September 19 - October 24, 2026
Ruben Aguirre, Casey Gray, Diego Rodriguez-warner
frisket forms
Where is painting in 2026? In the age of AI, social media, and photography, what is painting still uniquely able to achieve? Rubin Aguirre, Casey Gray, and Diego Rodriguez-Warner approach these questions with literal resistance and undeniable layers.
Through their use of frisket, a masking material that protects specific areas of work from paint, each artist uses abstract forms, figures, and realistic still lives to amplify small moments or scenes from the everyday. This masking technique necessarily creates layers and textures that enhance detail and bring the paint itself to life.
Breaking away from the standard use of stencils and spray paint, these works carry timeless depth and meaning. The foundation in graffiti is present while each artist pushes the boundaries between a stencil and organic shapes while nevertheless carrying the form, skill, and layers of paintings created this way. Crisp edges blend seamlessly with detailed textures, all of which bring the images off the canvas and into our 3D world.
Rubén Aguirre is an American painter whose work engages architecture and public space to cultivate a stronger connection between people and place. His practice reframes how urban environments are perceived and navigated, shaping how spaces feel and are experienced over time, playing with ideas of permanence and ephemerality. Rooted in graffiti and abstraction, Aguirre’s use of color and form draws from the built environment, landscape, history, and typography. His work balances calculated lines with gestural mark making to create a sophisticated signature composition with a clean aesthetic, often with symbolic references to the past. Every public work is developed in direct response to the location which it inhabits, allowing it to live in dialogue with surrounding architectural elements while contributing rhythm and narrative. His catalogue ranges from large scale public commissions to gallery exhibitions that include the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Chicago Cultural Center, and the Trout Museum of Art. In 2022, he received the Helen and Tim Meier Foundation Achievement Award in recognition of his contributions to contemporary public art. Aguirre’s work has been featured in publications such as ArtNews and The Atlantic, and in 2026 will serve as a cultural ambassador between the United States and Vietnam.
Casey Gray (b. 1983, Palo Alto, California) is a contemporary artist working primarily as a painter, while occasionally expanding into sculpture, graphic design, and site-specific murals. His work explores the meaning embedded in everyday life, using familiar objects and imagery as symbols to tell stories, process personal experiences, and examine identity. Themes of leisure, quiet celebration, and the search for balance—shaped by his suburban upbringing, rebellious spirit, and connection to nature—appear prominently throughout his work. Gray often uses historical painting traditions as a point of departure while allowing his subjects to move fluidly across genres, from figuration and still life to abstraction and landscape. His practice is defined by a commitment to aerosol paint and laborious, hand-cut masking techniques, resulting in a distinct visual language that blends precision with spontaneity and realism with abstraction.
Gray received his MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2010, and his BA in painting and printmaking from San Diego State University in 2006. He has exhibited extensively across the United States and abroad, and has been published widely both in print and online media. His work hangs proudly in public and private collections worldwide including the deYoung Museum in San Francisco, Stanford University and others. He has lived and worked in San Francisco, California since 2008. His pronouns are He/Him.
Diego Rodriguez-Warner was born in Managua, Nicaragua in 1986. In 2008, he studied under the Cuban Minister of Fine Arts, Lesbia Vent Dumois, in Havana and received his BA in Counter Insurgency Theory and Fine Arts from Hampshire College in 2009. In 2013, he earned an MFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design. He is both a 2013 Tobey Devan Lewis and 2020 Joan Mitchell Fellow and has exhibited in Denver, Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, and Havana. The artist lives and works in Denver.
