Denverite | 06/14/2019
Wellons was among 11 artists exhibiting in “Shifting Outlines.” The show up through June 22 at the Leon nonprofit arts organization’s gallery is put on by the Art Students League of Denver and The Gathering Place, which serves women, children and transgender individuals experiencing poverty or homelessness.
Empirical Imperatives
May 11th – June 8th, 2019
Leon is demonstrating its commitment to promoting performance art through an intensive five weeks series of events featuring some of the best and brightest performance artists of the Denver art community.
Ben Youngstone + Henry Maximillian McCall
Charles Livingston
Jared David Paul Anderson
Esther Hernandez
The Flinching Eye Collective
Leon is proud to announce their upcoming performance art series, Empirical Imperatives, an exploration of the immediacy and visceral nature of performance art, celebrating artists who are actively engaging our community, challenging our notions of art viewing, and broadening our artistic experiences. The series is taking place from May 11th – June 8th, 2019. Each successive Saturday night at 7pm, the gallery will become the stage for each of these unique and innovative artists from within our Denver scene, who are exploring a variety of performance art styles, and expressing authentic, individual statements. The artists presenting include
Ben Youngstone + Henry Maximillian McCall
Charles Livingston
Jared David Paul Anderson
Esther Hernandez
and collaborative artists The Flinching Eye Collective
Saturday, May 11th, 7-10pm Ben Youngstone + Maximillian McCall
Saturday, May 18th, 7-10pm Charles Livingston
Saturday, May 25th, 7-10pm Jared David Paul Anderson
Saturday, June 1st, 7-10pm Esther Hernandez
Saturday, June 8th, 7-10pm The Flinching Eye Collective
All performances will take place approximately at 8pm each evening. Length of program varies with each artist. Refreshments and conversations occurring before and after the programming. We encourage our visitors to this series to consider donating $5 or more at the door, so that we may give 100% of the proceeds to our performing artists.
Empirical Imperatives Exhibition Schedule:
Saturday, May 11th– Ben Youngstone + Henry Maximillian McCall– Untitled.
Untitled is an exploration of the themes of repetition and stagnation through the lens of movement. We all have interior worlds that are easy to get caught within and habits that can erode the spontaneity of life. The impetus to go outside a comfort zone can come from within or from outside forces and we are looking to investigate what factors can bring this about. Using physical and verbal patterns as well as projected film elements, the artists will take the audience outside of the realm of their everyday while exploring the dancer’s own personal habits. Ben + Henry look to create a unique experience for the audience while challenging themselves to both embrace and reject the improvisational habits that we have built over a lifetime of rehearsed dance.
Saturday, May 18th – Charles Livingston –Catalyst 1,542,384
Catalyst 1,542,384 is a performance/installation whereby Charles hand cut over 1,500,000 slices of bicycle inner tubes. Viewers are encouraged at any time to sit and take pieces of the tube, count how many they remove, record the number, sign, and date the ledger. Charles counts every slice and keeps a separate ledger. The number of slices changes with each performance as viewers take pieces and he adds. Catalyst 1,542,384 can be viewed as a catalyst for change and evolution through a process. A transformation from one state to a different state of being. From a micro to a macro scale through accretion and accumulation similar to how nature constructs. It is a metaphor for the interconnection between all things. A shared experience that allows for an awakening to our place and potential in the world. Living with manufactured plastics and synthetics is part of our everyday experience. Plastics and synthetics have been co-opted into the landscape, an undesired evolution of our nature. Using discard rubber addresses this chemically induced nature and environmental problem. This synthetic landscape is also represent in the synthesized sounds used to enhance a meditative state during the performance.
Saturday, May 25th – Jared David Paul Anderson– The Primordial Playground
The Primordial Playground has been experienced in a cave, in the alley and in the next episode, in a gallery. This is a concept where the observers of art become the creators of art through means of spontaneous actions while invoking a deep dig into the marrow of primal psyche. We will be better off after this primitive art performance as it will ready us all to prepare for when the gadgetry goes dark. If the world had lost its’ vessels of technology that shackle today, we still, as a race of beings, must create art, with anti-technology.
Saturday, June 1st – Esther Hernandez– née trance
The nature of the audience will be renegotiated through a series of movements, sounds and instructions in a three part performance that revisits and reworks an old fluxus score from the fluxus performance workbook. The performance, titled née trance is about being entranced by the past, and inspired by the work of the family of artists who came before!
Saturday, June 8th –The Flinching Eye Collective– Sticky Metal
For Sticky Metal, a new performance at Leon Gallery, members of the Flinching Eye Collective will present an entanglement of Post utilitarian humans fixing (or causing) problems no one asked to be fixed.
Every performance will be documented through video and still photography, thanks to Guilio Vallada D’Amore
Westword | 05/22/2019
Leon’s Empirical Imperatives series continues over Memorial Day weekend with Jared David Paul Anderson’s The Primordial Playground, a movable feast of performance art that’s previously gone down in a cave and in an alley.
Westword | 05/08/2019
Building on the success of last year’s inaugural series, Of the Moment, Leon is giving performance art a chance again in 2019 with a fresh cast of game-changers in the fine-art arena.
Photo by Amanda Tipton
04/06/2019 | Lenscratch
Eric Nord, co-owner and curator of Leon Gallery, sees Denver as a great place for early career artists to reach the next level.
Photo by Jeff Davenport
04/05/2019 | Cicada Wheels
I had a joint show at LEON Gallery with my friend Doug Spencer, and it was my first time collaborating with another visual artist. It was an amazing shift in perspective for me to scheme and execute ideas with another person and I learned a lot about myself as an individual and as an artist.
Photo courtesy of Jaimie Gershen
The Know | 03/31/2019
Davenport presents an alternative universe in a solo show at Leon Gallery in the Uptown neighborhood.
Photo by Jeff Davenport
Westword | 03/26/2019
Another MoP show worth a shout-out is Nights: Jeff Davenport at Leon, a rich assortment of nighttime views that were shot in California, Oregon and Colorado.
Photo by Jeff Davenport
303 Magazine | 03/22/2019
At first in his career, Jeff Davenport focused on the Denver music scene, after graduating from the University of Colorado Boulder with film and art history degrees. He was a member of local bands Ending People, Dust on the Breakers, D.Biddle, Porlolo and Meese, as well as hosting a local radio show, Shakedown Radio 1190. However, in 2016 he moved to Los Angeles in pursuit of photography.
Photo by Jeff Davenport
