Installation of “In Memory” with, from left, Daisy Patton, William Kentridge’s “Second-hand Reading,” and Cara Despain. Photo by Zachary Norman, courtesy of UMOCA.

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 known for his original approach to the frame-by-frame structure of animation, by which he encapsulates the inescapable presence of history in his films. His breakout work involved charcoal drawings that he pixelated—drew a little, shot a few frames, over and over—but made his own by rubbing out the charcoal image and redrawing, so that a ghost of previous images shadowed the action, much as memory shades all new experience. In “Second-hand Reading,” at UMOCA, he uses two comprehensive reference volumes as fixed backgrounds that represent the underlying and overwhelming facts of existence. Through this universe the artist figure walks, seeing only so much and striving to comprehend what he does see. Disconnected text fragments illustrate the impossibility of decoding the experience of being, yet produce poetic effects that take the place of a plot, just as they do in life. Close to this effort to take in everything, curator Laura Hurtado has hung Kentridge’s “Peonies,” an uncanny, handwoven mohair tapestry that turns a close-up lens on a jar of flowers, making palpable the close physiological connection between how the things look and how they feel.

When an artist delivers 20 or 30 works to a gallery, the writer need only decide which ones to feature. When 20 or 30 artists each contribute a single work to an exhibition (as happens increasingly often these days), the choice is more difficult: to include one artist at the price of leaving another out? But the 21 artists in UMOCA’s In Memory present a much greater challenge. Several of these are international figures, whose presence here elevates the gallery’s reputation even as it honors an audience that has shown itself ready for art as challenging as it is unfamiliar. The payoff comes when locally-produced art stands alongside what has been called “the art that’s in the history books” and delivers pleasure of similar magnitude.

Installation of “In Memory” with William Kentridge’s “Peonies,” in the center. Photo by Zachary Norman, courtesy of UMOCA.

Dallia Sanabria, “Repisas,” 2024, cardboard, styrofoam, 84 x 144 x 22 in.

For example, BYU graduate Dalila Sanabria’s “Repisas”—“Shelves” in her Chilean and Columbian Spanish—also fully occupies a wall, but does so with the spacial energy of sculpture that borders on architecture. Sanabria specifically refers to her packing materials as addressing her traumatic memories of a forced relocation of her family during her childhood, but of course the art wouldn’t work if it didn’t speak to more universal experiences, such as the way physical things augment memories. The best response I’ve encountered to her installation came from local artist Jillayne Meyer, who wrote, “Each piece of that wall was specifically designed for one, brief purpose: to protect a fragile object during transport. Specifically crafted and designed for that one purpose, and then discarded. Still retaining the memory of that precious, fragile object. The object is gone … only its memory remains. Yet in the gallery, it is not the fragile object that is beautiful, but the memory of it. The ghost of it.”

The trajectory of time goes only one way and carries us along with it, but our memories have the power of imagination and can travel in more directions than we may know. Julia Jacquette’s trio of trompe l’oeil paintings, “My Mother’s Calendar,” converts disposable plans focused on the future into permanent opportunities for reflection on biography and the well-lived life. Emily Hawkins’ “Dress Worn by Two Sisters” travels through time and testifies variously in all three of its dimensions: physical proof of a prior existence, of the wearers who are irrevocably changed, and foreshadowing of further change that the future holds in store. Then the recollections of Leah Moses, who created a graphic and personal record of her intimate experience of pregnancy, will have multiple memory channels that double and reinforce each other. Each artist fabricates an original memory that comments on some quality of recollecting: its processes, uses, limits; its fragility, durability, legibility.

Installation of “In Memory” with, from left, Emily Hawkins’ “Dress Worn by Two Sisters,” Hawkins’ “Dancing Dress” and Rebecca Campbell’s “The Wizard.” Photo by Zachary Norman, courtesy of UMOCA.

Julia Jacquette, “My Mother’s Calendars.” Photo by Geoff Wichert.

Photography today is moving away from its history, and particularly from the camera. With the touch of a button, a cell phone can replace all of the onerous labor of old. What primarily remains is to point it, and AI stands ready to eliminate even that. Anyone who can describe an imaginary photo may soon have it. Edward Bateman predates all this, having reached the stage by the turn of the millennium where he could generate a convincing digital image in his computer, without a camera. Bogus memories are the key to his art, whether he’s depicting Victorian robots or landscapes the way God sees them, but they work best when he uses them to delight viewers who enjoy having their eyes fooled even while their minds know better. The series titled “Science Rends the Veil” may be his epitome. Here his irony is pitch-perfect, since in these fraudulent memories science actually fabricates the veil, the would-be obstacle to truth.

In contrast to such gestures at undermining memory, Michael Scroggins’ recollection of a teenager’s love note looms as large in memory as it does on the wall. As he juggles the options as he’s found or been led to them, there emerges a realization of what he wants from this encounter. Having seen through to what’s possible, he’s not prepared to let go of the possible future. It matters to him how this will turn out, and while the audience probably will never know, it’s important to remember not just how things turned out, but what it felt like to care passionately about the future, now the past, before the outcome could be known.

Installation of “In Memory” with Angela Ellsworth’s “Pantaloncini: Group IV, The Ten Largest No. 6, Behind (Hilma),” (left) and Edward Bateman’s “Science Rends the Veil” (right). Photo by Zachary Norman, courtesy of UMOCA.

Michael Scroggins’ “Thinking About You.” Photo by Zachary Norman, courtesy of UMOCA.

By this point, it’s clear that the centerpiece of In Memory ought to be the small etching by René Magritte that hangs opposite the entrance. Commentaries and prescriptions hung on gallery walls are invested with the authority of the institution, which in this case may have been misled by the influence of a previous collector. It’s also Magritte’s fate to be miscast, usually as a Surrealist, when he might better be seen as a revolutionary proponent of the role language plays in thought. “L’aube à L’antipode,” then, which translates literally as “Dawn at the direct opposite,” is said in the text to represent “a man with a shattered mind, exploding in multiple directions.” But surely an explosion would disrupt the subject’s head, while in fact it is all there, as much of it as we can see, its shape and his features all where they belong, though we can only see the parts visible on, or through, the various geometric elements. These might better be thought of as disciplines, or media, or points of view through which the perception of reality is filtered. Only what each mode of thought can accommodate can be seen in it. Each of these ways of thinking, like the psychoanalytical perspective of the drawing’s original owner, initiates its own body of memory and knowledge, which in turn calls into being opposing, often conflicting modes of thought, much as this paragraph does. As does every memory, and every image held here, “In memory.”

In Memory, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, through Feb. 22,2025

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.