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.
C.C.A. Christensen painted his most important work, the “Mormon Panorama,” in the mid-1870s. Even though as an immigrant he hadn’t witnessed the persecution and violence central to the stories he gave visual form, it was his dramatic images, in which nature herself seemed to recoil in horror, that […]
In “Dig,” a large and very colorful landscape in a portrait format, a middle-aged man, lean and strong from a lifetime of hard work, leans forward from the waist, his bare torso so shiny with sweat it reflects the sky above him. As he digs, the passion of […]
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—the film critic Stuart Klawans told me I was “the sort of viewer who is as interested in the film outside the film” as I am in what happens in it. It wasn’t a compliment; more an acknowledgment of temptation. Yet I […]
Wending your way through the basement corridors of Sprague Branch Library in Sugar House, you’ll eventually come across a group of 20 artworks by Terence K. Stephens. (I’ve never had to actually hunt through a building for an exhibit before, but thought this one worth the effort.) Titled […]
I can’t tell if Zaq Landsberg is simply having a good bit of fun or actually taking himself seriously. Landsberg is the founder of an art project in Utah’s west desert called Zaqistan, which consists of two rather inaccessible acres of scrubland that has been given the meta-contextual […]
by Tabitha Nikolai Thanks to comments sections, opinions on art are less than a dime for more than a dozen. In spite of this glut on the market, Artists of Utah board member Stefanie Dykes asked me to share mine on the occasion of their latest incarnation of 35 […]
In his new exhibit, Ryoichi Suzuki’s carved, flowing forms of wood and stone punctuate two rooms in Salt Lake City’s A Gallery. In each sculpture on display, Suzuki uses different types of stone or wood to produce elongated and graceful organic forms. A native of Japan, Suzuki’s subjects […]
Andrew Rice’s new works, on exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s Projects Gallery, are filled with dark masses, scrubbed in black oil sticks, covering a rainbow of hues that struggle to emerge through the darkened planes. They define abstracted interior spaces, corners of large rooms, two-sometimes-three-stories […]
DemoGraphics, the Rio Gallery’s recent group exhibition, was a showcase of seven regional artists brought together through themes of visual language and communication. According to the gallery: “The exhibition explores communication with a personal, visual language, asking the viewer to let the artwork be heard. The viewer is […]
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. […]
