MycoMorphosis: Dancing with Fungi is a multimedia, interdisciplinary, collaborative BioArt installation led by artist and choreographer Iván-Daniel Espinosa. The work incorporates mycology, electroacoustic soundscapes, and dance.

Opening Reception September 19th. 2024, 5:30 - 7:30 pm.

Enjoy candid moments from everyday life in Denver and around the world in the Colorado Photographic Arts Center's new exhibition, Views From the Street.

Curated by Samantha Johnston, CPAC's Executive Director & Curator, the exhibition brings 18 artists together in an exciting visual conversation that challenges the boundaries of traditional street photography.

Opening Reception is Friday, August 16 (6 – 9pm). This event is free and open to the public. We’re also excited to host Instagram Live Chats with exhibiting artists from the Women Street Photographers group and street walking tours led by a few of the local photographers in the show as special programming for this exhibition.

There is no cost to participate in any of the events. Instagram Live Chats at 1 pm (MST) with Samantha Johnston at @cpacphoto: Thursday, 8/22 – Vanessa Charlot Wednesday, 8/28 – Gulnara Lyabib Samoilova

Street Walking Tours from 2 - 4pm (registration required, meet at CPAC): Saturday, 9/21 – led by Kenneth Wajda and Stephen W. Podrasky Saturday, 9/28 – led by Rudy Ortega and Jeff Tidwell Special thanks to exhibition sponsors Hahnemühle and Digital Silver Imaging.

Image detail: “Red Upsweep”, ©B Jane Levine

¿Qué soy?: Las historias que contamos / What am I?: The stories we tell

Born in Mexico and raised in East Los Angeles, Anthony Quinn, a two-time Oscar winner, was a legendary actor. This pop-up exhibition offers a glimpse into his lesser-known passion for drawing, painting, and sculpting, highlighting his legacy as a prolific visual artist focused on themes of identity and vocation.

Photo credit: Anthony Quinn, c.1982, Tallix Foundry in Peekskill NY. Courtesy of the Anthony Quinn Estate.

To see a highly selective survey of the best contemporary photography from Colorado and across the country, don't miss the 61st Annual Juried Members’ Show at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center (CPAC). This tradition showcases CPAC’s talented community of over 600 members and provides artists, both locally and nationally, with an important exhibition opportunity.

This year’s esteemed juror is Brent Lewis, Co-Founder of Diversify Photo and a Photo Editor at The New York Times. More than 1,000 images were submitted by photographers at all experience levels, and Lewis selected 34 works that will be on view at CPAC from June 28 – August 10, 2024.

Please join us for an Opening Reception & Award Ceremony on Saturday, June 29 (5 - 8 pm) at CPAC, 1200 Lincoln Street, Suite 111, Denver, CO 80203. Awards will be presented for Best in Show, Director's Choice, and Honorable Mention(s). All events are free and open to the public. Learn more at: https://cpacphoto.org/2024-annual-members-show/.

Gallery Hours: Tues - Fri 11-5, Sat 12-4. Image credit: Humpback Whales Bubble Net Feeding, detail, by Frank Zurey

Newcomers eloquently captures the resilience and humanity of young immigrants through powerful blacked-out portraits and narratives, offering a profound glimpse into their experiences and bringing an underrepresented community out of the shadows with transformative art.

The Presence of Absence masterfully navigates the depths of human experience post-conflict, using evocative photography and film to challenge societal perceptions and ignite a transformative dialogue on grief, memory, and empathy.

Join Motus Theater for the premiere of an UndocuAmerica exhibit showcasing murals by Edica Pacha of Motus UndocuAmerica monologists that were vandalized and torn down when placed in public spaces in Denver and Boulder. And artwork, developed in collaboration with Motus Theater, for Motus immigration programming by Sebastian Sifuentes. Exhibit opening on May 10th features undocumented leader with DACA and UndocuAmerica monologist Alejandro Fuentes-Mena uplifting the assets immigrants bring to our communities and challenging inhumane immigration policies. This event is a great way for people to listen to artfully crafted stories of their undocumented neighbors, with special improv responses from Colorado’s most diverse playback theater company.

Biophilia: Nature Reimagined brings together more than 80 imaginative works, including architectural models and photographs, objects, fashion, digital installations, and immersive art experiences that collectively highlight the transformative power of nature.

Jennifer Nehrbass: Solo Exhibition

OPENING: Friday, May 3rd, 6:00 - 8:00 PM. Lacuna, meaning the space between, will include portraits, landscapes, and sculptures. Nehrbass’s practice of layering explores the multifaceted aspects of identity, place, and the concept of the in-between. This in-between brings us together or separates us; past/present, thoughts/dreams, reality/imagination. All the work in the exhibition has a slight nod to Dadaism, specifically Dada collage, when disparate images come together to create a new image. Nehrbass spends countless hours scouring the internet for the perfect vista for inspiration to create her meticulously painted landscapes. The many layers symbolize ecological layers, layers of history, layers of identity and perception causing an emotive reaction to the landscape. The dreamlike setting evokes a longing for a place of peace that offers a light at the end of the tunnel. The softer lines add a sense of flow alluding to the need to navigate together to have a peaceful outcome for the environment. The portraits in the exhibition most clearly demonstrate the use of layering as a visual metaphor for cultural signifiers and historical markers. In the painting, Rush, the oversized necklace, and hat are symbols of the greed of Manifest Destiny while the shadow line creates a mask alluding to theft. A second painting, Harness, has layers of Hispanic culture and Meso-Ameican imagery referencing the complex histories that has interwoven the Hispanic community throughout the centuries. Made of cast away objects, the sculptures in the exhibition serve as 3D versions of the paintings. Much like the paintings, each carefully balanced sculpture is painted in layers and organizations of color, which bring ordinary objects into the realm of precious.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: The Awake Volcanoes is the first solo show in a US museum for the Chilean artist, known for her recent participation at the Venice Biennale and being the recipient of the prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize for 2023.

Explore the vibrant world of Espiritu Hermosx/Beautiful Spirit, where LGBTQ+ Latinx contemporary artists weave narratives of resilience and empowerment into an eye-catching landscape.

Fazal Sheikh: Thirst | Exposure | In Place is an exhibition created from three projects photographer Fazal Sheikh made on the Colorado Plateau from 2017 to early 2023. Sheikh’s portraits and landscapes shed light on the far-reaching consequences of extractive industry and climate change.

For his solo exhibition at MCA Denver, Steven J. Yazzie (Diné/Laguna Pueblo) presents recent painting, drawing, sculpture, and video works that reflect on his shifting perceptions of and relationship with landscape. Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the complexities of an Indigenous experience as it relates to personal identity, community relationships, and a connection to the land as the source of life, stories, conflict, and healing.

For his first solo museum exhibition, Ken Gun Min focuses on one of the major throughlines in his practice: landscapes and the natural world. Featuring expansive paintings from the last six years, The Lost Paradise foregrounds Min’s use of real and imagined landscapes, through which he explores issues such as race, gender, sexuality, and immigrant experiences. In these works, Min creates new ecologies where dense, richly-textured compositions serve as metaphors for human experiences of desire, loss, and power. 

Gala Porras-Kim is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work questions how knowledge is acquired and how artworks and objects function as meaning-makers inside and outside of arts and cultural institutions. Her recent work has investigated the collecting practices of museums, questioning what is being collected and how it got there; her art imagines what might happen if those objects had a say in their possession and their future.

Colorful and energetic, Wick's works are imbued with personal meaning and underlying narratives inspired by current events of her life and the world. Many of her paintings contain pairs, and those with single figures often have companion paintings. She works in clay, textiles, yarn and found objects as well.

Paolo Arao is a Brooklyn-based, Filipino-American artist working with textiles. He received his BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Arao has shown his work widely and has presented solo exhibitions at David B. Smith Gallery (Denver), Western Exhibitions (Chicago), and Jeff Bailey Gallery (NYC) amongst others. Residencies include: Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, The Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), the Millay Colony, the Studios at MASS MoCA, Vermont Studio Center, Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, NARS Foundation, Wassaic Project, BRIC Workspace, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and the Fire Island Artist Residency. He is a recipient of an Artist Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts, a 2023–2024 Pollack-Krasner Foundation grant, and a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship. His work has been published in New American Paintings, Maake Magazine, ArtMaze, Esopus, and Dovetail.

Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today is an interactive exhibition featuring three historical artworks, 17 contemporary seats designed by 22 Mexican artists, and a site-specific art installation.

Trey Egan’s 10th solo show takes its title from a phrase that spawned his approach to non-objective painting in the spring of 2011. Scribbled on the wall above the sink in Egan’s graduate school studio were the words, “Layer It/Divide It”. Egan adopted this phrase as his mantra as he surrendered to the physicality of oil paint and developed what he dubs his “natural aesthetic” -- the organic, unencumbered way in which he and oil paint operate together. 

In her debut at K Contemporary, Anne von Freyburg, a UK-based artist, celebrates textiles and ornamental pleasures in a painterly way. Within the tradition of Rococo painting, she rethinks fiber and the decorative by creating opulent, irregularly shaped wall hangings that disguise Fragonard- and Boucher-like figures in an orgy of vinyl, acrylic ink, spray paint, hand-embroidery, and self-dyed fringe.  She harnesses the period’s excesses, while toying with the sexual politics of the gaze, the feminine, and the pretty. The idea of the Rococo portrait translated into contemporary fashion fabrics references cultures -- past and present -- obsessed by image, the body, and appearance. The work is a nod to the idea of constructed beauty in technique and ideology. 

Performing Self is a look into how seven multidisciplinary artists celebrate the mutability of self-identity through the embodiment of alter egos or personae. Through photography, video, painting, and installation, artists Tobias Fike, Noa Fodrie, Laura Lee Shill, Louis Trujillo, Eriko Tsogo, and Sherry Wiggins & Luís Filipe Branco reveal how performance plays a role in the fluid construction of self-portraiture in our increasingly image-conscious culture. The work exposes the theatricality behind the act of self-transformation through the ritualized use of costume, make-up, and movement conjointly with varying degrees of humor, humility, and empowerment. 

Though distinctly individual in their approach to material, both artists are tied together by their interest in biomorphic, hybrid forms whose appearance can be understood as futuristic, otherworldly, potentially playful, or even scheming. While Clower's stark, hard-edged mechanistic forms reveal enigmatic narratives of a modern industrialized and depersonalized world, Cobb's intimately scaled works are faintly discernable as once functional objects melded into one another, playfully reemerging with protrusions, a bit more swollen and stretched. Both artists draw us into a peculiar physical and psychological reality, leaving us to decode the hidden messages amongst rich hues, wry humor, and strangely elusive forms. The exhibition acts as an invitation to examine the complexity that materializes when the bizarrely outlandish and the strangely mundane collide with the human psyche's awkward yet often beautiful depths.

 “How can I find a title for this exhibition? … Should it have a title at all?” -- Angel Ricardo  Ricardo  Rios (November 2023) 

Angel Ricardo Ricardo Rios would like the exhibition, Fruta de la Pasion, to speak for itself.  He struggles to find language to describe what he is up to artistically. He sees no equivalent. In fact, it seems contradictory, since while painting, he is captive to intuition, gesture, reflex, and pure emotion.  

The artist concedes that if he looks at his practice over time, he can identify certain moods and tendencies. There are themes that emerge and recur: flowers, seduction, eroticism, selflessness. Though well-studied, Ricardo Rios adheres to no specific art methodology, theory, or movement. His responsibility is to his own instinct which allows him the freedom of not supplying tidy explanations to his viewers. This provides his viewers with equal freedom to interpret.  

In Ricardo Rios’ realm of feeling, everything becomes clear -- things are simply as they are. He believes that art is not about providing answers. It welcomes entirely non-verbal ways of assessing, allowing us to rely on our senses vs. intellect. In this way, the viewer is invited to enter the paintings alongside Ricardo Rios – to be part of their energetic center rather than passive observers on their outskirts. 

How do his paintings feel on our skin, evoke smell, taste, or sound? How do they ask us to check in with our bodies? How do they allow us to step back from extreme statements like “it’s good or bad” and settle into a softer place like “it pleases me or it doesn’t.” They just are. 

Ricardo Rios explains, “Fruits of Passion is ethereal – a series of images that can’t be pinned down. It’s an aroma. It’s a fruit -- a passion fruit. Art is an image, but it’s also a perfume that is intangible. It is a still life, it distills life, it is a passion fruit -- my own one.” (Mexico, October 2023)

Andrew Jensdotter’s new work is a concerted meditation on time. SeventyThreePointTwo, the exhibition’s title, reveals the average age of an American man’s life expectancy. The show is an ode to the passage of time, mortality, and the desire to appreciate life’s quiet moments. It consists of a mixture of small paintings and framed Polaroids, pivoting around the question, “What if this is the last time I...?”  For example, “What if this is the last sandwich I eat...the last kiss I give my child...the last flower I see...the last painting I make composed with yellow?”  

The questions Jensdotter tacitly poses often encourage slow-looking and contemplative thinking. Absorbing the particular in his creations can lead to beholding the infinite.  For instance, a series of simple Polaroids taken successively of a deteriorated road sign near Jensdotter’s studio outside of Taos, New Mexico, is called Bump. The individual photos are framed as a single composition in a grid format. The abraded sign, endemic to a particular place, warns of trouble ahead, an approaching “bump in the road” -- perhaps an existential nod to life’s inevitable obstacles. 

This December, Denver's Gallery 1261 proudly presents a special showcase of contemporary artworks curated by Rose Fredrick.  "Naturalism Now" presents breathtaking artworks that capture the essence of the natural world in its purest form. Each piece is a testament to the artist's ability to imbue life onto canvas, creating an immersive experience that transports viewers to serene landscapes, vibrant ecosystems, and intimate moments shared between humans and their environment. While staying true to the principles of Naturalism, the exhibited artists dare to experiment with unconventional materials, novel techniques, and innovative perspectives. As visitors traverse the gallery, they are invited to witness a captivating dialogue between tradition and innovation, a conversation that elevates the genre to unprecedented heights. 

Participating artists: Lee Andre, Sophy Brown, Dan Chen, Dianne Massey Dunbar, Andy Evansen, Ulrich Gleiter, David Griffin, David Grossmann, Stephanie Hartshorn, Quang Ho, Tony Hochstetler, Amy Laugesen, Chris Maynard, Dean Mitchell, Jim Morgan, Jeff Puckett, Daniel Sprick, Rick Stevens, and Kevin Weckbach 

December 8 - December 29

Opening Reception: December 8, 4-8 pm

If you were asked to tell a story with photographs, how many images would you need to get your point across? What if you could choose only one? Opening December 1st at the Colorado Photographic Arts Center, Tell Me a Story highlights the power of storytelling in a single frame. The exhibition features 32 photographs by 32 local, national, and international artists selected from over 500 submissions by juror Mary Statzer, Curator of Prints and Photographs at the New Mexico Museum of Art. The exhibit includes a range of styles, from landscapes to still-lifes, portraiture to abstraction – but each one tells a unique story that stands on its own. Exhibiting artists include Saeed Abdollahi, Wednesday Aja, Robert Anderson, Debe Arlook, John Bonath, Chris Bratt, Daniel Brenner, Justin A. Carney, Mark Coggins, Ron Cooper, Sharon Draghi, Jesse Freidin, Risa Friedman, Camila Franco Ribeiro Gomide, Patricia Howard, Collin Howell, Roxanne Huber, Savanna Klear, Elizabeth Kelly, Ellen Mahaffy, Sarah Malakoff, Heather Canterbury Marks, Jason McKinsey, Marni Myers, Bill Orisich, Dana Pianowski, Linda Plaisted, Edward L. Rubin, Alexandra Sheremet, Igal Stulbach, Jane Szabo, and Sherry Wiggins & Luís Filipe Branco. Learn more at cpacphoto.org/tell-me-a-story/.

Art viewing times: Tuesday - Friday, 11 - 5; Saturday Noon - 4.

Image Credit“Vixen” by Wednesday Aja