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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This past week, I walked into Urban Mud art gallery in Denver to see Martha Daniels's solo show The Pleasures of Surface in Uncertain Times. The exhibition title was indicative of the experience—I found great pleasure in Daniels's surfaces, which were bright and colorful with great depth and emotional charge. The work in the show spans many years of her career and explores themes that she has been working with for some time. I had the opportunity to speak with Martha by phone to learn more about her process and her experience working in ceramics.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
In her most recent body of work, which focuses on the delta of the Rio Grande and the border towns of Brownsville and Matamoros, Ayala questions the existing violent narratives associated with that area through a meandering approach that mirrors the ever-evolving path of the river.
