He lived every second of his life for acclaim while pretending it was merely this unexpected, unwanted byproduct of his oh-so-authentic and eccentric cutting-edge art. Like he would produce that art whether or not he got the veneration. Bollocks. Everything he did he did to be adored. That’s […]
Most of “The Sound of Many Books” is taken up by the wall of tomes: going on five shelves of them, no two the same, the gaps between them like missing teeth that testify to regular use. This is an avid reader’s library. Who that reader may be […]
Writing for 15 Bytes, the temptation is always to go straight to the art. In the case of the current show at Art Access, that might mean Allianys Pupo Restrepo’s “Royalty Playing Cards”—decks of classic playing cards that have been digitally printed. The actual decks are laid out […]
Not unlike the historical epoch from which it emerged, What Falls Away is a novel that looks back in anger, while it looks ahead with hope. As in our lives, the anger is aimed at a greedy, patriarchal order that refuses to yield power, while the hope is […]
It’s well known that sensations like flavors, odors, and sights tend to be unpleasant on first encounter—a mechanism that protects individuals from unknown dangers—but that with further experience they may come to seem neutral, even positively delightful. Captured in a single image, the phenomenon might take the form […]
For much of the 20th century, painting and photography felt like mortal enemies. Any history of Modernism will explain how the camera forced artists into the varieties of Abstraction, among other things. That the schism has now healed is shown by Maggie Davis in her “Windowpane Poppies,” a […]
If there isn’t a narrative illustrated by “Flight of the Oculus,” viewers can be excused for inventing one. The appropriately highest panel on the wall depicts something that earlier generations would have pegged as science fiction: a drone floating in air on four spinning propellers. To the side, […]
A large drawing—large by most standards, but not by comparison with others hanging nearby—titled “Hazel’s Room” places an ancient symbol of menace, a wolf, at large in an up-to-date child’s bedroom. It’s every bit the nightmare image it appears: Hazel is the artist’s daughter, still an infant when […]
There will always be artists who start out by looking closely at the world, then by copying it in one way or another. Doing so makes sense, after all, since appearances are often where knowledge begins. Later, it may become necessary to look beneath the surface, to the […]
Now on view at Finch Lane Gallery, “Life, Death, Decay (Olympic Peninsula) and Greenhouse” consists of a shadow box, the back of which depicts the Olympic Rainforest, the closest mainland USA comes to a tropical wilderness. In front of this dense forest of huge trees springing from lush […]
In a vitrine in the lobby of the Library of Congress lie the objects that were in Abraham Lincoln’s pockets when he was shot, one of which is a pair of reading glasses repaired with string. Contemplating these real objects is about as close as one can come […]
The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s many virtues—currently under threat from short-sighted development—include its multi-level architecture, incorporating a vast space that still allows for intimate encounters. Right now, one grand wall of the main gallery is devoted to the unmatched video genius of William Kentridge, a South African […]
If you never thought to burn down your father’s house, or to murder him in his sleep—included here as a free psychic bonus—Michael Gills’ collection of 11 stories, accurately labeled “short,” may not be for you. If you were so fortunate as to grow up in a perfectly […]
There’s a general rule at 15 Bytes: the art we write about should be on public display somewhere at the same time. For living artists, that usually means we’re writing about something made in the past year or two, freshly hung on a gallery wall. In the case […]
All over the world, the story of art begins with Nature: for example, through images of living creatures painted on exposed rock faces. Later, when we moved indoors, art brought the natural world along, to complete a dwelling’s interior space. Artists can preserve the ephemeral, as Connie Borup […]
“I think that if a song isn’t about something, it ought to be an instrumental.” With that advice, spoken often in concert, the great American jazz poet and performer Gil Scott-Heron, author of “Winter in America,” “Johannesburg,” and “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” never failed to bring […]
Early in the new millennium, a couple of inauspicious things occurred locally. Shawn Rossiter, a linguist turned painter, decided to start something he felt Utah needed: an arts magazine. 15 Bytes struggled for a few years, then hit its stride in 2005. Same applies to glass master Dan […]
