14 APRIL 16-22, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | MUSIC | CAFE | CULTURE | NIGHT+DAY | LETTERS | CONTENTS | Thinking Outside the Box AFTER A DECADE OF NOMADIC ART, BLACK CUBE EXPANDS LOCAL EVENTS WHILE DEVELOPING NEW PROJECTS ACROSS THE COUNTRY. BY TONI TRESCA Long before Black Cube began installing artwork across deserts, in mountain towns and on public plazas, Cortney Lane Stell was asking a basic question: Why does con- temporary art almost always live inside the same kind of room? “A lot of Colorado’s art scene is really place- based,” Stell says. “If you think about the museums, they’re in buildings built by well- known architects, and it’s very much about the place. Simultaneously, white cube gallery spaces were creating this homogenized way of viewing art – not just in Denver, but every white-walled museum space across the globe was showing the same kind of artists in the same kind of way, and they were paying them abysmal fees, if they paid them at all.” Stell spent her days hanging work in one of these pristine white galleries at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design in the early 2000s. The space provided focus and control, but it also separated art from the contexts that infl uenced it. “In our early years, we were really thinking about a model that would be different from traditional institutional models for contemporary art,” Stell says. “Why not be different? Why not be sort of nomadic in our structure, moving from place to place?” When she founded Black Cube in 2015, that question became the prem- ise. Instead of building a permanent museum, the Denver-based nonprofi t would commission artists to create site-specifi c work shaped as much by their surroundings and communities as by the artists themselves. A decade later, that nomadic model has taken Black Cube from the tiny mining town of Gold Hill to a 160-acre earthwork in the San Luis Valley. This spring, however, the organization is turning some of that en- ergy back toward home. Over the past few weeks, Black Cube has begun hosting a series of public programs at its headquarters in Englewood, including experimental fi lm screenings and the return of a long-dormant community brunch series. “It wasn’t until our tenth year that we decided to really commit to our Englewood space in the sense of engaging the public,” Stell says. “We’ve always had this deep follow- ing around the globe, but our biggest audience is defi nitely here in the Denver metro area.” Black Cube has occupied the nearly 8,000-square-foot space since 2018, using it primarily for fi lm shoots, sculpture produc- tion and administrative work. Converting it into a public-facing venue required navigat- ing building codes intended for industrial storage and shipping, rather than gathering audiences. Because the building lacks a fi re-sup- pression sprinkler system and was originally built with loading docks rather than public entrances and exits, Englewood regulations sharply limit how many people can be inside at once. Installing the full sprinkler system required for a larger occupancy would have necessitated running new water lines from the street and retrofi tting the entire build- ing, an upgrade Stell estimates would cost roughly a quarter of a million dollars. “It didn’t make sense for an organization where most of our programming is out in the world to put that kind of money in a build- ing,” Stell says. “So I kept talking to the city about ways that we could work around that.” By installing a new exterior safety ramp along the south side of the building, the orga- nization was able to obtain a permit allowing up to 49 people inside at a time. That compro- mise enabled Black Cube to activate the space in ways that align with its ethos: intimate, experimental and community-oriented. Earlier this spring, the organization hosted Black Cube Shorts, a two-day pro- gram of experimental fi lms commissioned from international artists Julie Béna, Anna Uddenberg and Alejandro Almanza Pereda. While Black Cube has produced fi lms before, the screenings marked a fi rst: sharing that work with a Denver audience. “We’ve produced three fi lms in our eleven years, but we had never screened them lo- cally,” Stell says. “I think that was a really cool experience and a fun thing to talk to our community about. It was fun to have some of the actors there, and I think the screenings went well. We rented a super kitschy popcorn maker and had some drinks and snacks available for the guests, and the dialogue was really lively.” If the fi lm screenings leaned into Black Cube’s interest in experimentation, the re- turn of Talk With Your Mouth Full signals a renewed investment in community building. The potluck-style brunch series invites local artists to host informal gatherings centered on food, conversation and shared activity. “We stopped it during the pandemic, but people ask about it all the time,” Stell says. “Talk With Your Mouth Full was just really intended to help foster youth and commu- nity in a casual, convivial, food-centered, ‘I’m-not-presenting-my-art’ sort of way. It struck a deep chord with the community, so we decided to bring it back this year.” The Englewood building itself helped shape the program’s revival. A former owner outfi tted the warehouse with a full kitchen and even a half-court basketball setup, rem- nants of which are still visible today. “It’s kind of like a hangout,” Stell says. “We wanted to think about how to use that kitchen as a way to give back to the community.” Even as Black Cube builds a more consistent presence in Denver, its broader ambitions remain fi rmly out- ward-facing. The organization contin- ues to develop large-scale, site-specifi c projects, including a forthcoming work in Nevada that engages with the history of atomic testing, as well as ongoing installations in upstate New York. Closer to home, Black Cube is also expanding into more permanent public art. This year, the organization plans to install a sculpture by Mexican artist Gabriel Rico that’s more than twenty feet tall near Union Station, incorporat- ing augmented reality elements into the work. “I think we’re interested in diver- sifying the landscape of permanent public artwork,” Stell says. “We’ve done a lot of temporary projects, but it’s in- teresting to see what an experimental organization can offer in a more permanent context.” At the same time, the Englewood head- quarters will continue to serve as a testing ground. This fall, the space will host a solo exhibition by Mexican artist Enrique López Llamas, designed to remain on view for sev- eral months after it opens on September 25. The balancing act between mobility and rootedness refl ects a lesson that Stell says took years to fully understand. “I thought that CULTURE continued on page 15 KEEP UP ON DENVER ARTS AND CULTURE AT WESTWORD.COM/ARTS Black Cube’s 2025 installation, “What We Hold On To,” at its headquarters in Englewood. Coryn Kempster and Julia Jamrozik, “Pipelines,” in Denver’s Plaza of the Americas, 2023. PHOTO BY THIRD DUNE PRODUCTIONS PHOTO BY THIRD DUNE PRODUCTIONS
