New in Galleries: Celebrate Casa Bonita, Go Immersive at the Museo and See LEGO Art in Loveland

Everyone’s a critic at How Do You Like Me Now?, the seventh edition of Next Gallery’s Casa Bonita Art Show that opens Friday, February 16. And at the Denver Art Museum on Sunday, February 18, visitors are invited to sit on the art in a new show on chair design. What is the creative world coming to?

Go see! Here’s our list to get you started:

Intervals
Robischon Gallery, 1740 Wazee Street
Through March 9
Robischon Gallery turns over its spaces to 24 gallery artists riffing individually on the concept of scale, from tiny to liminal to monumental, and how it expresses the creative process. The visual variety alone suggests a stunning art walk through the building, so give yourself some time – but hurry, too, because this show only runs through Saturday, March 9.

Sacred & Soft Landings: Soñar y Descansar
Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 17
Museum admission: $5 to $8 (members and children aged twelve and under free)
The Museo is trying something new with the pop-up installation Sacred & Soft Landings: Soñar y Descansar, an immersive adventure promising multisensory succor in the face of the raw, deep ethnic and political divisions that are tearing the world apart in real time. Local artists Cal Duran, Sam Hutch-Ouranos, David Castillo, Lillian Lara, Cindy Loya and Ana Marina Sanchez collaborated to create an out-of-the-box, calming exhibition without boundaries. Check out the experiment through March 17.

Syncopation, a Contributing Artists Exhibition
Sync Gallery, 931 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 10
Opening Reception: Friday, February 16, 6 to 9 p.m.
Sync Gallery in the Art District on Santa Fe throws its annual show by its Contributing Artist Program, which invites artists to participate for a fee covering exhibition costs and other perks. Syncopations, named to note the added interest and complexities new artists add to the diversity of Sync’s regular member output, includes work by 22 new names at the gallery.

The Casa Bonita Art Show: How Do You Like Me Now?
Next Gallery, 6501 West Colfax Avenue
Friday, February 16, through March 3
Opening Reception: Friday, February 16, 5 to 10 p.m.
It’s the lucky seventh year for Next Gallery’s annual Casa Bonita Art Show. To begin with, the pink eatertainment palace has finally reopened, spit-shined and updated by the South Park crew. But whether or not you like the new menu or the redistributed attractions, the art for this novelty exhibition, this time called How Do You Like Me Now?, is always spectacular and full of love for the iconic tourist trap that defines lowbrow. Judges Andrew Novick, fashionista Mona Lucero and Next stalwart Betsy Rudolph (aka Dolla B), have been bombarded with top-notch renditions. Go if you want to be among the first to know.

X.i Tenth Anniversary Exhibition
Michael Warren Contemporary, 760 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 16
Opening Reception: Friday, February 16, 5 to 8 p.m.
Michael Warren Contemporary embarks this weekend on a summer-long revolving exhibition of gallery artists, ten at a time, to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The first leg of the series, which is spread out month by month to give more space to every artist in the anniversary showcase, focuses on Eva Bovenzi, Brenda Biondo, Isa Catto, Raul de la Torre, Sharon Feder, Fred Hodder, Tom Hoitsma, William Loveless, Mark Rediske and Lorelei Schott, offering a cross-section of styles and mediums.

LEGO Art Show
Par.a.dox Gallery, 2683 North Taft Avenue, Loveland
Friday, February 16, through March 10
Opening Reception: Friday, February 16, 5 to 10 p.m.
Everyone loves LEGOs (except when accidentally stepped upon), because the plastic blocks pose no creative limits. You can build something, pull it apart and build something else completely different, driven by imagination alone. What happens, then, when a bunch of artists get their hands on a pile of LEGOs and begin to create? You’ll have to head to Loveland to find out, when the new gallery/bar Par.a.dox hosts a Lego Art Show on the theme of paradoxes in life, juried by Denver’s Lord of Cool, Andrew Novick. Why Loveland? In 1965, one of the first LEGO factories in the U.S. was built there, complete with an exterior designed to look like LEGO blocks. Cash awards and a mini exhibition at Par.a.dox will be handed to the winners in Best in Show, Runner Up and Fan Favorite categories.

Carol Till, Prairie
Introducing Julia Martin
NKollectiv, 960 Santa Fe Drive
Friday, February 16, through March 10
Friday, February 16, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
NKollectiv artist and printmaker Carol Till pitches in this month for the citywide Month of Printmaking 2024 with a nature-derived print series. Till fell in love with the prairie ecosystem last fall, gathering flowers and grasses to ink and print, and researching the relationship between plants and prairie wildlife. New NKollectiv member Julia Martin will introduce herself with work combining fiber techniques layered with oil and wax to create a patchwork.

Trey Egan, Layer It, Divide It
Anne von Freyburg, Roses are blue and the mirror is you
K Contemporary, 1412 Wazee Street
Saturday, February 17, through March 30
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 17, 3 to 6 p.m.
K Contemporary pairs Trey Egan’s candy-colored paintings, brushed this way and that in short, painterly strokes of thick impastoed layers, with Anne von Freyburg’s Rococo paint-and-fiber creations for a color-forward pair of shows on view through March 30. Drop by the Saturday afternoon reception to meet Egan.

Barbara DeMarlie and Carrie MaKenna, It’s a Mystery
Tricia Soderberg, Bursting Botanicals
Claire Ibarra, Self-_____
Craig Rouse, Embracing Stillness, in the East Gallery
D’art Gallery, 900 Santa Fe Drive
Through March 10
Opening Reception: Saturday, February 17, 1 to 5 p.m.
A lot is going on at D’art Gallery as new shows debut this weekend, beginning with It’s a Mystery, a duet by gallery artists Barbara DeMarlie and Carrie MaKenna, who both favor the basic medium of acrylic paint to visually explore inner views of earthly magic and mystery unimpeded by civilization. Fellow gallery member Claire Ibarra dallies with a choose-your-own-narrative theme, illustrated by a composite style of mixed photographic imagery, while member Tricia Soderberg’s monotypes flirt with florals. In the East Gallery, Craig Rouse’s paintings pair architecture and abstraction in geometric forms.

Evans School Open Studios and Art Market
Evans School Building, 1115 Acoma Street
Saturday, February 17, noon to 6 p.m.
Shmooze with artists and buy works in an informal atmosphere this weekend as the Evans School’s dedicated monthly open-studio event returns in its new monthly third-Saturday cycle.

Have a Seat: Mexican Chair Design Today
Denver Art Museum, 100 West 14th Avenue Parkway
Sunday, February 18, through November 3
The new Have a Seat exhibition opening Sunday is an in-house job, culled from the modern end of the Denver Art Museum’s 18,000-item Architecture and Design collection to celebrate how Mexican designers reach into a multicultural history to reinvent old traditions. Unlike most museum shows, this one even encourages viewers to touch and sit on the chairs as a way to get to know them better. For more background, the DAM is hosting a lecture on Saturday, February 17, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., with the museum’s Latin American art curator, Jorge F. Rivas Pérez, who will give you some ideas about what to look for, and perhaps what to touch. Tickets are $20 (members and college students free); register here.

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