The Castle / Blossom & Decay

Leo Franco: The Castle / Brian Cavanaugh: Blossom & Decay

Pirate Contemporary Art

7130 W. 16th Avenue, Lakewood, CO 80214

June 23-July 9, 2023

Admission: Free

Review by Paloma Jimenez

Leo Franco’s The Castle and Brian Cavanaugh’s Blossom & Decay at Pirate Contemporary Art present two different approaches to constructing narratives out of a material-based logic. Franco favors a visual rhythm composed of elegantly finished wooden structures, while Cavanaugh intertwines organic matter through endless lengths of wire to grow a joyously provisional ecosystem.

Leo Franco’s installation The Keep in his exhibition The Castle at Pirate Contemporary Art. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Towards the front of the space, Leo Franco has pushed his contemplative wooden sculptures into new territory with a multimedia installation inspired by Franz Kafka’s The Castle. Kafka’s final unfinished work follows the lonely journey of a character named K, who struggles with the bureaucracy of a village and the weight of alienation.

One of the wood sculptures in Leo Franco’s installation The Keep. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Franco’s initial response to the story, entitled The Keep, expertly balances delicately carved shapes with varying textures of wood grain. He forgoes any stains and chooses to exalt the natural tones of the exotic woods with an oil finish. The result is an enigmatic sentry that only follows the rules of its own invented gravity. Nearby, three smaller compositions confidently wait, potential keys to an unsolvable riddle.  

A detail view of Leo Franco’s installation The Keep. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Franco expands the ideas from The Keep into a larger panoramic piece that spills out onto the gallery floor. He consolidates the elements of Kafka’s story by selectively arranging wood, rocks, and metal. Amidst a pile of dusty black rocks, a limp “K” shape lies defeated on a contrasting path of white rocks. The tonal polarities throughout the installation emphasize emotional extremes in an unyielding environment. Two bandsaw-carved figures visually oscillate atop the constructed shadows of their precarious platform. A brass pendulum hangs from the ceiling, rendered motionless by its own weight; psychological inertia lingers. 

A view of Brian Cavanaugh’s exhibition Blossom & Decay at Pirate Contemporary Art. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Brian Cavanaugh’s installation, Blossom & Decay, fills the back space of the gallery with a growth of green tangles reaching for the ceiling. He tells an evolving story through the mutable matter of plants and fungus. Skeletal wire forms emerge from piles of organic mass, with heads full of moss and glass bladders holding propagating pothos clippings. Purple irises and red carnations inside the chest cavities lend vital bursts of color. The plants and flowers are in various stages of life, some just sprouting and others bursting forth with one final bloom.  Bustling fruit flies and an occasional rogue caterpillar move through the viewer’s periphery.

Two figures in Brian Cavanaugh’s exhibition Blossom & Decay. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

A detail view of an installation in Brian Cavanaugh’s exhibition Blossom & Decay. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Scattered throughout the installation, mushrooms appear like unexpected but welcome guests. Their smooth curvature and alluring colors offer a change of visual pace to the surrounding greenery. Cavanaugh incorporates both dried and living specimens in murky blues, tender pinks, and toasted creamy hues. The bulbous, fruiting bodies signify both death and nature’s cyclical patterns, as the living installation will inevitably lose some of its greenery over the next couple weeks and slowly sprout new growth. Simultaneously expansive and minutely detailed, Cavanaugh’s spindly roots crackle with an undercurrent of exuberant transformation.

One of the sculptures in Brian Cavanaugh’s exhibition Blossom & Decay. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

One of the wood sculptures in Leo Franco’s installation The Keep. Image by Paloma Jimenez.

Franco and Cavanaugh both hold an earnest curiosity for the alchemical possibilities of sculpture. Tactile sensations guide their exploration of existential quandaries. The artists take the materials of the earth—wood, soil, rocks, and plants—and transform them into compelling allegories. 

Paloma Jimenez (she/her) is an artist, writer, and teacher. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and has been featured in international publications. She received her BA from Vassar College and her MFA from Parsons School of Design.