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# Diego Rodriguez-Warner’s Swirling, Curvilinear Compositions Leave No Surface Undecorated
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/diego-rodriguez-warner-horror-vacui-leon-gallery/
- Published: 2020-12-28T14:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:42:31.000Z
- Description: In Horror Vacui, the artist’s works exude depth and dynamism, turning what might be mayhem into compelling narratives.
- Author: Ray Mark Rinaldi
- Tags: Art, Colorado, Denver, Featured, Review, Southwest, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 09:08 (2019, 2020, part 3)

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.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/leonhorrorvacui20_0037.jpg)

Diego Rodriguez-Warner, "untitled" (2020), acrylic, spray paint, relief on panel. 36 x 48 inches (Photo by Amanda Tipton)

But the work avoids illustrating the grand themes of isolation and worry that other artists have wrestled with this year. Instead, Rodriguez-Warner spent his days creating pieces he labels as “attempts”: dozens of disparate efforts to distract from boredom and hone the complicated stenciling technique that has won him wide attention lately — including a spot in Crystal Bridges’ *State of the Art 2020* and a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation (which no doubt enables ample “attempting”). 

As the show’s title suggests, Rodriguez-Warner traffics in the artistic practice of leaving no bit of surface undecorated, and so he crams canvases with a mish-mash of imagery and bottomless nods to art history. A piece may start as a reclining nude, a hummingbird, or one of the violent battle scenes he favors concocting, but it could end up a swirl of allusions to every*one* from Michelangelo to Matisse to Yoshitoshi, and every*thing* from graffiti to comics to Japanese animation.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2020/12/leonhorrorvacui20_0030.jpg)

Diego Rodriguez-Warner, "untitled" (2020), latex and spray paint on panel, 96 x 192 inches (Photo by Amanda Tipton)

Little is left on the table and the work comes dangerously close to overindulgence. But Rodriguez-Warner possesses the skill of a DJ who knows his source material intimately. He mixes it all together with his signature move — a series of swirling, curvilinear ribbons he weaves throughout his scenes with sensational skill, created with stencils cut from contact paper and deftly-applied spray paint. They add depth and dynamism and transform what might be mayhem into compelling narratives.

[*Horror Vacui: New Works by Diego Rodriguez-Warner* ](https://leongallery.org/horror-vacui-new-works-by-diego-rodriguez-warner/?ref=hyperallergic.com)*continues through January 16,* *2021 at Leon Gallery (1112 E. 17th Avenue, Denver).*