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.
Badlands. The word itself evokes images of dry, barren deserts. A place where crops wither in the heat, and sculptured sandstone flows from one end of sight to the other. An inhospitable landscape, with towers of rock balancing precariously, holes carved through them by wind and weather. A […]
The dire predicament of fine art right now is the proverbial animal in the room that no one wants to acknowledge; it’s as if an author died between books and the publisher hired someone to continue writing under the same name, all the while keeping it a secret […]
From conception to execution, Iterations (opening Sept. 16 at Alice Gallery) promises to be a fascinating show. Working side-by-side in the same space on Thursday afternoons since May, Nancy Vorm and Sue Martin were hoping to see if their individual processes might influence each other. They created “iterations” […]
Sibylle Szaggars was in her high desert home in the southwest of New Mexico when the idea for the rain paintings came to her. It was 2010 and the monsoon rains, visible for miles in the distance, would arrive regularly in the afternoon. She decided to lay one […]
After a game of cribbage and a glass or two of Cointreau, my grandfather was apt to rise and recite from “As You Like It”: And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in […]
If somehow the primal essences of cult horror movies, ‘80s arcade games, abandoned amusement parks, and pulp sci-fi magazines were smashed together, Elmer Presslee’s art might have been fused from the resulting debris. Although many elements feel familiar—callbacks to subcultures of the 1970s and 1980s—Presslee’s style is so […]
Albedo | Nigredo , the collaborative exhibit by Colour Maisch and Gary Vlasic at Finch Lane Gallery, takes an attentive sculptural approach to exploring the mystical way that everyday materials are transformed by artists’ creative processes and the unique environment of gallery space. The gallery creates a space […]
All of us — well, most of us — have become conscientious recyclers, making sure to set aside our plastic bottles and aluminum cans so they can be turned into bicycles, or our cardboard and paper products so they can, well, be turned back into paper and cardboard. […]
What does one say about abstract art? It neither depicts a scene nor tells a story. It does not reference, investigate, or negotiate — or any number of the vague, Latinate verbs endemic to curatorial statements these days— anything. It is, in a term which has been largely […]
What do a rusty sewer grate, “Llama Crossing” street sign, rabbit, and a metal screen door have in common? On the surface, not much. Aside from the llama-crossing sign, these are all ordinary things anyone might see in a neighborhood or while out for a drive in the […]
Woven fiber encompasses both the mundane and the most sacred, technique intermingled with ritual. It is one of the most ancient and most common art forms in cultures the world over, yet, perhaps because of its subtlety, is rarely examined in the setting of a contemporary art […]
“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” – Joni Mitchell The idea of paradise is about as slippery as the idea of landscape: no two are exactly alike. They look different to each of us, smell different, imbued with cultural constructs fashioned from […]
You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.– Jim Rohn “A while ago I found myself in a ‘painting rut,’” says Layton artist Terrece Beesley. Instead of staying in that rut, the artist decided to get experimental with her usual style. “I […]
The untitled photographs in Willy Littig’s exhibit Vecinos wander across the walls of Mestizo Gallery like humble pilgrims. Dressed in understated, neat frames, they appear unburdened by worldly pretensions, as if they are on their way to ascetic enlightenment. Littig captured these images on his recent walking pilgrimage […]
In the deep shade of canopies that flutter like leafy parasols above South Temple’s historic mansions, the Alice Gallery, home to the State of Utah Fine Art Collection, displays Downy Doxey-Marshall’s newest show /klōTH/. If you’ve ever wondered how to describe the upside-down letters and slashes that follow […]
“Lift not the painted veil which those who live Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there, And it but mimic all we would believe With colours idly spread…” Percy Bysshe Shelley In part, Shelley’s sonnet “Lift not the painted veil” is about casting fake appearance, putting up […]
When Walter Askin was a child, he gravitated to the small roses on the wallpaper in his childhood home—but only because the pattern inspired him to draw small boats, figures, and other objects inside the roses. After his mother expressed her ire over Walter’s decorating efforts, he realized […]
The mixed-media installation in the Gittins Gallery at the University of Utah transports you to a place, possibly from your childhood, where there was beauty and magic in the leaves and branches of your own backyard or a secret hideaway in the woods. It reminds you of […]
It’s not enough to paint well. Any artist, no matter how talented with pencil or brush, must also find a subject, a message for their medium. Holly Cobb, an MFA candidate at the University of Utah, has found hers in food. Cobb’s interest is not in the food […]
