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The Armory Show is undeniably one of the biggest art shows in the world, and this upcoming September, Diego Rodriguez-Warner with K Contemporary will be one of the few Colorado-based artists ever to be exhibited there.
Growing up in Colorado by way of Venezuela, Rodriguez-Warner recalls his experiences of Denver as exciting and full of energy. His art is an amalgamation of techniques used across the world and art history, using bold colors to confront the contradictions of beauty and violence.
Artwork by Diego Rodriguez-Warner
According to Doug Kacena, owner of K Contemporary in downtown Denver, Warner was the first person who came to mind when creating the concept for the gallery’s second exhibition at The Armory, which was named as one of the top 10 booths at the show by Artsy.
International artist Elizabeth Alexander’s solo show with K Contemporary last year was placed in a section for emerging galleries. This year, K Contemporary will be placed with established galleries — showing the kind of growth K Contemporary aspires to, but also growth in Denver’s contemporary art scene.
The Armory fair officially starts Sept. 24 and ends on Sept. 27. Rodriguez-Warner admits that not everything is done yet. “When I’m in the studio, the things that arrive are meant to arrive…There’s definitely kind of an undercurrent in my work which is early 20th century travel posters with the idea of rest, relaxation, the idealized landscape and then kind of like rupturing that,” he says.
“The principal element of the work is spectacle,” he adds. “Having things that are really soft and delicate, being counterweighted by things that are really brash and heavy.” There is an element to his work that shows a mastered skill of techniques playing off of each other and also being at odds.
Rodriguez-Warner compares his art to that of a Venus flytrap. “Carnivorous plants are usually bright and colorful, and they have these little sticky hairs, and so all these techniques are the sticky little hairs they get caught in the painting.”
Warner says he grew up with a high amount of political consciousness growing up Latin-American. “I never felt that ease,” he says. In his eyes, the wide array of media “require impossible, empathetic leaps. It’s a psychopathic visual culture. All viewing, ads, Instagram models, genocide, tone-deaf celebrity news, soccer, death.”
“They will drive you insane, and so a maximalist approach in my paintings is how I choose to confront this sort of violence and beauty,” he adds. “To reconcile the irreconcilable.”
Artwork by Diego Rodriguez-Warner
What is certain about the exhibition is what could be the main attraction: a 7-by-12-foot piece created by three panels that captures the attention of the viewer with a spinning storm of bodies and colors that suffocate themselves around a pillar. “It’s really about the way that we are enraptured by the news of these sorts of things,” Rodriguez-Warner says. “It’s a weird panic.”
Denver is not considered one of the nation’s main art hubs, but Kacena believes it should and could be. Speaking about the Armory Show, he explains, “It’s a way for us to present an artist in front of a huge variety of institutions and not just in museums, but for residencies, magazines, for all of these different ways that our cultural community supports itself.
“I think we have so much here, and I think we’re so close to having more of a cultural impact on a more national and international scale, but we still have work to do,” he continues.
Kacena believes that Rodriguez-Warner’s art is doing something important. “There’s an opinion that is suggested in all of the work. Art becomes this safe space for us to interpret and have our own view and reflect upon it,” he says. “You can look at these ideas that might be different from your own and be able to associate with it in a way that feels safe. I think that’s a really important part of art is to reach people that need to be reached in a way that’s not as confrontive.”
K Contemporary is at 1412 Wazee St. Learn more about Diego Rodriguez-Warner here. The Armory Show is Sept. 24-27 in New York.
