On November 15, Leon presents Protocols of Desire, an exhibition that places us at a crossroads of rapture and ruin, where desire and discovery blur. At the center is Eve’s bite of the apple: a moment historically framed as sin, here transformed into mythic indulgence, curiosity, and creation. Protocols of Desire reimagines this act as initiation as a declaration of agency and a charged embrace of knowledge that reverberates through our modern entanglement with technology. As we consume knowledge and innovate, technology emerges not merely as a tool but as a partner, reshaping our sense of self, our desires, and our futures.
Featuring works by Alli Lemon, Andy DiLallo, Arthur Williams, Dani Cunningham, Diego Rodriguez-Warner, Ethan Nathan, Kate Casanova, Paulus Van Horne, Ruby Sumners, and Shayne Thome, the exhibition invites viewers into a space where innocence and indulgence, creation and destruction, blur. It imagines paradise not as a static relic of the past, but as something we co-create—alive, shimmering, and in motion.
Alli Lemon (she/they) is a queer, multi-disciplinary artist living in Pittsburgh, PA. Originally from Memphis, TN, she received a BFA from the University of Memphis before moving to Colorado where she earned an MFA from the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2015, she was Yale Norfolk Summer Fellow. She has served as an adjunct instructor of art at several universities and presently teaches foundations courses at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. She was a member of the 2024-2025 Distillery Emerging Artist Residency at Brewhouse Arts in Pittsburgh.
Andy DiLallo is a new media artist whose work explores the ideological underpinnings of algorithmic systems, machine learning models, and digital agents. His practice examines how computational protocols shape emotional experience, desire, and agency, often critiquing the incentive structures of platform capitalism while imagining alternative logics. Andy has exhibited internationally at venues including SIGGRAPH, Athens Digital Arts Festival, IndieCade, The Wrong Biennale, and COP26.
Arthur Williams AIFD, EMC, IMF is known for his floral headdresses and the use of natural tension in his work. With a background in gardenin3g, sculpture, and photography, he entered the floral industry in 1996, and opened his own business, Babylon Floral Design, Inc., in 2004. Arthur was inducted into the American Institute of Floral Designers in 2015 and completed EMC, the European Master Certification program Cycle 3 in 2016. Following up with the prestigious IMF (International Master Florist) designation from the Boerma Institute in the Netherlands.
Arthur has been featured in the 2012-13, 2014-15, 2016-17, and 2018-19 2020-21 editions of International Floral Art. His work made the Spring 2013 cover of the French floral art magazine Nacre and was also featured in the winter 2016 edition. Arthur’s work has been in many Colorado publications, he has contributed to Florists’ Review magazine and was profiled in the book 50-Mile Bouquet by author Debra Prinzing. Arthur published the art book “Decade” in 2014 and co-authored “Impermanent” in 2020 .In 2018, Arthur took home a Bronze Medal for his work for the annual World Flower and Garden Show in Japan. He is also a past Creative in Residence at the Denver Art Museum .
Every piece is a collaboration between Arthur and the materials. An organic medium demands an organic process, and each placement dictates the next. Layers, color, texture are all informed by the structure, which comes from the plants themselves. Contrast and harmony blend into each other and unify. The very nature of living materials makes them impermanent. Arthur considers what is yet to come when positioning a bud yet to blossom, or a full bloom that will decline. A floral work of art is alive and transitory, and cannot be possessed; it can only be experienced. There is perfection in the imperfections of nature’s sculptures, and bringing them together in simple, striking beauty is Arthur’s gift.
dani/elle cunningham is an artist, art historian, and psy-borg living in Denver, CO. Interested in the lives of materials, she draws from mysticism and science fiction/fantasy themes to transform her own body and everyday materials into otherworldly sculptural, lens-based, and performance works. She often uses her artistic practice to interrogate and subvert the impact of capitalism on gender, sexuality, and disability and is especially concerned with humanity’s uncertain future. dani has curated exhibitions and written about cyborgism as tools for de-stigmatizing diverse experiences, particularly mental illness and neurodivergence. She also contributes regularly to regional publications, is co-founder of chant cooperative, and is a resident artist at the Temple Contemporary Artist Haven.
Diego Rodriguez-Warner, b. 1986 in Managua, Nicaragua, lives and works in Aurora, CO. In 2008, he studied under the Cuban Minister for Fine Arts, Lesbia Vent Dumois, in Havana, and in 2009 he earned a BA from Hampshire College, followed by an MFA from the printmaking department of the Rhode Island School of Design in 2013. He is a recipient of both Toby Devan Lewis (2013) and a Joan Mitchell Fellowship (2020). Rodriguez-Warner has exhibited internationally and nationally in Berlin, Denver, Havana, Los Angeles, New York City, Marfa, and Miami among others. In 2020, His work was featured at, and acquired by, the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. He is represented in public and private collections around the world and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions at major museums, including the Washington Pavilion, South Dakota; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; the Museo De Las Americas, Denver; and the Gallery of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs.
Ethan Nathan is a transdisciplinary artist with a background in fabrication and digital media. Ethan has a BA and MFA in Studio Art, and they currently supervise a woodshop and digital fabrication lab at a university. They previously worked as an exhibition fabricator at the Denver Art Museum. Prior to the DAM, Ethan taught art classes at the University of Northern Colorado and Syracuse University. They are also a practicing artist, based out of Denver, and have exhibited in New York City, and London, UK.
Ethan was born in Memphis, TN and is named after John Wayne’s famous character from The Searchers. This birthright into toxic masculinity has framed their entire life. Their artistic practice attempts to counter toxic representations of gender by building out nonnormative representations of masculinity as queer networks of material signifiers.
Kate Casanova is an interdisciplinary artist who explores the posthuman through sculpture and video. Casanova has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as Yi Gallery (Brooklyn) the Black Cube Nomadic Museum (Denver), and the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis). Casanova is represented by Myta Sayo Gallery (Toronto). She received a Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2013 and a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art & Design in 2008 and serves as Associate Professor of Sculpture and Director of the School of Art & Art History at the University of Denver.
Paulus van Horne is a sound artist and practice-based technology researcher based in Seattle, Washington, United States. After completing their doctoral research, Paulus now works as a software engineer specializing in interactive spatial audio techniques. Paulus has produced numerous sound works for podcast, broadcast and performance and presented in venues across the USA, Europe and Asia. Paulus’ primary research areas include: noise studies, vocal synthesis, gender & technology and multimedia installation artwork. Their recent artwork highlights the intimate, surreal and often alienating aspects of human-computer interaction as mediated by voice.
Ruby Sumners is a Denver-based artist working primarily in print, stained glass, and drawing. She studies at the School of the Art Institute Chicago before returning to her hometown, where she continues to grow her practice. Since moving back, she has completed a three-month residency at LungA in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, and contributed to the founding of Squirm Gallery. She now runs a risograph press and maintains a dedicated studio practice. Sumners’ work is guided by an interest in intimacy, ephemera, and the ways dream logic and symbology can articulate sentiment and nostalgia. Her use of stained glass serves as a metaphor for harnessing reflection and illuminations: paralleling its spiritual associations without directly implicating them. Encased within glass, her prints and drawings often emerge from the collaged automatic writings and sketches rooted in diaristic intention. Through this process, she ritualizes the mundane, weaving personal experience into symbolic visual language.
Shayne Thome is a local floral designer that primarily utilizes recycled flowers in their sculptural designs. Their work is influenced by surrealism, extraterrestrial organisms and the potential of every bloom.
