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.
For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. (1 Corinthians 13:12) “Coming Through” represents a familiar Asian face, close up, one of nine small portraits of Buddha […]
Lenka Konopasek is always blowing things up or burning them down. Her beguiling works in paint or sculpted paper, now in a solo show at Nox Contemporary, make manifest that disaster is her thing, her oeuvre — but why is that? We arranged to meet at Nox to […]
The ladies and gentlemen at Phillips had a grand time bringing Spring to the main gallery for the current show – it hits you right in the solar plexus as you walk in and leaves you, well, hopeful. They do it with color, of course: screaming tangerine walls […]
In the upper right-hand corner of a canvas seven feet high and a little over five feet wide, rectangles of gold and orange overlap a mottled patch of sky blue. In front, or so it appears, a series of black loops suggest spirals rising, while a similar figure […]
When we call for Doug Smith’s contact information, 15 th Street Gallery Director Lucy Heller tells us one of the artist’s encaustic works just sold “for $10,000, right out of the window.” By the time we reach Smith, the same buyer has purchased an additional, smaller piece of […]
“I don’t do strange stuff with Photoshop,” states Paul Dougan, who seems more interested in chatting up the printing process than discussing other aspects of his work. “If the color red is there, it’s the best the camera can do and I can do to keep it red.” […]
On July 3, 2020, The New York Times reported that the Black Lives Matter protests in response to the May 25th death of George Floyd likely constituted the largest in United States history, garnering a half-million participants in over 500 locations at their peak. The magnitude of these […]
Visiting the Springville Museum of Art always presents an opportunity to experience an eclectic presentation of talent, insight, and creativity within the walls of a unique structure. The building itself, with its tiled floors, arched doorways, and courtyards, prepares you upon entry for a dramatic shift from the […]
No self-respecting dramatist would set a Biblical Apocalypse in the parking lot of a shopping center; it’s too mundane, too much a whimper and not a bang, to produce the proper sense of doom. Yet today it’s a routine event to carry the groceries out to the car, […]
Despite appearances to the contrary, group exhibitions of art are the norm, and should be. A theme, familiar or exotic, or a location, a medium, even a gender can provide the opportunity to compare how different artists handle the same materials: physical, emotional, contextual. From landscapes featuring Mt. […]
By David and Sara Lindsay (with frequent additions by their children) Since moving to Utah, we have noted several characteristics and peculiarities of the art in the state. We found that the Springville Museum of Art’s 96th Annual Spring Salon highlights some of these peculiarities. On our visit […]
In order to enter Material Issues, the pieces of which can be seen from above, spread invitingly across the ground level gallery of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, you must cross the familiar steel bridge and descend the switchbacks of the staircase, first walking away, into the […]
If you’re being followed or navigating a dangerous place, your natural defense mechanisms activate and start tuning. These mechanisms are buried in our mind and body, just as they are in any other domesticated animal. Colors get brighter, movements slow down, and you can shift from terror to […]
Stepping into the basement of the Finch Lane Gallery this past week was a surreal experience. First, due to COVID-19 restrictions, the gallery is currently open only by appointment, so the whole space was profoundly silent. Second, Kasey Lindley’s exhibit has transformed the industrial environment of the cinder […]
Walking into Phillips Gallery at 4 p.m., an hour before closing time and a day before Stroll and the official opening, I see Meri Ploetz DeCaria, a third of the current show in the Main Gallery, chatting on the phone — animatedly for the usually reserved gallery director […]
We all can relate to the idea of the inner child, the concept introduced by Freud that everyone possesses a “childlike aspect” within the unconscious mind. This inner child manifests as a subpersonality, an aspect of one’s character that is shown during times of challenge. It is a […]
“There is much in the scenery to admire; mountain rising above mountain, precipice rising above precipice.” — Samuel Parker, Journal of an Exploring Tour: Beyond the Rocky Mountains in 1835 How do you review mountains, or paintings of mountains? Mountains too formidably, completely, contain all opposites: in paintings, every […]
Linguist Noam Chomsky says language often has been considered “the core defining feature of modern humans, the source of human creativity, cultural enrichment, and complex social structure.” Yet one language dies every 14 days. Nearly half of the approximately 7,000 languages spoken on Earth today will disappear by […]
Playing off Virginia Woolf’s classic essay, A Room of One’s Own, the BYU Museum of Art’s exhibition A Studio of Her Own: Women Artists from the MOA Collection, honors women artists represented in the museum’s collection who were able to find that proverbial room, time, space, or means to […]
