In 2023, Steven Chodoriwsky, then an assistant professor in Multi-Disciplinary Design at the U of U, set up in the front gallery of Finch Lane a witty, physical model of the technology that goes into activities like teaching, which he labeled “A picture of a nondescript corner in a temporary and reviled building taped up in a nondescript corner of a permanent and beloved building.” This month he has brought an expansion, or perhaps a more candid version, or, anyway, something related, to the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s AIR Gallery, but he can’t refer to this venue as a beloved building, since it’s already scheduled to be vacated and demolished, and those who might otherwise object have chosen to cut their emotional losses by telling themselves that’s OK.
Chodoriwsky’s plan this time is much less elaborate than three years ago, but the effect is, if anything, more complex. For “An ad hoc ad infinitum cul de sac but good” he’s packed up what he says is the entire design department’s moveable property and deposited it in the gallery space, largely in heaps and boxes, and appended a statement that, if one takes the time to read it, does a superb job of explaining what’s up. That said, here’s what your arts writer thinks:
The current limit of human knowledge, which was honestly teased out of real events by mathematicians over the last four centuries or so, is that while there are patterns in the real world, nothing is absolutely controlled, least of all by the human occupants who behold it. Patterns emerge from random events, but they don’t replace randomness. Walk around the AIR gallery and see how a place exists for everything, but those things keep spilling over into spaces meant for other things, and half the effort of doing anything is spent making it possible to begin. Design, the meeting ground of science and art, is clearly one place where this is easier to see, and Professor Chodoriwsky has brought the bleeding edge of what can be known before us in an exhibition that replaces the false aesthetics of a cultivated image with the generalizable experience of what’s actually happening.
Steven Chodoriwsky: An ad hoc ad infinitum cul de sac but good, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, through Jan. 2, 2027.
Categories: Exhibition Reviews | Visual Arts
