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.
In Viktor Shklovsky’s “Art as Technique,” the character of a horse, contemplating the relationship between humans and their private property, wonders at the oddity of a person’s need to claim an object as “mine” without regard to if that object presents any function or necessity for the […]
“The deepest thing we can learn about nature is not how it works, but that it is the poetry of survival.” — John Fowles The Poetry of Survival, up at Utah State University Eastern’s East Gallery through Nov. 1, showcases work by Anne Kaferle and Kadi Franson, two artists […]
In the darkened gallery they float like apparitions, life-size outlines of figures captured in poses that shift between submission and aggression, carved masks sprouting from their flattened surface suggesting fear, defiance, bafflement, awe. Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s Casta Paintings, currently on exhibit at the Street Gallery of the Utah Museum […]
An artistic process that’s been practiced for centuries, from Albrecht Dürer’s woodcuts to Andy Warhol’s silk-screens, printmaking is a dynamic art form with capabilities that extend far beyond its typical associations with wall posters or flattened reproductions. Contemporary printmaking surprisingly lends itself to a variety of processes, from […]
Myth, open at Modern West Fine Art until October 31 and featuring three of the gallery’s newly represented artists — Fidalis Buehler, Mitch Mantle, and Wren Ross — combines their three bodies of work, which share a preoccupation with pictorial symbolism and a dash of aesthetic abruptness. Colorful, […]
Jason Lanegan’s “Ancestral Reliquary II: Sylvina Belle Frohlich” could be described as a geometric assemblage that, hanging on a wall, establishes a context that literally connects it to architecture. The reference is underscored by hints in its shape: complex, house-like, but initially disorienting, not least because of the […]
There’s a lot for the heart and mind and mental taste buds in the Art Access II Gallery, where the color palettes used by painters are almost merry-go-round rich. Most unforgettable is Tess Cook’s oil-on-panel “Smooshed,” where a tropical blue turtle industriously works its way across the goo […]
What are prints? In a way, they’re coinage: capable of being drawn, or pulled, as printmakers say, from a belabored crucially important original art surface, in potentially endless number. Unlike coins, a print has a stated and limited run. And a good printmaker does an almost horrific thing […]
Half a century ago, the children of Frank McEntire’s generation studied science in classrooms that self-consciously resembled laboratories: microscopes stood on tables and gas jets protruded from black, plastic-topped counters. On the walls hung graphic summations of fundamental scientific knowledge: evidence of taxonomy, the original business of sorting, […]
The moniker “power couples” implies two individuals who, while successful in their own right, bring even greater meaning or influence when considered in the context of each other. When applied to art, this expression is even more intriguing: what might an object in the context of another bring to […]
A teacup rests on a saucer, an accompanying spoon at its side. Covered in coarse fur, the seemingly innocuous objects’ deviation from the familiar is jarring and uncomfortable. Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim’s iconic “Luncheon in Fur,” from 1936, is the ultimate Surrealist sculpture, a work that invariably elicits strong responses […]
Relationships build us up and tear us down. Our dealings with family members, teachers, romantic partners, and even people we meet in fleeting interactions mark us, sometimes for the rest of our lives. Family members and others, loved ones or not, give us the syntax to interpret the […]
It’s as if a mad chef split an enormous cooking gallery into all round bowls and pans and rolling pins on one side; on the other, angular cutting boards, trays, rectangle and square pans. “Brights, sweets, for you,” he cries to Susan Jarvis the painter. “Darkness, depth,” he […]
From the high deserts of Utah to the shores and redwood forests of the Pacific, the exhibit Intersections in Nature describes and investigates landscapes that have impacted artists and local residents Cody Chamberlain and Len Starbeck. Both artists use their histories of mixed outdoor employment to inform their […]
Abstraction broke onto the art landscape of different countries at different times, but often as a response to disillusionment with the narrative art relied on previous knowledge of religious or mythical stories. Instead, abstraction provided a totally self-referential possibility, where an artist created their own code of line, […]
