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.

Nov 24

Nov 24 Silsila

Sama Alshaibi’s solo exhibition Silsila is currently on view at the Hatton Gallery at Colorado State University (CSU) and is presented in conjunction with the Center for Fine Art Photography and the CSU Center for Environmental Justice as part of the Environmental Justice Thru the Arts exhibition series. Part of her larger project also titled Silsila, Alshaibi creates photographs and videos of performances, explorations, and documentations of her journey through fifteen predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Maldives nation of islands in Southeast Asia between 2009 and 2016.

Nov 14

Nov 14 caesura

José Antonio Arellano

I want to invoke metaphors of geological time to describe the sense of temporality invoked by Martha Russo’s exhibition at the Ent Center for the Arts. Apart from the pandemic-related interruptions that delayed its possibility, the nature of the work itself is accumulative, labor and time-intensive. With this exhibition—titled caesura, on view until December 2— the Gallery of Contemporary Art (GOCA) proves itself as a site committed to advancing what could be possible in the arts in Colorado Springs.

A Mi Manera | Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado | Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley

Nov 7

Nov 7 A Mi Manera | Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado | Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley

Dani/elle Cunningham

The Arvada Center’s three newest exhibitions explore the history, traditions, and aesthetic of the San Luis Valley, affectionately known as the Valley. In the Main Gallery, Emilio Lobato’s retrospective A Mi Manera: A 40-Year Survey encompasses the Valley native’s innovation and numerous stylistic changes. Meanwhile, two group exhibitions, Latitude 37°: Art of Southern Colorado and Colcha Embroidery of the San Luis Valley, embody the region’s influence and relationship to colonialism and hybridity, respectively.

Reflections on Amache

Oct 31

Oct 31 Reflections on Amache

Mary Grace Bernard

Currently on view at the Parker Arts, Culture & Events Center until November 12, 2023 is a solo exhibition of work by Sarah Fukami entitled Reflections on Amache. From cut Plexiglas® to lithography, and personal documents to government archives, Fukami uses a variety of media to layer her family’s history and the immigrant experience as Japanese Americans living during World War II.

It’s a Wrap / IFeel Monsters / Giving Voice

Oct 26

Oct 26 It’s a Wrap / IFeel Monsters / Giving Voice

In collaboration with Nicole Banowetz, Access Gallery artists DILLPhoenix, Heather H., Jareth J. Charles, and Skylar K. have created an installation of soft sculptures brimming with textural delight and dynamic colors. Abstract fiber forms inspired by a variety of natural organisms activate the entire space from floor to ceiling. Alongside the installation titled It’s a Wrap, two community projects offer generative tactile experiences as outlets for people who have been affected by bullying.

Light Contrasting with Dark

Oct 12

Oct 12 Light Contrasting with Dark

Dani/elle Cunningham

Cabell has always worked with re-purposed materials in a subversion of human consumption and waste, while Bailey focuses on conservation education through photography. Though the artists work in markedly divergent mediums, these shared interests became connective points. With Light Contrasting with Dark, their second collaborative exhibition at the Artists on Santa Fe gallery in Denver, Bailey and Cabell have honed their artistic relationship, generating unexpectedly cohesive works that are as natural as their subject matter.

Colorado Women to Watch

Oct 10

Oct 10 Colorado Women to Watch

An open, curious approach to material and a long-term commitment to process emerge as the conceptual through-lines of Colorado Women to Watch, currently on view at MSU’s Center for Visual Art (CVA). Curated by CVA director Cecily Cullen, the exhibition brings together five well-established, female-identifying artists: Kim Dickey, Ana María Hernando, Maia Ruth Lee, Suchitra Mattai, and Senga Nengudi.

Wild and Precious

Oct 3

Oct 3 Wild and Precious

Laura I. Miller

You could call Rachel Denny’s Wild and Precious exhibition at Visions West Contemporary romantic. After all, her textile sculptures include a frolicking fawn, a soaring bird, grazing sheep, and a hopping rabbit. But if you look closer, you’ll see that the sculptures, which take their inspiration from taxidermied animals, have dark undercurrents that stem from man’s conflicted relationship with nature.

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.