On May 12th, Dikeou Collection hosted a public lecture by New York-based art critic Ben Davis in partnership with Black Cube Nomadic Museum. Dikeou Collection serves as a relevant platform for a critic lecture as it offers a free space for the public to interact with art that encourages critical thinking and expression. This is the second time Dikeou Collection has partnered with Black Cube to present new and thought provoking ways for audiences to engage with art in Denver.

Founded in 2015 by artist and philanthropist, Laura Merage, Black Cube upholds the belief that art is an essential part of a vibrant, just, and healthy society. As a nonprofit, they exist by partnering with artist fellows to commission popup art experiences. They aim to nurture the self-sufficiency of artists and inspire people to discover and appreciate contemporary art beyond traditional white museum and gallery walls.

Davis is an art critic living and working in New York City. His book, 9.5 Theses on Art and Class has been called “a riveting manifesto” by New York Magazine and a “required reading for art professionals” by Publishers Weekly. Davis is currently National Art Critic for artnet News, and was formerly executive editor of Artinfo.com and an editor of The Elements of Architecture, the catalog of the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale. His writings have appeared in Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, New York, Slate.com, The Village Voice, and many other venues. Davis presented his ideas surrounding the intersections of art and class to a receptive and open-minded audience.

Davis spoke about the three definitions of class: economic, educational, and structural. While many of us are familiar with the first two, we may not all have knowledge of the third. Structural class refers to our positions relative to society. Unfortunately, art is “isolate[ed] … from the practical problems of the moment,” he says. Part of this may be because art is and has always been secondary to other things society deems more important.

Although more people work in creative industries now than they did forty years ago, art is a tough profession. Art programs in schools are the first to get cut when funding is tight, and most professional artists are not able to sustain themselves purely with their art. As a result, the art world is an exclusive luxury industry.

Over 60 people attended Davis’ lecture, including artists, curators, critics, and other professionals and supporters in Denver’s creative community. A great Q&A session followed where individuals talked about their own experiences in the contemporary art world and learned more about Davis’ role in the art community. Keep an eye out for more upcoming events at Dikeou Collection and Dikeou Pop-Up: Colfax.

- Aryana Hatami

Installation view of zingmagazine in Momoyo Torimitsu’s Room.

As you meander through the rooms of the Dikeou Collection, you see clear plastic shelves holding various books and other bound creations with vintage photos on the covers. This is zingmagazine. The placement of each copy of zing is very purposeful and intertwined not only to the artist in the room that the magazine resides, but also to the owner of the collection, Devon Dikeou and her art practice. This trifecta of practice, collection, and magazine create a way for the audience to see not just one artist’s work, but a career that encompasses hundreds if not thousands more voices to be heard.

zingmagazine #24.

Devon is the founder, editor, and publisher of zingmagazine, a curated arts magazine that has no boundaries on contents or media, as long as the project fits within the allotted 16 page limit. zingmagazine was created in 1995 as an extension or better, an integral platform, for Devon’s art practice, and a way to broaden her connections to her contemporaries. zingmagazine precedes the Dikeou Collection which was founded three years later by Devon and her brother Pany. Most of the artists presented in the collection have curated projects in zingmagazine, hence the display of so many issues in the galleries.

Installation view of What’s Love Got to do With It.

What’s Love Got to do With It for Decorous Beliefs.

Lining the hallway as you enter the collection is a series of directory boards created by Devon Dikeou entitled What’s Love Got to do With It, which began in 1991 and continues today. The boards reference the one found in the lobby outside of Leo Castelli Gallery, which announced the current exhibition and the artists on view. Conglomerating into approximately 125 boards they describe either an issue of zingmagazine or a group exhibition in which Devon has participated. As you make your way down the hall to the front doors of the collection, the directory boards set the stage and introduce you to Devon’s artistic practice and its relationship to zingmagazine and the collection.

A sense of community can be seen in these boards, as multiple artists are listed in various exhibitions with Devon, as participants in zing, or the have their work on view at the collection. These names and places are more than just a referential note of someone’s exhibition or publication history - these names are references to shared experiences. This community of artists listed on the walls gave way to her wanting to recognize their work in another platform, like a magazine, and sometimes a space in her collection.

-Madeliene Kattman

The Room Moved, The Way Blocked (Stage 1) at Dikeou Collection

Wade Guyton’s installation Untitled, The Room Moved, The Way Blocked is a simple formation brimming with art historical and conceptual constructs. Made of parquet flooring, the block was specifically recreated by the artist to occupy a space at Dikeou Collection, and measures 12’ x 12’ x 5’. While it immediately comes across as intrusive, the block is actually quite engaging as it is meant to be climbed upon to continue through the galleries, sparking excitement and a sense of play. Beyond the instant gratification of scaling the block is a very clever yet cerebral analysis on minimalism and conceptual art. As an early work it also occupies a unique place in Guyton’s oeuvre, thus making it a compelling talking point about his evolution as an artist.

Untitled (Stage) at Hunter College, 1998

Bill Arning, who at Guyton’s Hunter M.F.A exhibition saw an earlier installation, Untitled (Stage), that preceded Untitled, The Room Moved, The Way Blocked, wrote in BOMB Magazine that it “points to a smartly evasive young conceptualist.” Since dubbed as a post-conceptualist, Guyton’s block takes the guiding principle of conceptual art - where an idea has priority over the object - and turns it into something that has to be physically grappled with as well as mentally. From Duchamp’s Fountain to Baldessari’s I Am Making Art, conceptualism has done much to expand the definition of art, but also distanced some of the audience with its perceived lack of aesthetic and narrative attributes. By adding the interactive element to The Room Moved…, Guyton transcends that analytical barrier and presents a work that can be appreciated by brainy connoisseurs and hyperactive children alike. Curator Devon Dikeou states the work is a “humoristic, if not metaphoric path to the fatalism of Modernism and Modern living.”

Guyton was only 26 years old when he initially created the first iteration of the block while studying under Robert Morris, a distinguished artist and theorist in the conceptual and minimalist genres. One can see Morris’ influence during this time through the use of large geometric sculpture and its ability to reinterpret space (this image is particularly resonant) . These days Wade is most known for his big monochrome inkjet paintings, but his engagement with sculpture and use of wood in particular is a longstanding part of his repertoire. Works like Inverted Woodpile from 2002, his X Sculpture from 2003, and his own studio floor which he recreated for his 2007 solo show at Petzel Gallery, demonstrate how the wooden installations were significant in generating the motifs and methods utilized in 2-dimensional form. In fact, a lot of his early wood sculptures do not exist anymore because he had no place to store them in his tiny studio on East 2nd Street.

X Sculpture installed at High Desert Test Sites 2, 2003

The block is one of the first installations by Guyton sold to a collector, and the fact that these early sculptures are rare and this is the only artwork by him on public view in Colorado makes it all the more special. Part of Devon Dikeou’s mission as a collector is to acquire works “in breadth,” meaning she wants to highlight as many facets of an artist’s output as possible. A Guyton collage resides in Dikeou’s installation Not Quite Mrs. De Menil’s Liquor Closet. It is small, delicate, and perched high on a shelf; it couldn’t be more opposite from The Room Moved…, yet the two works perfectly encapsulate the fascinating progression of Wade Guyton’s craft.

— Hayley Richardson

And now enjoy some memorable moments…

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With spring comes flowers, birds, glimmers of summer, and sometimes one and a half feet of snow. But spring also brings back our Family Saturday Workshop series, which begin on Saturday, April 9. Inspired by a specific work or series in the collection, the Family Saturday Workshops aim to teach participants about materials and techniques used by an artist in the collection. The series begins with a look at Margaret Lee’s piece entitled Think About Tomorrow or Don’t from 2007, where kids and families will create their own wooden monument. These free workshops are fun for all ages. We invite you to bring friends and family to create your own Dikeou Collection inspired artwork.

Margaret Lee, Think About Tomorrow or Don’t, 2007.

The most recent Family Saturday Workshops from the 2015 season included Momoyo Torimitsu’s storyboard and performance workshop in July, Rainer Ganahl’s scarf printing workshop in August and Misaki Kawai’s character building workshop in September.

March 2015 Lee Stoetzel workshop.

Lee Stoetzel’s Accidental Tourism, is a series of close-up photographs captured from his studio windowsill, scratched glass and globs of paint that compositionally appear to be distanced landscapes. In this March workshop, participants took extreme close-ups of tile, wood grains and artwork textures from the collection to capture their own landscapes

August 2015 Rainer Ganahl scarf workshop.

Rainer Ganahl’s Hermes Marx series includes a set of four Hermes silk scarves that have been screen printed over with his own logo “Hermes Marx”. In this workshop, participants were invited to print over the existing printed fabric of a scarf with their own design. This act of printing over the pre-existing design, not only changed the aesthetics of the scarf but then appropriated the object into the participant’s own piece of artwork.

September 2015 Misaki Kawai character building workshop.

The last and most recent workshop was a Misaki Kawai character building workshop that had participants create themselves in the form of an iconic Kawai doll. Designing their own clothes, hairstyle and doll, participants learned about Kawai’s use of photography, sewing and doll-making in her work.

Looking to our 2016 Family Saturday Workshop series, we will teach workshops that include materials and concepts like cardboard, color theory, wood, paper mache and found objects to continue exploring the art practices found in the Dikeou Collection. Can you guess which artists use these materials?

The purpose of the Family Saturday Workshops is not only to get the audience thinking and talking about artworks in the collection, but to ignite their own creative process as well. Learning about how the objects in the collection are made, conceived or experienced allows a deeper understanding of the practice of art making and teaches new techniques to our audience. We have instructions to guide one’s way through the project but we also encourage the participants to incorporate their own ideas and techniques to the projects. Encouraging personalization incites the audience to not just replicate but to create from their own artistic energy. Teaching various techniques used in the collection also creates a relationship between the viewer and an art object. Conceptually understanding an artwork can be difficult, but if someone can physically create it themselves using a similar technique as the artist, the gallery-go’er is that much closer to understanding the work.

Keep an eye out for our 2016 Family Saturday Workshop press release, which will include an artist list with dates of the entire 2016 lineup.

-Madeliene Kattman

Patterns of repetition fill the gap that exists between static images and animated ones. A single, fixed image comes alive when it is repeated over and over, with some slight variation, to create movement and tell a story. Dutch artist Serge Onnen’s video animation, “Break,” surrounded by his illustrated pink wallpaper titled “Silence Fence” at Dikeou Collection, combines stillness with motion to create an installation that immerses the viewer in the power of repetition. The placement of Onnen’s artwork in the collection (in the women’s restroom) creates a combination of viewer experiences as well, where it can be seen both publicly and privately. This unorthodox location is actually quite advantageous as it is the most frequented room on the entire 5th floor of the building, continuing Onnen’s conceptual drive toward movement, stasis, and rhythm.

Onnen created “Break” and “Silence Fence” through drawing, and hands appear prominently in these works, thus making them additional important themes. In “Break” two arms extend from the left and right sides on the screen and smash together random objects like lamps, telephones, and beer mugs. The objects break apart into pieces, and the hands then touch in someway before they pull apart offscreen and reappear for another smash session. An eccentric, non-melodic, guitar plays the soundtrack. “Silence Fence,” which covers all the walls in the bathroom, is composed of people holding their hands to the their ears. Their facial expressions reveal various states of displeasure, insinuating that they are experiencing some terrible deafening noise. Perhaps they are absorbing this noise, placing the viewer on the quieter side of the “Silence Fence.”

The way Onnen poses his figures, with their hands held to their hands, expresses his interest in the complex relationship between our brains and hands. The connection these two parts of the body share is what enabled humans to create, to build, and evolve. It is also what gives us the capacity to draw, a creative activity that Onnen holds in the highest esteem, as it is the generative process for all other artful mediums and is accessible to every human on this earth. Drawing is an exercise that, when done regularly, strengthens the mind and sharpens coordination.

When there is a lack of mindfulness, hands become tools for destruction rather than creation. In “Break,” where heads are absent, the hands demolish objects that were originally designed and made with much thought and intention. The gentle way the hands touch each other, though, after they break something, suggests that this is not a violent act but rather one that symbolizes release. We are often slaves of our own creation, and recklessly destroying something can be mentally liberating.

-Hayley Richardson