Salt Lake City
June 27, 2025 – January 3, 2026
The Utah Museum of Contemporary Art presents Inner Horizon, the first U.S. solo exhibition by London-based artist William Cobbing. Commissioned by UMOCA, this immersive, multi-channel video installation chronicles Cobbing’s journey across Utah’s iconic basin and range region—an environment shaped by deep geologic time, mineral sediments, and erosive forces.
Filmed across sites including Stansbury Island, Goblin Valley, and Temple Mountain, Inner Horizon draws viewers into the artist’s contemplative engagement with the landscape. Rather than imposing himself upon the terrain, Cobbing treats the land as a co-creator. Using first-person camera work, he transforms observation into embodied dialogue, centering the land’s voice rather than a human narrative of mastery.
Each video performance is shot in a single take and features the artist wearing hand-sculpted clay head coverings—one a reflective mirror surface, the other a primitive cave-like mask. These objects serve not only as visual motifs but as perceptual devices. The mirrored headpiece reflects clouds, terrain, and light in a constant visual loop, while the clay mask restricts vision to a raw, elemental focus on texture, motion, and sound. Together, they shift the viewer’s gaze from domination to attunement, from spectacle to presence.
The videos quietly reference the conceptual legacy of Land Art, with brief appearances of works by Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. Yet Inner Horizon departs from grand gestures of permanence. Instead, Cobbing offers something fugitive and intimate—the soft erosion of clay, the trace of a footstep, the murmur of wind in stone.
By inviting the landscape to speak, Cobbing dissolves boundaries between self and environment, creating a space where perception itself becomes an act of listening.
Venue: Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Address: 20 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM | Admission by donation
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Categories: Exhibitions | Salt Lake Area Exhibitions
