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
In the exhibition Patterns of Consumption at the Littleton Museum, Kalliopi Monoyios converts cast aside objects, including single-use plastic, cords, and snack packaging, into new states of being as art materials, quilt-like wall hangings, sculptures, and three-dimensional framed works ranging from minimalist to maximalist styles that are nearly unrecognizable from their original forms.
Brenda Mallory’s exhibition The Folly of Dominion explores “making do” as both a resource for material usage and for engaging with the practice of frugality and resilience. It is on view in Colorado State University’s Lory Student Center Duhesa Gallery. Lenka Konopasek’s exhibition Transient Objects of Desire, in the Lory Student Center’s Curfman Gallery, focuses on the dichotomies flowing between tension and solace, beauty and destruction, and brute force and gentle intimacy.
The artwork of Jean Herman and Taylor Coble is currently on view at Sync Gallery, located at the heart of Denver’s creative district on Santa Fe Drive. The exhibition is titled Discoveries. While both artists use vastly different styles, it is hard not to see connections between the two in subject matter and spirit and their use of mixed media.
Susan Cooper’s installation Story Line, A Visual History from Poland to the USA, on view at the University of Denver’s Anderson Academic Commons, is a visual autobiography told through the depiction of buildings, ships, houses, and vehicles. It chronicles Cooper’s and her family’s journey from Poland to Los Angeles to Denver. Like Cooper’s storyline, the exhibition has travelled from Chmielnik, Poland to the University of California, Los Angeles and now is on display at the University of Denver.
The concrete and steel of SPACE Gallery in Denver sparkles in the sun as I am greeted and directed towards the works of the artists Philip Tarlow and Noelle Phares. You first encounter Philip Tarlow’s exhibit titled: i fly (petAow). The series of abstract collage works are inspired by two events: the jubilance Tarlow felt watching the 2020 Olympics and also a surgery around the same time he underwent to save his eyesight. Noelle Phares’ exhibition titled Hothouse speaks to the Anthropocene and the greenhouse gasses caused by human pollution. Phares is able to bring our attention to a very concerning topic without making us want to run out the door.
Featuring the work of nine contemporary Japanese artists—Hina Aoyama, Eriko Horiki, Kyoko Ibe, Yoshio Ikezaki, Kakuko Ishii, Yuko Kimura, Yuko Nishimura, Takaaki Tanaka, and Ayomi Yoshida—the exhibition Washi Transformed at the Longmont Museum unifies the artists’ diverse practices through an exploration of their shared use of the ancient medium of washi (和紙), handmade Japanese paper. The result is a show both distinctly focused and wonderfully abundant in unique expressions created through the artists’ contemporary aesthetic interventions.
This spring, Core New Art Space in Lakewood presents the exhibition Architecture of Form for its third year running. It’s a love letter to geometry for geometry’s sake. A viewer may rest their eyes on balanced arrangements of squares and rectangles, angular compositions in pleasing palettes, and repeating patterns and shapes. The exhibit statement boldly declares, “Geometry intrinsically rejects contemporary transient socio-political and cultural involvement as well as the interpretive bias of the viewer.”
At the Downtown Aurora Visual Arts (DAVA), Viviane Le Courtois has put together the current show In Between, a printmaking exhibition. It’s part of the Month of Printmaking (or Mo’Print, for short), and Le Courtois has curated an exhibition showcasing local Colorado artists from various backgrounds. Each artist is in some way “in between” two or more identities: gender, culture, language, religion, place, nationality, ability, or ethnicity. The artists not only examine and describe their own identity (or identities), but also question the validity of having to belong to one group over another.
Transcendent Glitch—the title for Art Gym Gallery’s fifth iteration of the Impressed national printmaking exhibit—sets an interesting tone for the show. Referring to an extraordinary error, it’s a surprising description for a juried exhibition featuring works of impressive technical skill from 27 different artists. Further, the term “glitch” connotes flaws in both the digital and electronic realms.
With the origins of abstraction dating back over a hundred years, I would never blame an artist who felt stuck or intimidated by the challenge of expanding upon abstraction during this 21st century. However, it is evident from Jennie Kiessling’s exhibition In the Garden, In the Distance made up of 83 artworks that she feels no such intimidation but is rather inspired. From January 14 to April 10, Kiessling brings her abstract works to the Loveland Museum in three series: In the Garden, In the Distance, The Disciplined Painting, and Your Hunger Betrays You.
It’s clear that great attention to detail and careful planning have been put into the exhibition Josef Hoffman’s Vienna at the Kirkland Museum of Fine & Decorative Art in Denver. One of the key elements of the period and of the Vienna Secession in particular—the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk—is in its very definition. The German term describes “a total work of art,” with the “it” perhaps referring to an entire room, or even an entire building, like Hoffmann’s most recognizable architectural work, the Stoclet Palace (located in Brussels and constructed between 1905 and 1911).
In the first exhibition at east window SOUTH, emerging artist André Ramos-Woodard presents a straightforward and concise visual display of the ongoing struggle of African Americans at the hands of cops through photographic collages, ubiquitous images from social media, and a video projection. The fifteen photographic works of art and the video in African America: Contempt of Greasy Pigs make up the inaugural exhibition in the newly opened gallery east window SOUTH managed by Todd Herman.
The five solo exhibitions currently on view at Robischon Gallery each capture a delicate and masterful use of color and texture. When entering the gallery on a gray winter day, one is washed over with the bright palette of Deborah Zlotsky’s paintings. In contrast to Zlotsky’s large cartoonish paintings, Altoon Sultan’s serene works are in praise of small things—diminutive compositions, small repeating loops of wool, and closely cropped images of parts of a whole. Kate Petley’s photographs utilize a slight of hand to engage the viewer in active seeing. And nestled in the back room are the works of Scott Chamberlin and Stephanie Robison, who approach materiality and texture with the same vigor that the other artists approach color.
Every year, the Center for Fine Art Photography (C4FAP) in Fort Collins and Loveland's Artworks Center for Contemporary Art (ACCA) collaborate on a lens-based exhibition. As the C4FAP and exhibition curator Hamidah Glasgow notes, the significance of such exhibitions to the art community is that they counter the notion that successful art can only be made in a competitive vacuum. This year's offering is a double testament to this sentiment, as it highlights the collaborative spirit between C4FAP and ACCA while exhibiting several collaborations among artists.
Visitors can expect to be confronted by the contemporary theme of identity, but what sets the exhibition apart are the processes of identity exploration these artists are willing to share, including visceral representations of the intimate steps they have taken to know themselves better. From manipulating mediums to manipulating their own bodies, each artist questions their physical and psychological limits, the constructed boundaries of the world, and even the fluidity of art media. The exhibition features Alicia Rodriguez Alvisa and Lidzie Alvisa, Kristianne Riddle, Rafael Soldi, and Lorenzo Triburgo and Sara Van Dyck.
K Contemporary’s As of Now exhibition sums up the gallery’s last five years of existence, not only in the work that it has shown, but also in how it has approached the world. With owner Doug Kacena at the helm, K Contemporary navigates the troubled waters of our times, exploring relevant cultural matters, current events, and how the pandemic has affected us all. Kacena champions artists who do not shy away from hefty topics that are difficult to handle, whose works add insight or nuance to discussions of subjects like race, politics, and death. As of Now not only highlights the featured artists’ work, but also explores how the gallery built connections between those artists and the broader world.
Around 1503-1507, a Nahua girl later known by various names—Malina, Malinalli Tenépatl, Doña Marina, Malintzin, La Malinche—was born on Mexico’s Gulf coast. Malinche was a principal, if overlooked actor during this period, garnering a complicated, yet impassioned heritage of criticism and admiration as both a traitor and “the mother of Mexico.” Traitor, Survivor, Icon: The Legacy of La Malinche at the Denver Art Museum is the first ever comprehensive art exhibition examining Malinche’s significance.
On a wintry Sunday, I had the pleasure of walking through Leon Gallery with Viktor El-Saieh, the curator of Pitit Tig / Children of Tigers. Featuring works by ten contemporary Haitian artists, including El-Saieh himself, the exhibition tells many interweaving stories. Bright colors warm the air. Deities, mermaids, and townsfolk depicted as cats play-out cultural rhythms through densely painted scenes, textiles, carved wood, and clay sculpture. The artists’ work speaks for itself—brilliant in technique, craft, and character. Most of the pieces were lovingly created thousands of miles away. Despite the distance, Pitit Tig / Children of Tigers is embedded with a reverence for Haitian culture, history, and spirituality that gives art patrons a glimpse into this faraway home.
Community Forms is an outdoor installation on the TAXI Campus in Denver by artist Matt Barton (b. 1975), created for the nonprofit, nomadic art museum Black Cube. In 2021, Barton received an 18-month artist fellowship with Black Cube to produce a site-specific work that expands audience engagement with contemporary art. To that end, Barton designed Community Forms as Black Cube’s first permanent site-specific artwork.
