The Denver Post – Ray Rinaldi, Sunday, February 5th, 2023

Art is alive and well at Denver’s Leon Gallery. The small, storefront space in the city’s Uptown neighborhood has a unique and appealing way of doing business. One month it will show a star, such as Diego Rodriguez-Warner or Laura Shill, and the next month deliver a complete surprise by giving a promising newcomer a platform.

Leon treats them all equally, and that gives it an important place in the region’s art eco-system. Artists get a lot of freedom to transform the space, and the risks usually — but not always — pay off. There’s just enough unpredictability to keep things interesting.

The other key to its success is director Eric Nord, who has been there since 2014 and ushered Leon through the ups and downs that all small galleries have to endure to survive. We asked him a few questions.

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New York Times – Ben Osborne, April 7, 2021.

The irony has always troubled Raafi Rivero. “People love Black athletes,” he said. “But they don’t love Black people.”

In July 2013, it resonated anew for Rivero, a lifelong sports fan, when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of Black teenager Trayvon Martin, the same weekend Rivero saw the film “Fruitvale Station,” about the 2009 killing of Oscar Grant, who was also Black.

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The Denver Post – Ray Rinaldi Feb 22, 2021

Some of this year’s best exhibitions are in-person, online or splashed across local billboards

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SW Contemporary magazine – by Joshua Ware Feb 8, 2021

Diego Rodriguez-Warner’s recent exhibition Horror Vacui offers a look beyond the immediate disarray and confusion in which we find ourselves.

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Hyperallergic – by Ray Rinaldi Dec 28, 2020

Denver, CO — Like many people, Diego Rodriguez-Warner has spent the pandemic quarantining at home, and the paintings and drawings he has created for Horror Vacui at Leon Gallery present material evidence of an artist forced to make due with supplies on-hand. Leftover acrylics, crayons, watercolors and spray paint adorn scraps of plywood and drywall that serve as canvas.

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Denverite – by Donna Bryson Nov 2, 2020

“You want every jersey to be the last one. But you kind of know, intrinsically, that something’s going to happen again.”

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Marsha Mack and Lindsay Smith Gustave – Reviewed by Derrick Velasquez

Marsha Mack and Lindsay Smith Gustave are masters of expansion and collapse. Their exhibition Animal, Vegetable, Mineral at Leon Gallery taps into the notions of abundance, progeny, and growth that temper human desire. With works that shed light on the microscopic, constituent cells of natural and unnatural objects and with imagery that alludes to our contemporary experience of dwelling, the two artists share the space seamlessly and offer viewpoints that are a refreshing reprieve in the midst of heavy times.

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Jasmine Abena Colgan is an assemblage sculptor, a photographer, an alchemist and a warrior who digs deeply into the roots of racism, as well as the difficult personal territory of her own biracial heritage and her diagnosis of vitiligo. In her current show, Human Currency, at Leon Gallery, Colgan focuses on the cowrie shell in an exploration of ingrained bigotry, spiritual feminism and African culture.

Photo courtesy of Jasmine Abena Colgan.

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303 Magazine | 06/19/2020

The most recent mural painted by Veiga and Detour is on the side of Leon Gallery on 17th Avenue and depicts a local woman who was murdered in broad daylight just last week while out with her boyfriend and dog.

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Denverite | 06/18/2020

Evans had approached Leon’s directors several weeks ago about painting a mural. His original plan had been to fill the wall with a portrait of a teacher he knows. After the shooting, he decided to paint Thallas’s portrait instead.

Photo by Donna Bryson/Denverite

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