Utah Exhibition Reviews published in 15 Bytes, Utah’s art magazine, including reviews of local Utah artists, regional artists, group exhibitions and traveling exhibits of national and international artists.
Many art exhibitions now include a video as part of the display, often showing the work in progress. Picasso was probably the first artist with the confidence to paint in front of a camera, brushing an image on his side of a pane of glass while the camera […]
The ultimate aim of any multi-artist exhibition is to achieve a pairing, trio, or subsequent combination so brilliant that everyone is left asking why these particular artists didn’t team up sooner. The artworks would enhance and underscore each other so well that it appears to be a match […]
The art and architecture of Pre-Columbian Mexico work together to produce an effect that is rightly described as “colossal,” and that’s the term artist Horacio Rodriguez uses to describe the larger-than-life ceramic heads that make up “Yuma 14.” A selection of them appropriately occupies the only solid wall […]
Trent Call is a little bit “Disney;” Clint Call is a true Geppetto – a wizard with wood. Together, son and father have a hell of a show going down at Finch Lane. Best in show? Probably the numerous, notable, and intricate hanging kinetic pieces along the walls on […]
Walking through As You Are, the assembly of 35 recent paintings by John Sproul that make up his latest outing at Salt Lake City’s Current Work, it occasionally feels as though one of Utah’s most skillful and imaginative artists has set out to add “The Painter of Halloween” […]
Symbols being slippery things, you don’t have to believe Joshua Luther when he tells you his current works are about the transmission of knowledge and wisdom. Or, believe him, Luther being the hand that drew these images and the mind that conceived them. But don’t feel constrained by […]
There’s a contrast between the exhibition’s title, unruly, and the cooperative, even collaborative feelings evident in the works within. It’s a dissonance that all too clearly arises not in the sentiments of the artist, Alise Anderson, but rather in her recognition of some egregious, inhospitable response from within […]
In the West it can be easy to be seduced by the grand vistas — the panoramas unveiled at high places. As Louise Fischman shows in her current exhibit at the Gallery at Library Square, the details are just as visually intriguing. And even related. In Unearthed, she […]
Tom Howard has a gift for renewing language through its association with landscape. His painting, “The Long View,” takes a once-useful phrase, worn out by too many years of metaphorical urging (largely in an effort to motivate listeners to do something people are just not good at — […]
An art gallery which contains a courtyard with water and fish (as ‘A’ Gallery does) can run a show called You Animal and succeed in a way those without a “water feature” cannot. Consider the magic and necessary pull of water, whether in drought conditions, or not: settlements/towns/cities […]
Not everyone takes an interest in the backstory of art. That said, Margaret Wilson Morris tells a story about her recent series of miniature quilts, how they came about and what they mean to her, that everyone who makes, cares about, or even thinks about art should be […]
Aside from “Please don’t touch,” it’s rare to see a warning posted in an art gallery. Perhaps, though, there should be more. For example, the exhibition of Oonju Chun this month as Phillips might fare better if there were a sign advising the viewer not to read the […]
At the edge of a forest, amid lush foliage punctuated with small blue, yellow, and white flowers, a barefoot woman with red hair lies sleeping on the grass. She wears black leggings and a blue blouse adorned with curlicues, and a planter’s trowel lying nearby identifies her as […]
In the ever-evolving landscape of contemporary art, new mediums and materials constantly emerge, challenging conventional notions of what constitutes fine art. But sometimes we look to old materials and techniques and reimagine or recontextualize them. For centuries the result of practical necessity — and generally considered a folk […]
There’s something familiar about this landscape, but it’s not quite right. Yes, the verdant, green foreground and the rounded, purple mountains in the distance speak of an abundance of water because, unlike the hard-edged verticals of the red rock, mesa country of southern Utah deserts, northern Utah took […]
“So many people have lost the proper way of living, but here it is.” The comment, delivered by someone contemplating two of the approximately 125 mostly woven works in The Threads That Bind Us, the annual exhibition by the Mary Meigs Atwater Weaver’s Guild at the Utah Cultural […]
We may be done here. From time to time, a new effort in a human enterprise so fully exceeds what has gone before that it becomes impossible to speak of the new in the language that was adequate to discuss what came before. Imagine trying to explain to […]
