West of Federal by Esteban Cabeza de Baca

Solo Exhibition

West of Federal is a homecoming for artist Esteban Cabeza de Baca. With formative roots in Denver, this exhibition brings together recent paintings that reveal how connected the artist remains to Colorado and the region while working in his Queens, New York studio. Blurring locations and making connections across time, Cabeza de Baca’s paintings act like time and space traveling devices, collapsing a location’s ever-changing borders and its past, present, and future into a single image. Shifting, multidimensional planes of space, compositions, and abstracted shapes (most commonly a spiral) are overlaid and intertwined within these painted landscapes. Inspired by an Indigenous model of time, these spirals operate as portals, connecting the artist’s personal and familial histories and experiences of these locations to a much deeper sense of time, both historically and projected into the future.

The exhibition title, West of Federal, is a direct reference to the culturally significant Federal Boulevard, a vibrant west-side corridor of Denver with a long history of Mexican American residents, activism, language, food, culture, and art. Cabeza de Baca is heavily influenced by his Native American and Mexican heritage, the environmental and human rights advocacy of his parents, and landscapes significant to the artist’s life and family in the North American Southwest. Specifically, Cabeza de Baca draws inspiration from his childhood hometown of San Ysidro, CA, which borders his mother’s birthplace of Tijuana, Mexico, his father’s original home of New Mexico, and Denver where Cabeza de Baca lived in the 1990s to early 2000s. Like Federal Boulevard, these places have been and continue to be shaped by Indigenous cultures and people, as well as the impacts of colonization and gentrification.

Cabeza de Baca graduated from Denver School of the Arts in 2003 and earned a BFA from The Cooper Union in 2010 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2014. He is the fourth and final artist in RMCAD’s 2023/2024 Visiting Artist, Scholar, and Designer Program series.

EXHIBITION RUN

  • February 6 - March 22, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION

  • Tuesday, February 6th, 2024, from 5:00 pm - 7:30 pm.

GALLERY HOURS

  • Monday through Friday, 11 am - 4 pm.

PRESS

February 6 - March 22, 2024

ABOUT THE PHILIP J. STEELE GALLERY

Named in honor of RMCAD’s founder, the Philip J. Steele Gallery features dynamic and innovative work from contemporary artists and designers, RMCAD alumni, current students, and faculty. Open to the public, these galleries serve as a place to foster critical discourse around art and design for the RMCAD and broader communities by presenting challenging, educational, and significant exhibitions and projects. The Philip J. Steele Gallery is located on RMCAD’s campus at 1600 Pierce Street, Denver, CO 80214.