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.
Jason Lanegan’s “Ancestral Reliquary II: Sylvina Belle Frohlich” could be described as a geometric assemblage that, hanging on a wall, establishes a context that literally connects it to architecture. The reference is underscored by hints in its shape: complex, house-like, but initially disorienting, not least because of the […]
There’s a lot for the heart and mind and mental taste buds in the Art Access II Gallery, where the color palettes used by painters are almost merry-go-round rich. Most unforgettable is Tess Cook’s oil-on-panel “Smooshed,” where a tropical blue turtle industriously works its way across the goo […]
What are prints? In a way, they’re coinage: capable of being drawn, or pulled, as printmakers say, from a belabored crucially important original art surface, in potentially endless number. Unlike coins, a print has a stated and limited run. And a good printmaker does an almost horrific thing […]
Half a century ago, the children of Frank McEntire’s generation studied science in classrooms that self-consciously resembled laboratories: microscopes stood on tables and gas jets protruded from black, plastic-topped counters. On the walls hung graphic summations of fundamental scientific knowledge: evidence of taxonomy, the original business of sorting, […]
The moniker “power couples” implies two individuals who, while successful in their own right, bring even greater meaning or influence when considered in the context of each other. When applied to art, this expression is even more intriguing: what might an object in the context of another bring to […]
A teacup rests on a saucer, an accompanying spoon at its side. Covered in coarse fur, the seemingly innocuous objects’ deviation from the familiar is jarring and uncomfortable. Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim’s iconic “Luncheon in Fur,” from 1936, is the ultimate Surrealist sculpture, a work that invariably elicits strong responses […]
Relationships build us up and tear us down. Our dealings with family members, teachers, romantic partners, and even people we meet in fleeting interactions mark us, sometimes for the rest of our lives. Family members and others, loved ones or not, give us the syntax to interpret the […]
It’s as if a mad chef split an enormous cooking gallery into all round bowls and pans and rolling pins on one side; on the other, angular cutting boards, trays, rectangle and square pans. “Brights, sweets, for you,” he cries to Susan Jarvis the painter. “Darkness, depth,” he […]
From the high deserts of Utah to the shores and redwood forests of the Pacific, the exhibit Intersections in Nature describes and investigates landscapes that have impacted artists and local residents Cody Chamberlain and Len Starbeck. Both artists use their histories of mixed outdoor employment to inform their […]
Abstraction broke onto the art landscape of different countries at different times, but often as a response to disillusionment with the narrative art relied on previous knowledge of religious or mythical stories. Instead, abstraction provided a totally self-referential possibility, where an artist created their own code of line, […]
Like clockwork, at 10 a.m. every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, Willie Smith, who has mild Down syndrome, accompanies his father Tony from their home in the Avenues to their West-side studio across the street from the LDS Church’s Welfare Square in Salt Lake City. Willie immediately goes to […]
We know him — if we know him at all — as the creator of “Metaphor: The Tree of Utah,” the 87-foot tall sculpture that surprises travelers driving through the Bonneville Salt Flats along Utah’s I-80. But Karl Momen is more than this one-hit wonder (or miss — […]
Art has long sought to capture the transitory and sensory in physical form. From the transformative capabilities of an artist’s two-dimensional canvas to contemporary art’s revolutionary experimentation with media, material doesn’t just inform art, it is art. Or as philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously stated, “The medium is the […]
Audience tastes evolve, institutional needs change. Which is why museums can find it difficult to always hew closely to the visions of their founders or the intentions of their donors. When it opened in 2016, the Southern Utah Museum of Art honored, as its inspiration, Jimmie Jones, a […]
‘“Where are my people?” the mountains cry out.’ This line from a young Diné (Navajo) poet sets the tone for an exhibition curated by Dr. James Swensen, Melanie Allred, and Meagan Anderson. Featuring visual art, poetry, and ephemera produced by students of the Intermountain Indian School, the display […]
“Peonies VII,” etching by Jenni Christensen, photo by John Snyder “I have always loved flowers and the garden. The variation is endless.” – Jenni Christensen Although in the high desert of the Great Basin, you could mistake a small patch of Pleasant Grove, Utah, for a flower-filled backyard […]
Disposable plasticware is advertised as a convenient alternative to washing dishes, but are disposables really more convenient? With plastics clogging the ocean, factory waste, climate change, and multi-billion dollar initiatives needed to pull the earth back from the brink, we are being killed by disposables. However, convenience has […]
The history of photography is bound up in chemical and technical overhauls, and when artists combine and tweak these photographic processes, new levels of expression emerge. Contemporary photographers Christine Baczek and David Hyams, co-founders of Luminaria in Salt Lake City, are reviving alternative photographic agents and playing with […]
Utah will be host to at least four major quilt shows in 2019. Is this the best one? Possibly. Technically, it’s not a quilt show. Things That Matter is a “fiber art” exhibition. With one or two exceptions, however, these works are quilts, ones that, as the show’s […]
