RHYTHM COLLISION

ALEX BLOM, CESAR BEJERANO HERREJON, RUBY SUMNERS

September 20, 2025 to October 28, 2025

Friend of a Friend is pleased to announce our next exhibition Rhythm Collision featuring Alex Blom (Chicago), Cesar Bejerano Herrejon (Boulder) and Ruby Sumners (Denver) opening Saturday, September 20, 2025 from 7-10 pm.

The three artists in this exhibition meld and mend via protracted material processes that coalesce into unique objects. Divorcing themselves from traditional methods and outcomes (painting, stained glass, glassblowing, printmaking), each artist leans on and into an outward-facing sense of naivete that is quickly revealed to be a honed air of careful, time consuming experimentation.  They meander down a path less worn and, for lack of a better term, create messy compositions that reflect the reality of our constructed lives. 

Alex Blom’s recent Intimacy Collision series exemplifies their foray into glass blowing after a residency at Ox-Bow in Saugatuck, Michigan. The process requires multiple collaborators coming together to create, manipulate and then press together separate bodies into one. The results are unpredictable despite the traditions and cautionary techniques required for the work. Other glass sculptures become reflections and vessels for the sea and sky of their lived environment pressing together the sublime spaces through which we walk and exist.

Cesar Bejerano Herrejon’s painting and sculpture combines his Mexican heritage with his upbringing in the American south and skate culture. He explores materials inherent to the environment of the a city, brings them into his white cube studio at CU Boulder and builds substrates out of tar paper, concrete and brick. He then fills them with marks and imagery alluding to surrealism often found in Mexican culture. This work results in multiple snippets coming together like an infant star bursting with chaotic intimacy.

Ruby Sumners works primarily in print, stained glass, and drawing based on automatic writings and sketches rooted in diaristic intention. Her stained glass works collage together risograph prints and jagged glass cut-offs softened with extra amounts of solder. The loose narratives and associations created by combining Tiffany-style stained glass methods and modern diy printmaking techniques are rhythmic in nature and pattern. This is interleaved with fractured segments obscuring personal imagery with the diffuse nature of found glass. 

We hope you will join us for the opening reception on Saturday September 20, 2025 from 7-10 pm. Friend of a Friend is located at the ground floor of the Burrell at 3575 Chestnut Place, Denver CO 80216. For more information please email us at friendofafriendgallery@gmail.com

Originally hailing from Louisville, Kentucky, Alex Blom’s (he/they) studio practice centers on the multiplicity of identity, creation/performance of persona, and synthesis of queer spirituality. Blom holds a BA in Studio Art with minors in Art History and Business Administration from the University of Denver (‘23), where he was also a four-year NCAA Division I swimmer. After graduation, he served on the Media and Marketing Committee for Mo’Print Colorado and completed the Create Award Residency at Art Gym Denver. Blom has shown work across Colorado, Kentucky, Texas, Arizona, Illinois, New York, and Missouri. He is currently a Special Collections Assistant at the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection while pursuing an MFA in Printmedia at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Cesar Herrejon is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder focusing on mixed media painting and drawing. He is from Birmingham Alabama. Growing up in the deep south, Cesar was involved in the skateboard culture around his teen years and draws influences from these childhood experiences into his work. Currently his work also explores materials foreign to academic artistic expression that parallel and enrich his cultural heritage.

Ruby Sumners is a Denver-based artist who studied for five years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before returning to her hometown, where she continues to grow her practice. Since moving back, she has completed a three-month residency at LungA in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland, and contributed to the founding of Squirm Gallery. She now runs a risograph press and maintains a dedicated studio practice.