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.
“Open wide the floodgates / wash away extractors from the shore. / may we never again measure / this body by economic value. / may we count our blessings / by the flaps of wings. / may we be the ancestors who stepped / in the path of […]
On the way to a creative life, many eager students are given advice approximately based on their interests. An avid reader might be urged to become a writer, though in truth there are numerous perfectly good and potentially more appropriate vocations for readers. One who draws compulsively may […]
In the midst of our rapidly evolving, instant-gratification society with constant distractions, I believe we’ve lost our way. —Nina Miller These days, when so much public commentary is clearly calculated to avoid offending our litigious oligarchs, we may well find ourselves searching the national conversation for evidence such […]
On a river trip, Bianca Velasquez used the solitary quiet of the desert float as a meditation on her current show’s topic. The water bugs caught her attention and a fellow mate on the trip—unbeknownst to her at the time, a wildlife biologist specializing in bears, well-versed in […]
In the foreground of a tall, slender watercolor a luminous yellow oval on the roof of a wet-looking car identifies it as a Taxi. This spot of color is echoed by the light from four narrow windows in the somber, gray structure that lines the street behind it. […]
Sometimes a gallery shows two artists simply because that’s who they have. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or they may have discovered an unknown pair: two deep excavators, say, who are mining the same subject matter. Some artists prefer to show with their friends. Again, nothing wrong there. […]
When Briana Dolan and Kevin O’Keefe opened the doors of the Mountain America Exposition Center in Sandy on May 14th, they were testing a thesis. Salt Lake City, they had argued for the better part of a year, was ready for a serious, national-caliber fine art fair. The […]
Modern West Fine Arts has had three successive locations in Salt Lake City, which is an unusual number for a gallery. For those who fondly remember the days when critics told us what was good and what was bad about things, here are some relevant opinions. The first […]
Envisioned as a 5-year long exhibition that updates the permanent American Art collection galleries, BYU Museum of Art’s latest iteration is a significant re-conceptualization not just of the collection, but of the way the institution views historical perspectives and artists’ roles in history. But instead of presenting a […]
The most commanding work at Polarized America, in the Gallery on 6th at Utah Valley University, might be Kristina Lenzi’s “Pantsuit Pattern.” Essentially an actual American flag hung on a back wall, its brilliant red, white, and blue make it strikingly visible from throughout the room, while the […]
Mimi Chen Ting believed movement could be made visible. In paintings filled with looping lines, rhythmic geometries, and figures that seem to pulse across the canvas, the artist transformed dance, migration, memory, and music into visual form. In a downstairs gallery at the BYU Museum of Art, Make […]
Before it became International Workers’ Day, before it became a bank holiday, May 1st was a festival of spring: dancing, drinking, flirtation, communal release. It was a ritual of renewal with pagan roots and Christian overlays, not wholly approved by the authorities, where villages gathered around a tall […]
There’s a wisecrack by Ad Reinhardt (or some say Barnett Newman) that a sculpture is something you bump into when you back up to get a better look at a painting. That notwithstanding, having the two media share a gallery can be an effective use of space. One […]
Each year since 1924, the Springville Museum of Art has hosted a contemporary art competition called the Spring Salon. Artists from around the country, including John Carlsen, Norman Rockwell, Emile Gruppe, and Maynard Dixon have participated. The contest still receives submissions from all over; but, the majority are […]
“My paintings stem from an innate desire to express something words cannot,” says Anne Wolfer in her artist statement. The challenge to those who write about visual art may never have been more succinctly stated. Then again, the unmistakable differences between the way she represents the visible world […]
Trent Call is such a protean inventor that anyone faced with the present task might be tempted to start by recalling any number of personal favorites: the facade facing the TRAX station at Ninth South that serves as an invitation to one of the most innovative urban enclaves […]
There is absolutely nothing wrong with painting from photographs. Even artists who never, ever work from them will tell you they have no quarrel with painters who do so. Photography was invented in the 19th century by painters seeking to shorten the arduous path that leads from three-dimensional […]
Salt Lake City legend and prolific painter Susan Kirby is showing both old and new works in There Is Nothing More Shocking Than Joy, a show that crosses timelines, from ethereal dreamscapes into realities that bend the narrative of history. Rendered in what Kirby herself admits is a […]
Several years ago, when so many of our artists and their galleries were devoted to sounding the alarm on behalf of the environment, and particularly the disappearing Great Salt Lake, Pamela Beach had her own perspective, literally, on the matter. From the front porch of the home where […]
