Marius lehene, Regan rosberg, john lake

Opening reception: January 31, 2026

Open through March 8, 2026

Friend of a Friend is pleased to present a different distance featuring works by John Lake, Marius Lehene, and Regan Rosburg. These three artists wrestle with incommunicable ideas surrounding location through points in time, place, and mental state. This exhibition includes sculpture, painting, photography and installation work to weave together stories of hope, depression, nature, figure, and landscapes as we ask Where are we? Where are you? Where have we been? Where are we going?

When almost any place on the surface of our planet can be virtually accessed or recorded, the distance between people making connections to one another has collapsed so succinctly that the gap of “within arms reach” begins to feel foreign and large. 

Denver photographer John Lake consistently returns to his hometown of Rochester, New York to take pictures of a city he describes as “a mixed bag”. He captures photographs of waves and frozen ice bubbles that undulate endlessly on the surface of Lake Ontario pointing his film camera both above and below the horizon line. These images are contrasted in subject matter by the occasional human face or the portrait of a dam with a rushing waterfall. Moments of stillness and stagnation are placed in conversation with boisterous energy through a muted grey color palette as he plays with depth of field and perception. This exposes what is visible within the psyche of a rust belt city constantly churning while trying to recapture its essence. In his newest installation, a cement pillar pierces an elongated green tinted photograph of Lake Ontario. This piece points to how we think of water as fluid and reacting to its environment and eventually wearing its own path over time, much like the South Platte River that can be seen from the adjacent window. However, with a more surgical gesture, Lake has removed a chunk of the water from the image acknowledging how many of the man-made structures around Rochester interject themselves into the bodies of water. 

Marius Lehene’s glitched and layered paintings speak to an overload of visual information made manifest through painted decals applied to canvas. These decals consist of paint on transparent plastic allowing Lehene to utilize both the reverse and obverse image when creating his works.  This unique process convolutes our perception as he mixes imagery from what he calls his “fickle sense of identity” (Romanian, North American, and Indian). Space is collapsed through competing worlds permanently invaded by other worlds as his layering effects intentionally distort any sense of reality even though his source material is in fact “real”. Deeply rooted in literary and behavioral reference, Lehene flattens virtual space and brings the tired, chipped, and slowly peeling parts of the world to the surface for us to inspect. 

Regan Rosburg’s multidisciplinary practice employs a wide range of modes and materials by transposing symbology, ornamentation, and writing onto vintage environmental research ephemera or nature itself.  These juxtapositions are not applied with a questioning paradoxical approach, but are instead teeming with purpose – a gold architectural ornament that can be bought at Home Depot is placed in the Rocky Mountains or a dead tree taken from nature is placed in a white gallery. While her intention could be read as cynical or pointedly critical, Rosburg circles back into the lineage of environmental scientists from a not too distant past that might help guide us to rediscover curiosity rooted in hope and community. In her sculpture, The Way is the Way, she mines a location of personal history to resurrect a tree that lived and died long before she was even born. Applying resin cast and manipulated gold ornamentation to the long hardened root structure of the tree as well as green moss that wraps itself around the trunk, she imagines a future of growth that reaches towards the Sun’s light rays. 

Marius Lehene

Born in 1972 in Cluj, Romania, Marius Lehene approaches spatial and narrative incongruities in his recent work. These incongruities situate the viewer in multiple points of view at once by invoking overlapping histories; some Eastern European, some North American and some Indian – the three cultural environments that inform Lehene’s practice. Lehene studied at the University of Art and Design – Cluj. He holds an MFA degree in Painting and Drawing from SMU, Dallas, Texas, and a BA in Economics from Babeş-Bolyai University, Romania. Lehene’s work has been shown at the Art Museum of Cluj-Napoca, Romania, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Stein Galleries, Ohio, The Bargehouse, London, Casa Matei Gallery at University of Art and Design, Cluj, Etaj Gallery, Bucharest, Viewing Room 17, Manifest – Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, Fort Collins Museum of Art, and Pollock Gallery at SMU in Dallas, Texas, among others. Along with Aitor Lajarin-Encina, he is the co-founder of Dinghy Rig, a collaborative artist-run art production and exhibition program based in Fort Collins. Lehene has collaborated with other artists and writers and has published a collaborative book with poet Matthew Cooperman, Imago for the fallen world, with Jaded Ibis Press, Seattle, WA. Lehene is currently a professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Colorado State University.

Regan Rosburg

Regan Rosburg is an interdisciplinary artist who weaves together science, psychology, history, and social engagement. With a passion for studying various ecosystems and biota, her work investigates not only the exquisite intelligence of ecology, but also the causes and ramifications of over-consumption. Her research on ecopsychology and art was published in the IGI International Journal of Civic Engagement and Social Change (2017).

Regan firmly believes that artists are a crucial ally when dealing with pressing global issues. She has partnered with Human Rights Watch (Chicago, IL), the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (with Weinberg Newton Gallery, Chicago, IL), and the Center for Local Prosperity (Pugwash, Nova Scotia). Regan’s work has been featured in BBC News (Culture), the New Art Examiner, CPR News, and Yale University’s Order of Multitudes. Regan is an Associate Professor at the Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design and the Artistic Director of Cayo Residency (Saõ Sebastiaõ, Brazil).

John  Lake

John Lake is a Denver based photographer from Rochester, New York who uses experimental processes and installation techniques to create images and non-images about place, memory and the confluence of time. He holds an MFA in Visual Studies Workshop from SUNY at Brockport. He has exhibited and curated regionally and nationally at Union Hall, Alto Gallery, Lane Meyer Projects, The University of Northern Colorado and Regis University. He currently teaches Photography classes at Metropolitan State University.