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.

Sep 28

Sep 28 Neuron Forest

Intricate flowing systems that mingle, connect, and divide from one another exist in everything that moves. Imagine the rooting systems of plants, the complex network of river systems, and the jutting flashes of lightning as they find their way to the earth. These complicated structures scaffold how we think, move, and comprehend the world around us through the consciousness that constructs the pathways of our neurons. The artist Katie Caron plays on this dynamism of the neuron and nature’s unconscious geometric patterns in her new exhibition Neuron Forest at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder.

Last Chance Module Array (Modules No. 4, 5)

Sep 20

Sep 20 Last Chance Module Array (Modules No. 4, 5)

Madeleine Boyson

Last Chance Module Array (2015-2016), iterations four and five in M12 Studio’s Prairie Module series created with Onix Architects from Groningen, the Netherlands, stands halfway between Denver and the Kansas state border as a lone, contemporary monument.

High Desert Homecoming / Nude Masculine States

Sep 11

Sep 11 High Desert Homecoming / Nude Masculine States

Mary Grace Bernard

For the month of September, Lindsey Bell has curated two solo exhibitions in her Denver gallery Bell Projects by artists Jamie Gray (in the front gallery) and Jon Sargent (in Bell Project’s Living Room gallery). Gray’s High Desert Homecoming and Sargent’s Nude Masculine States together share the common theme of nature.

Fiber Art International 2022

Sep 7

Sep 7 Fiber Art International 2022

Dani/elle Cunningham

This Fiber Art International exhibition at the Museum of Art Fort Collins praises the handmade and the materiality of objects, revealing that many artists still enjoy interacting physically with their work. Although AI-generated artwork isn’t likely to disappear, it seems that neither is fiber art. The strong relationship between artists and objects is profoundly felt and impacts their selection of materials and concepts, ranging from the macro to the micro, demonstrating that art can be made from anything.

Abstract Expressions

Aug 29

Aug 29 Abstract Expressions

Raymundo Muñoz

Clyfford Still Museum presents Abstract Expressions, a terrace installation by composer Nathan Hall and Denver Botanic Gardens assistant curator and horticulturist Kevin Phillip Williams. Not since the museum’s opening in 2011 have the terraces been revamped and reimagined, so the change is a welcome one. The new installation invites viewers to enjoy the second-level outdoor spaces with a multisensory experience of soundscapes and regionally relevant gardens inspired by the life and art of abstract expressionist Clyfford Still.

Islands Beyond Blue

Aug 24

Aug 24 Islands Beyond Blue

José Antonio Arellano

Like tourists embarking on a Pacific excursion, visitors of the newly reopened Arts of Oceania gallery at the Denver Art Museum are greeted by plastic leis. Whereas the kitschy garlands that adorn vacationing travelers adhere to advertised paradisal fantasies, the hundreds of synthetic leis of this installation gather to form a more dismal image—that of an imposing mushroom cloud. The exhibition Islands Beyond Blue: Niki Hastings-McFall and Treasures from the Oceania Collection confronts the visitors’ learned vocabulary and expectations and exposes the (mis)understanding these can produce.

Aug 14

Aug 14 Clayprints

Jillian Blackwell

A cornucopia of colorful prints spread in a continuous line across the walls of The Bridge Gallery and The Commons Gallery in Colorado Springs. Clayprints, an exhibition of the work of Michael Cellan and friends, showcases a unique and not widely practiced type of monoprinting. Clayprinting merges the spontaneity of clay and the trace-quality of printmaking. If you have never seen a clayprint in person, this is not a show to be missed.

Aug 10

Aug 10 Evocation

Raymundo Muñoz

Changing forms and colors call forth in our minds and hearts anything from personal truths to great mysteries. In a similar way, Evocation―the current exhibition on view at Walker Fine Art―presents selected works from six artists that invite introspection through the common themes of nature, landscape, and memory. It’s a well-curated show with a strong backbone of fine, representational painting from Matt Christie, Doug Haeussner, Peter Illig, and Virginia Steck, further enhanced by striking abstract work from Atticus Adams and Kim Ferrer.

Aug 1

Aug 1 Marina Eckler

The meandering lines and poetic washes of color in Marina Eckler’s work offer an entrance into her arena of paradoxical structures. Feelings of tender uncertainty coexist with confidently defined forms. Working across various media–including drawing, painting, interactive objects, and performance–she constructs a visual language that unearths all the humor and heartbreak in the gentle slope of a mark.

Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave

Jul 25

Jul 25 Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave

Djamila Ricciardi

The most recent exhibition at Museo de las Americas features 13 international artists and two artist collectives who together “represent Colombia’s cultural diversity as well as its geographic differences.” It is truly an expansive survey that “emphasizes the interconnectedness of people and nature and the contradictions of that connection.” It is rare that artwork produced in one location can transcend time and geography to connect with local viewers on such a visceral, human level. Presented in collaboration with independent curator and native Colombian Alex Brahim, Museo de las Americas offers Colombia: The Corn, the River, and the Grave—a far-reaching exhibition that seeks to reconcile with the ghosts of a nation’s past and look towards the future with hard-won hope and empathy.

I Invited Myself, vol. II

Jul 18

Jul 18 I Invited Myself, vol. II

Eiko Otake’s oeuvre encompasses a wide range of practices. She has worked as an internationally recognized movement and media artist for nearly 50 years. I Invited Myself, vol. II at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center (FAC) is in keeping with the multidisciplinary character of her work. In part, it is a survey of five decades of art. It is also a contemplation of space and time—indeed, the works on display rotate through a series of literal "seasons." Additionally, vol. II includes live performances that engage directly with the work on display and three symposiums with Colorado College that feature artists, curators, and scholars in dialogue with Otake and each other.

MFA Thesis Exhibition 2023

Jul 12

Jul 12 MFA Thesis Exhibition 2023

Mary Grace Bernard

This year’s Colorado State University (CSU) Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Thesis Exhibition celebrates the culmination of artworks by three graduate students. Leila Malekadeli, MFA Graduate in Sculpture, Sam Hamilton, MFA Graduate in Painting, and Vicente Delgado, Graduate in Printmaking, completed three years of study in the Department of Art and Art History’s creative studio arts program. By fostering individual research, CSU’s MFA program encourages graduate students to focus on a specific medium and complete a strong body of work in their chosen field.

Made in Colorado

Jul 5

Jul 5 Made in Colorado

Laura I. Miller

The juried Made in Colorado exhibition at the University of Colorado Denver's Emmanuel and Experience Galleries features artists currently living in the state and typically was held every two years. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the exhibition has been on hiatus since 2018, but the 45 artists now on display haven’t been idle. They’ve been busy painting, sculpting, sewing, photographing, videographing, building, and making. If the exhibition, held at CU Denver’s Emmanuel and Experience Galleries, is any indication of how we’ve evolved over the past five years, then it appears that we’re in the midst of an artistic renaissance. The exhibition thrums with vibrancy and awareness of the artist’s role in society.

The Castle / Blossom & Decay

Jun 28

Jun 28 The Castle / Blossom & Decay

Leo Franco’s The Castle and Brian Cavanaugh’s Blossom & Decay at Pirate Contemporary Art present two different approaches to constructing narratives out of a material-based logic. Franco favors a visual rhythm composed of elegantly finished wooden structures, while Cavanaugh intertwines organic matter through endless lengths of wire to grow a joyously provisional ecosystem.

Jun 26

Jun 26 Prismatic

Dani/elle Cunningham

Talent from Colorado and beyond shines in “Prismatic,” as does the breadth of the queer artist community. More than that though, this exhibition illustrates that art doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Life experiences lead to ideas and influence artistic styles, generating concepts to which the public can relate. Maybe minds won’t be made more inclusive or accepting by this exhibition, as it seems largely tailored to a queer or an already-receptive audience, but minds will certainly be strengthened in the idea that there is no such thing as identity, singular.

High Strangeness

Jun 22

Jun 22 High Strangeness

Madeleine Boyson

On view through July 2 at Lane Meyer Projects in Denver, High Strangeness features eight paintings by Littleton, Colorado-born and -based artist Mark Farrell that are gleefully sinister and ominously playful. Farrell’s works are ideal for the room in which they are featured. The exhibition evokes a corresponding impishness to RiNo’s PoN pOn art bar—through which visitors must walk to reach the project space—while indulging in macabre spectacles that parody cultural façades. But Farrell does more than blur the line between “classic horror and the suburban mundane,” producing multi-layered scenes that delight in the true comedic horror of living in the twenty-first century: life itself.

Jun 13

Jun 13 Skyspace

Jillian Blackwell

Green Box Arts opened James Turrell’s Green Mountain Falls Skyspace in the Red Butte Recreational Area near Pikes Peak this past year. Visiting the installation for the formal Sunset or Sunrise Shows feels like a pilgrimage, requiring an arduous journey to get to the building that houses the artwork, but viewing the sky at the final destination is well worth the trek.

Jun 8

Jun 8 Sanctuary

Todd Herman’s exhibition Sanctuary at Mercury Framing in Boulder invites associations. He displays his photographs serially and they read like a film strip. Taking in the exhibit, your choice becomes one of narration—of how you will view these images as a story and decide what they mean. Ultimately, the meaning is continually shifting.

May 29

May 29 Clerestory

J. Benjamin Burney

Ethan’s Jackson’s clerestory takes the camera obscura and, using mirrors and sunlight, evolves it into an immersive art experience where the outside is projected inside. The inside in this case is a wing of the Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales Library Branch on the first floor, in the Story Time Tower which is located behind the children’s section. Created as part of the City of Denver’s Public Art Program in 2016, clerestory integrates architecture and optical artwork to create a scene of nature on the vaulted ceiling of the tower.

Lasting Impressions / Onward and Upward

May 26

May 26 Lasting Impressions / Onward and Upward

Lasting Impressions and Onward and Upward: Shark’s Ink at the University of Colorado Art Museum in Boulder present prints from an array of artistic movements to tell the idiosyncratic story of the United States. The works on view collectively assert that printmaking, long used as an accessible means for a wider audience to view an artwork or a message, pulses with an inherent urgency rooted in the desire for communication.