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.
Addressing the hard reality of climate change, an inspiring, youth-led, group exhibition titled Seeds of Hope is on display at Downtown Aurora Visual Arts through November 18. Combining works from over sixty youths (ages 6 - 18) with works by adult artists Kelly Cox, Anna Kaye, Regan Rosburg, and Eileen Roscina, this multifaceted, interactive, educational, and science-focused exhibition tackles the complex theme with a dizzying array of art and information.
At the University of Northern Colorado’s Campus Commons Gallery, Caminos Por Andar: Latinx Futurism and Expanded Realities presents anti-colonial visions of the future. In this exhibition, a cyborgean creature composed of human detritus and dirt emerges, white settlers are recast as extraterrestrials, and the Madonna and Child become residents of a modern-day border town. Many of the artworks employ a familiar futuristic aesthetic—sharp angles, ambient light, and an emphasis on technology—while others are subtle, reminding viewers that the future isn’t always a Star Trekian utopia, nor is it singular.
RemainReal Fine Art has a fall show devoted to the art form of tarot cards. Beyond the Deck is open through October 26 and invites audiences to reimagine tarot “through the eyes of Colorado’s most visionary artists.” Each of the twenty-two works in this feature exhibition interprets a different Major Arcana card from The Fool (0) to The World (XXI) and reflects the internal (cards I to VII), external (VIII through XIV), and mystical (XV to XXI) powers at play in the human experience.
A walk through Nick Ryan Gallery’s current exhibition, Shapespeak, evokes an abstracted American landscape filled with deserted strip malls, fragmented urban life, and flickering nocturnal visions. Ky Anderson, Emilio Lobato, Andy Ryan, and Courtney Sennish each utilize their own combination of highly specific colors and textures to illuminate the layered complexity of humans’ relationship to our environment, both built and natural.
For more than twenty years, Zip37 was an artist-run gallery at 37th Avenue and Navajo Street in Denver and was part of what was then the Navajo Street Art District. Though that art district has declined, Zip37 and its many recognizable artists are celebrated in a new exhibition at Kanon Collective in Lakewood’s 40 West Arts District, where many Navajo Street galleries relocated.
Colorado has a wizard, and his name is Lonnie Hanzon. The artist and storyteller has bewitched audiences via storefronts and interactive experiences since 1980, and he now dons his sorcerer’s cap to revamp Cabinet of Curiosities and Impossibilities at the Museum of Outdoor Art’s (MOA) Greenwood Village headquarters, alchemizing fable into history and oddity into treasure.
The same way a dancer works hard to appear soft, Elnaz Javani’s works in Oddments, on view at the Mariani Gallery until October 10, exude a quiet sense of power. On display are ten hanging pieces made over the past two years and a set of animal-like figures constructed in 2020.
Understudy Art Incubation Space has a unique, fishbowl-like design, with floor-to-ceiling windows that invite passersby to either observe art from the outside or physically experience it inside. Enhanced by the gallery’s compact layout, Tricia Waddell’s immersive solo exhibition, We Will Be Strange, emphasizes phenomenology, a philosophy that focuses on how the body shapes perception.
The word that seems most apt to describe Deborah Jang’s sculptural works is “lyrical”—each piece is built from a motley assortment of disparate objects which, once together, find balance and rhythm. According to Jang, her constructions are a study in radical inclusion.
Guest curator Valerie Hellstein had her work cut out for her with the exhibition Dialogue and Defiance. The exhibition tries to qualify Clyfford Still’s notorious “defiance” of the artworld by emphasizing the “dialogue” between him and his contemporaries—those who came to be called the Abstract Expressionists. Still, though, would no more have admitted to having been in dialogue with his peers than he would have wanted an art critic to review his paintings.
This year’s All Colorado Show is 2024 Fiber Art Colorado, juried by Cecily Cullen, the Director and Curator of Metropolitan State University’s Center for Visual Art. Bringing together 75 artworks by 49 artists from across the state — some of whom are members of the guild — the show quite literally fills the entire exhibition space, spanning three rooms with weavings, sculptural pieces, clothing, and more.
The artists in the group exhibition X.v, celebrating the tenth anniversary of Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, have tapped into an elemental energy to create works of spirited material exploration. Grounded in process-led practices, they traverse the range of physical realities, from scorched paper to powder coated steel.
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) is currently hosting the exhibition Tracking Time, which will be on view until September 2, 2024. This show presents the works of two artists—Chelsea Kaiah and Noelle Phares—who address the pressing ecological issues surrounding the Colorado River.
Rounding out the summer, three exhibitions at Blo Back Gallery in Pueblo explore different perspectives from Colorado-based artists Christine Rose Curry, Kim Sewell, and Adam Toksöz. Together, these exhibitions reflect the dynamic and diverse artistic voices Colorado has to offer, each contributing to a broader dialogue on modern issues and personal expression.
If there is a unifying message to be gleaned from A Hand in Nature, a show dizzying in its thematic and material scope, it is this: try as we might to control it, the natural world has a life of its own. The pandemic forced us into this realization four years ago when a coronavirus tore open every fissure in our social fabric, but while COVID exposed us to the dark side of nonhuman agency, Gala Porras-Kim opens our eyes to its poetry.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe was the “first guitar heroine of rock & roll,” in the words of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. [1] But for all her undeniable contributions to American music history, Tharpe is still not quite widely known. “I couldn’t believe more people weren’t familiar with her,” says Chloé Duplessis. “I resolved then to begin researching her life, with the intention of telling the story of this American music pioneer and founder of rock-n-roll.”
The exhibition Resist at the Avenir Museum of Design and Merchandising in Fort Collins centers on the artistry of shaped resist dyeing—a technique in which the cloth is manipulated through folding, tying, twisting, and binding—where textiles become canvases for artisans to imprint their movements and memories. The garments on display represent cultures across space and time, from India to Guatemala, starting in the late nineteenth century to present day.
The latest exhibition at SeeSaw Gallery, “Oscillations,” features four artists who unravel their connections to place and demonstrate the interplay between instinct and honed technical skills. While each brings a unique perspective to the show, curator Hayley Schneider expertly weaves together a cohesive and harmonious collection featuring Leslie Fitzsimmons, Jamie Gray, Ilan Gutin, and Autumn T. Thomas. The result is an atmosphere of serenity that ignites introspection, contemplation about the artmaking process, and commentary on the relationship between artists and their materials.
Hương Ngô’s Ungrafting at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center focuses on the politics of visibility in the context of French colonial knowledge production in Vietnam. The exhibition examines how power shapes what is seen and what is made to be unseen.
The We CU: A Visual Celebration of Black Womanhood, Presence, and Connectedness exhibition, presented by The Museum for Black Girls, unfolds as an extensive and profound exploration of the influence of Black women on the concept of “home.” Curators Charlie Billingsly and Von Ross have masterfully assembled an installation that captivates visually while also inspiring deep reflection. Through the show, they urge visitors to contemplate the substantial, yet frequently underestimated, contributions of Black women in shaping both familial and cultural frameworks.
