TEKNO_BEIGE: A VISUAL AFFAIR | JUSTAS MARCINK & ALEXANDRA STEFANEC

Opening Reception:

Saturday, June 20th, 2026 (6-9pm)

On Exhibition:

June 20th – July 3rd, 2026

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Artist Statement: 

TEKNO_BEIGE: A VISUAL AFFAIR


The design is displeased, it yearns for an industrial touch. Somewhere between romance and wet cement, self indulgence creeps. Magnificent. Useless. Exactly what you paid for.


Alexandra Stefanec and Justas Marcink began collaborating in 2017 after their painting instructor at MSU Denver encouraged them to share a sketchbook and explore their mutual visual language in design, composition, and visual aesthetics. Their collaborative process is rooted in an ongoing dialogue, with each artist responding to and building upon the other’s motifs, forms, and compositional choices. Through this iterative exchange, ideas evolve into cohesive works that reflect a shared creative vision. Drawing inspiration from industrial design, minimalism, and abstraction, their paintings balance two distinct artistic voices while fostering a unified aesthetic. The result is a body of work that is both dynamic and visually compelling—paintings that celebrate the individuality of each artist while creating something entirely new through collaboration and creative synergy.

About the artists:

Alexandra Stefanec a conceptual painter born in Colorado Springs, Colorado and currently lives and works in Denver. Stefanec’s large-scale works, while abstract in nature, exist as representations of autobiographical subject matter. Her practice utilizes a process of emotional mapping where each painting illustrates the landscape of her personal memories through shape, line, and composition. From the starting point of the circle or orb, Stefanec places herself into her compositions via the symbol of the circle. Containing neither beginning nor end, the circle exists as an elemental form in nature, acting as a stand-in for the protagonist in each painting’s narrative. The circle offers both a point of origin and a grounding subject in planar worlds of non-representational shapes. While form in her paintings vary widely, often swooping, looming, or pressing down on the circular characters in works, there is a coded system of the weight and placement of forms in relation to the self, or circle. Resultant of inward, meditative reflection, Stefanec’s works serve as “acts of resolution,” that she achieves through a process of discovery that painting allows. Though personal memories guide the placement of shapes in each painting, there is a universality communicated in Stefanec’s compositions. The battle between head and heart is fought through a coded visual system, wherein the self is at odds with memory, exploration, and ultimately resolution.

Born in Lithuania and based in Denver, Colorado, Justas Marcink is a contemporary artist whose practice explores the intersection of personal fascination, cultural commentary, and visual communication. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in Art from Metropolitan State University of Denver and is currently a resident artist at The Temple Studios in Denver’s RiNo Art District. Marcink utilizes art to investigate his enduring obsessions with a diverse range of subjects, transforming curiosity into visually compelling narratives. His work engages themes of identity, irony, and authorship while questioning traditional notions of fine art through the strategic use of appropriation and graphic design. Working primarily in large-scale formats, Marcink creates bold and immersive compositions that immediately capture attention while inviting deeper examination. Beneath their playful and accessible surfaces lie nuanced layers of meaning, often infused with wit, satire, and tongue-in-cheek commentary. Through this dynamic balance of visual impact and conceptual depth, his work encourages viewers to reconsider familiar imagery and engage with the complexities embedded within contemporary culture.

Sculpting Sound – Playground Ensemble

Opening Reception:

Saturday, April 25th, 2026

On Exhibition:

April 25th – June 6th, 2026

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Artist Statement: 

Sculpting Sound

Inspired by Playground’s 2022 collaboration with BRDG Project and sound sculptor and interdisciplinary artist Alex Branch, Sculpting Sound will feature multiple new sonic artworks by local visual and installation artists.


These sonic artworks will then become an ‘orchestra’ for a series of new musical commissions to be performed by the musicians in The Playground Ensemble. In collaboration with Leon Gallery, the artworks and composers’ scores will be on public display from late April through the month of May, with an opening reception on April 25, 2026 from 6-9 PM. During the exhibition visitors will be allowed to interact and experiment with the artwork themselves.

The show culminates with two concerts premiering the commissioned music on May 30, and a third improvised music concert on May 31.


This program is supported by Denver Arts & Venues through the DENVER CREATES Fund, and by Colorado Creative Industries with support from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Participating Composers: Michi Theurer, Michael John McKee, Sarah Whitnah, Conrad Kehn, Nathan Hall, David Farrell, Sean Friar

Participating Artists: Dave Seiler, Alex Branch, David Britton, Katie Taft, Steve Gordon (posthumously)

Musical Personnel: Dave Short (cello), Luke Wachter (percussion), Richard C. (percussion), Ryan Fiegl (guitar/electronics), Shane Courville (trumpet), Sonya Yeager-Meeks (flute), Sean Friar (keyboard/percussion), Michi Theurer (violin), Conrad Kehn (electronics)

About Playground Ensemble:

The Playground Ensemble, in Residence at Metro State University of Denver, is the Rocky Mountain Region’s premier new music group. We are professional musicians, composers, educators and fans dedicated to presenting chamber music as a living art form.

In addition to concert seasons that feature the work of recognized composers, we work to cultivate a thriving local composition community. With exciting outreach programs like our innovative Young Composers Playground we are showing young people that classical music is vibrant, adventurous and relevant. We hope to inspire our audiences to not only listen, but to create!

Collaboration is at the heart of the Playground’s artistic vision. We commission new works by living composers, perform in support of touring improvisors, and perform regularly. We work with dancers, poets, spoken word artists, visual artists, and multi-media artists, finding inspiration across disciplines and exploring new, hybrid artistic forms.

The Playground has performed at many notable venues and festivals including the Biennial of the Americas, the National Performing Arts Convention, the International Society of Improvised Music Annual Conference, Mile High Voltage Festival, MCA Denver, Boettcher Hall, the Clyfford Still Museum and the Denver Art Museum.

We have performed with, or worked directly with a diverse cast of new music luminaries including Eyvind Kang, Morten Lauridsen, So Percussion, Evan Ziporyn, Roomful of Teeth, Caroline Shaw, Jace Clayton (DJ /rupture) and Tatsuya Nakatani.

Our efforts have been recognized and supported by numerous regional and national organizations including the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Chamber Music America, The Amphion Foundation, The American Music Center, New Music USA, the Gay & Lesbian Fund for Colorado, the Singer Foundation and the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District.

DANS LE RÊVE – SANDI CALISTRO

Opening Reception: 

Saturday, March 7th, 2026 

On Exhibition:

March 7th, 2026 – April 18th, 2025

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Artist Statement: 

Dans Le Reve

Grief has changed me forever, and it took years to understand that this transformation does not have to be tragic. Some of the most beautiful change emerges when we allow ourselves to sit with our darkest thoughts and feelings. Melancholy has long fueled my work, and I have learned to embrace it as both teacher and companion.

These pieces speak to a story of loss and of growth—of what remains after absence reshapes us. I hope that those who have lived alongside grief can see themselves reflected here, and feel both seen and understood in its quiet beauty.

My parents supported me deeply in my artistic life, and this exhibition is dedicated to them. I lost my father two years ago, and my mother seven years before that. When the weight of loss becomes too heavy to hold, I turn inward through my art. In those moments of deep immersion & creation has carried me forward—it has, in many ways, saved me.

Artist Bio:

Sandi Calistro is a Denver-based artist working across painting, tattooing, and murals. Born in New Britain, Connecticut, and raised in the wooded landscapes of western Maine, her relationship with art has unfolded over a lifetime. At fifteen, she painted signs for local businesses and began exploring tattooing—early gestures toward a practice rooted in both craft and storytelling.

Years later, after establishing a well-known tattooing career, her focus turned more fully toward painting and the exhibition of fine art. Her work centers on the female figure as vessel and symbol, weaving themes of the sacred feminine and humanity’s enduring bond with the natural world. These figures inhabit dreamlike realms where tattoo iconography, religious imagery, and pop culture converge, forming intimate narratives that exist somewhere between memory, myth, and reverie.

Protocols of Desire – Group Exhibition with Guest Curator, Keira McIntosh

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.

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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.

Nothing Can Separate Us – Ainslie O’Neil

October 4th through November 8th, 2025

Ainslie O’Neil (1990 – 2022) was and artist, activist, and ecological landscape designer rooted their in hometown of Denver. A vision of Ainslie’s was to “generously give and receive support within [her] social and ecological communities”, and she did so with a contagious zest for life.

The Back of My Face – Brady Dollyhigh

Opening Reception – Saturday, August 16th 6pm – 10pm

Exhibition on view – Saturday, August 16th – Saturday, September 27th

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Artist Statement:

For my first real solo show I was trying to say something definitive about reality. For this show I confronted everything that to me- will never be definitive. Late at night, alone in a box with a brush I dwelt on everything that I dread. I wanted to unravel myself and see what creatures came out when I laid still. 

I found a world of spiders and pyramids. Heads and castles. Smiling and lying faces looking at me without eyes. Manifestations of unending searches and places to hide away. I imagined myself deep in the pyramid. I imagined myself as the spider. I imagined I wasn’t myself at all.

And now my world of intimate meditations are made public.

The back of my face.

Brady Dollyhigh

Bio:
Denver based painter and multimedia artist, Brady Dollyhigh has been exhibiting his work since 2019. Over the last five years, Dollyhigh has participated in 7 exhibitions, two of which were solo shows, and has been featured twice in reviews by the Denver Post. His work has transformed drastically over the years from cluttered line drawings to large scale multilayered works on sheet metal. Generating work at a fast pace, Dollyhigh has no plans to slow the evolution of his art and vision, making every exhibition drastically different from the last.

NIGHTBURN – Daphne Sweet

Saturday, June 14th – Saturday July 26th

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Nightburn is an embodied myth moving through mountains and memory. In this work, I merge western iconography with goddess myths and feminine power, blurring the line between human, land, and legend.

My paintings depict towering women intertwined with the landscape—cosmic figures cradling portals and starlight. There is a sensuality in their forms and gestures, and a playfulness woven into their presence. My ceramics serve as ceremonial relics: vessels and figures etched with dreamlike stories of saints, cowgirls, and goddesses, balancing reverence with whimsy.

Rooted in western terrain and matriarchal storytelling, Nightburn explores the body as landscape, the vessel as storyteller, and fire as both destruction and rebirth.

 This is the nightburn of a fluorescent moon.

Bio:

Daphne Sweet (b. 1996, Los Angeles, CA) is a visual artist based in Butte, Montana, working in painting and ceramics. Her work weaves personal narrative with myth, exploring themes of femininity, power, and transformation. Through intricate linework and a vivid, symbolic use of color, she creates imagined worlds inhabited by celestial figures, animals and relics.

Influenced by a matriarchal upbringing and a lifelong interest in storytelling, Sweet’s work blurs the line between the intimate and the archetypal. She holds a BFA in Studio Art and Art History from the University of Montana. Her work has been exhibited nationally, including solo shows at Visions West Contemporary (Denver, CO) and The Palace Gallery (Ellensburg, WA), and has been featured in DARIA Magazine and The Washington Post.

Multiverse – Max Maddox

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Max Maddox is an interdisciplinary artist whose work ranges from public performance to abstract painting, a compass he has used to approach subjects such as class struggle, public hysteria, marginalization, and phenomenology. Maddox received a B.A. in Philosophy from Grinnell College, a discipline he integrates with his training at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art to pursue cultural critique through art.

Maddox is an award winning artist and writer, most recently a 2024 Theater District grant awardee and 2023 recipient of the Greene Fellowship. He is a career advocate and is currently lead developer for the arts and mental health program, “Troupe Therapy.” He has exhibited his work in galleries that include the Redline Contemporary Art Center (Denver), where he was resident artist from 2020-2022, The Art Gym (Denver), Hillyer Art Space (Washington D.C), Locallective (Chicago), the Slought Foundation (Philadelphia), the Print Center of Philadelphia, The Ellen Powell Tiberino Memorial Museum (Philadelphia), and Abecedarian Gallery (Denver).

“Multiverse is the result of the close collaboration between artist and machine, a relationship over three years with a Co2 laser. Uniting photography, painting, and assemblage with naval engineering schematics from the early 20th century, these laser engravings are tangible, topographical iterations of the virtual, myriad, energized worlds that seem to have emerged from technological cataclysm. Objects in this exhibition together feel like a glimpse into an alternate dimension, dreamscapes where rebirth is tooled or radical change is sparked, portals into several possible futures or multiple worlds.”

From the Ground Up – Melissa Lynn

01_March 03, 2025
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Exhibition on view March 1st – April 12th, 2025

Melissa Lynn’s latest series examine the essential relationship between humanity and the Earth. Her work emphasizes the necessity of conservation and preservation initiatives and underscores our interdependence with nature. The images invite viewers to reflect on their roles within this complex ecosystem.

From the Ground Up explores agriculture and sustainable land management through images created at urban farms and gardens in Colorado. These vibrant green spaces help combat climate change, promote regenerative practices, and ensure equitable access to fresh, healthy food. Urban farms serve as essential community hubs for education and collaboration, transforming neglected areas into thriving ecosystems. This series also highlights native pollinator plants that support vital species, including bees and butterflies.

Melissa’s creative technique is grounded in the regenerative principles central to this series. Through a synergetic method, the transformation that emerges from decay becomes an integral part of the artwork. Drawing from these sustainable practices that nurture the land, her method intertwines ecological and artistic processes.

In response to environmental imbalance, From the Ground Up offers a vision of renewal—one where humans reconnect with the land, nurture healthy ecosystems, and restore harmony for the benefit of all. This alliance with nature embodies the work’s core message: by healing the soil, we heal the Earth—and, in turn, ourselves.

High Creek Fen features an ecologically rich wetland in Colorado that has preserved ancient flora and fauna since the last Ice Age. Fens are peat-forming habitats where water rises to the surface year-round, supporting a rare ecosystem adapted to thrive in this unique environment.

Melissa’s creative process mirrors the fen’s slow transformation and directly collaborates between the ecosystem’s life and the photographs. This bioart approach blends living organisms with artistic creation, further connecting art, science, and nature.

High Creek Fen is a fragile, ancient world that reminds us of the delicate balance sustaining our planet. She hopes to inspire a deeper connection and commitment to its preservation by bringing its essence into the gallery.

Copyright Melissa Lynn 2023

The Peace Found – Fitz Lewis

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Photography credit: Wes Magyar Photography

 Leon is honored to announce the opening reception for first exhibition of 2025, The Peace Found, featuring new work by Denver artist, Fitz Lewis. The opening reception will take place on Saturday, January 11th, between 6pm and 10pm, and the exhibition will be on view through Saturday, February 22nd, 2025.

A well known creative individual within the Denver art scene, Fitz Lewis has presented some powerful and impactful performance art pieces to the local community in recent years, including their 2018 piece, Illicit Patriotism, which consisted of a 22 mile hike around central Denver with a 60 pound American Flag draped across their shoulders. For their upcoming exhibition, the artist will be presenting three dimensional sculptural objects made from a variety of materials, some of which are often used by the army to construct temporary housing, fortifications, and defensive structures. 

Artist Bio and Statement:

Fitz Joseph Lewis (they/them) (b. 1983, Mark Joseph Fitzsimmons, Kansas City, Mo.) is a Denver based interdisciplinary and conceptual artist. The artist asks what we value – the object or the action; the symbol or what the symbol represents. Influenced by their history of violence, Lewis plays with the humble materials that permeated their abusive childhood and time in combat zones. The work is an outcome of the artist deconstructing and healing from the values that were violently instilled within them.

Lewis was Honorably Discharged from the Army in 2014, holds a BFA from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in Fine Art – Painting, and an MFA from the University of Kansas in Expanded Media. Their work has been included in solo shows at Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery and Dateline Gallery, with group shows at Friend of a Friend, Union Hall, and RULE Gallery.