly

The latest exhibition at the Santa Fe Art district’s iconic hot pink building, Museo de las Americas, is Rhythm and Ritual: Music of the Ancient Americas curated by Jared Katz. This collaboration with the Denver Art Museum focuses on musical instruments from the Andean, Mayan, and Olmec cultures (in modern-day Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru) with dates ranging from 2500 BCE to 1550 CE. Encompassing a wide range of places and times, the exhibit provides a comprehensive view of the uses—in private and public—as well as the lasting legacies of these instruments.

The Space Between

Aug 19

Aug 19 The Space Between

Laura I. Miller

One of the things Samantha Johnston, executive director of the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC) in Denver, likes best about her job is the opportunity to pair artists whose work wouldn’t otherwise be shown together. The Space Between combines photographs by Kris Sanford with photographs, video, and audio from Philip Matthews and David Johnson. These artists use black-and-white portraiture to explore queer identities.

Aug 4

Aug 4 SHARE

Samantha Hunt-Durán

Glittering, bold, slab serif installations are cropping up all around the Denver metro area. Namely, Anuar Maauad’s multi-location SHARE installation series that has caught the attention of Denver mainstream outlets. Each one of the nearly 100 installations reads: “To share is precious, pure, and fair.”

The phrase is sampled from the song “I Want You,” often attributed to singer Marvin Gaye, but written by Leon Ware and Arthur Ross. This instrumental, romantic, atmospheric disco song was a far cry from Gaye’s usual funk range, and the lyrics make an intriguing pairing with a font sourced from the Chicago Trump Tower sign.

Jul 23

Jul 23 Night Reels

Stacey Steers is an internationally-recognized filmmaker whose work is currently featured in solo exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) and the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (MCA). These coinciding exhibitions offer a mid-career survey of Steers’ work that spans collage, film, installation, and sculpture. Steers’ dreamlike aesthetic uses the vernacular of Surrealism to explore ideas of memory, longing, and agency through her female protagonists yet these ideas are often overshadowed by a sole focus on her process.

Jul 21

Jul 21 We The People

Nari Ward: We the People at Denver’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) features selected sculptures, multi-media works, and large-scale installations from the span of Jamaican-American artist Nari Ward’s career. The exhibit was curated by Gary Carrion-Murayari, the Kraus Family Curator at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, and has previously shown at the New Museum in New York and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. We the People arrives in Denver as though planned to coincide with current Black Lives Matter events, immigration anxieties, and pandemic news

Apr 14

Apr 14 Flora

The American-Swiss artist duo of Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler, usually referred to as Hubbard / Birchler, offer a dip into the archive with their recent exhibition Flora at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. While exploring the scholarship of Swiss sculptor Alberto Giacometti, Hubbard / Birchler discovered much to their surprise the life and artwork of Denver-native Flora Mayo hidden within a small footnote. Previously labeled as one of Giacometti’s lovers, Hubbard / Birchler’s Flora aims to expand the lost work and curious history of Mayo in a reconstruction of narrative space and time.

Spirit Resonance

Apr 8

Apr 8 Spirit Resonance

Srishti Sankaranarayanan

Guest curated by Sarah Magnatta, Spirit Resonance celebrates the medium of printmaking and features six artists who channel their energy to create poignant, primarily abstract works. The artists—Taiko Chandler, Catherine Chauvin, Marie-Dolma Chophel, Angela Craven, Jade Hoyer, and Sangeeta Reddy—use collagraphy, lithography, monotypes, and screenprinting to open up a personal conversation with viewers through evocations of nature, language, and the emotion of color, form, and design.

Dearly Disillusioned

Apr 3

Apr 3 Dearly Disillusioned

Mary Voelz Chandler

Featuring work by four artist/curatorial groups—Birdseed Collective, Hardly Soft, Odessa, and Pink Progression—the aim of Dearly Disillusioned is to commemorate the centennial of women’s suffrage in the U.S. (although notably this is not the centennial for all women) and to expand on the Womxn’s March mission to end inequality and discrimination based on gender identity. Throughout the exhibition, the four segments draw upon societal and environmental concerns, championing shared power, celebrating the vote for women across the country, and the rule of law applicable to all people in equal measure.

Imprint and 528.0

Mar 16

Mar 16 Imprint and 528.0

Jillian Blackwell

To celebrate Denver’s Month of Printmaking this March, the Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities is the place to go if you want to see a dizzying assortment of prints. The two exhibitions on display, Imprint: Print Educators of Colorado and 528.0 Regional Juried Printmaking Exhibition, showcase works that demonstrate a plethora of printmaking techniques—many using a variety of materials outside of paper—and even include a few installation pieces. Everything from engraving, intaglio, and lithographs to screenprinting, woodcuts, and more are on display in these wide-ranging surveys.

Near in the Distance

Feb 28

Feb 28 Near in the Distance

Near in the Distance, the annual resident artist exhibition at Redline, is the first show in the Afrofuturism series. It includes eighteen current resident artists and recent alumni who respond to the theme authentically and responsibly. Some artists use the prompt as an opportunity to explore the topic of possible futures more generally, while others choose to engage directly with issues of white privilege, gentrification, surveillance, and social justice.

The Art Happens Here

Feb 7

Feb 7 The Art Happens Here

Jan 28

Jan 28 Maybe Blue

Valeria Serrano Vélez

Despite the sizable number of creative graduates who have called and continue to call Boulder, Colorado home, there is a notable lack of alternative spaces in the city where local artists and curators can show their work and experiment with new ideas. A new residential arts space called Maybe Blue is slowly changing this.