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.
It was a crowded opening with obviously interested viewers eagerly engaged with a variety of well-presented art: Marcee and Ric Blackerby’s “Freak Show” went off without a hitch. Except for the title, that is — which, shortly after the initial postcards were sent, was abruptly changed by the […]
From the clay tablets of the Minoans to the papyrus scrolls of the Egyptians, from the illuminated manuscripts of medieval monasteries to Gutenberg’s Bible and the pulp novels of the 20th century, the book has had a monumental role in the creation of civilization. It is history itself. […]
In 1968, I discovered Krishna. That year, I took a spiritual journey from being a University of Texas at Austin theater student and anti-Vietnam war demonstrator to a student of the Bhagavad Gita and chanting the Hare Krishna mantra in Los Angeles. After several weeks of instruction, I was initiated […]
Despite the obviously punning reference in its title, a first glance around Driven to Abstraction suggests a third layer of meaning: the impact of the open road on art. Here are three prominent canvases by Jean Arnold, her familiar perspective from her mobile studio—a public bus—condensing transport into a constellation […]
This month 15th Street Gallery has brought together three local artists, who, though individually working through their own aesthetic sensibilities, all create works that succeed through their exploration of space. Shown together, the works of Blake Luther, Anne Wolfer, and Jill Barton create a formal unity and harmony […]
California artist Kim Schoenstadt has returned to Utah, where she received a warm welcome from the Brigham Young University Museum of Art (MOA): an entire gallery on the museum’s bottom floor has been devoted to one of the artist’s sprawling, architectural mash-ups. “Block Plan Series: Provo” spans two […]
When you stop by the visitor’s desk at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, you’ll see a large glass bowl, placed there by curator Becca Maksym, topped full with apples. Red. Shiny. Delicious. The kind that greet you in hotel lobbies. As a fruit, it’s a sentinel of welcome, […]
You can be forgiven if you have a tendency, when visiting a museum, to pivot on your heel and turn around when you come across a projection room. They are becoming increasingly prevalent and the works on display can too often disappoint. Frequently the production quality is low, […]
The works of the late Harry Taylor, now on exhibit at Phillips Gallery, teem with energetic life and vitality. With his unique sense of brevity, playful sense of humor and dynamic skills as a woodcarver (he managed to keep working even after he was diagnosed with ALS), Taylor […]
by Marcela Torres This last Friday and Saturday the Salt Lake City Public Library’s Main Library Branch in downtown Salt Lake City hosted its second annual Performance Art Festival, curated by Utah native Kristina Lenzi. Fifteen artists, split evenly between local presenters and out-of-state artists, participated in the […]
“I love ambiguity,” Bernard Meyers says, and with that refreshingly unambiguous confession, highlights a principal characteristic of his photography. Ambiguity is what makes his photos—unlike the majority of images produced by today’s ever-more ubiquitous cameras—valid additions to our common visual language. Or in other words, works of art […]
Here lies the truth, and that is the secret of the reality of the forest that transcends all, even the forest itself.
Two things are soon apparent on entering the Shaw Gallery. The first is that, to paraphrase The Wizard of Oz, we’re not in Utah any more . . .
Sometimes what an artist most needs to get going, says artist Ron Russon, “is a kick in the butt.” The Lehi artist graduated from BYU in 1996 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration and Design and was doing well working on books and magazines and commercial […]
Take a closer look. These paintings aren’t on canvas. Or linen, panels or boards. These luminous, poetically evocative works by Brandon Cook, which fill Finch Lane Gallery with a sense of hushed wonder, have been painted on sheets of metal. With his exhibit Aeonic, a term that suggests […]
According to Wikipedia: The hippocampus (named after its resemblance to the seahorse, from the Greek hippos meaning “horse” and kampos meaning “sea monster”) is a major component of the brains of humans and other vertebrates. It belongs to the limbic system and plays important roles in the consolidation […]
Picasso famously told Gertrude Stein, before embarking on what became one of the most famous portraits of the twentieth century, that she needed to understand that it would not look like her. Picasso taught the world a new way of seeing, though, and his pre-cubist portrait of Stein […]
Across the room, Nuala Creed’s “Lament for Fukushima” looks like a child’s well-worn doll, but up close he’s seen to be an adult: one so rounded and smooth as to be mistaken for a child. He sits on the ground with his legs folded in front of […]
Heliography, the 2013 solo exhibition at Finch Lane Gallery that introduced Matthew Allred to a wide Utah audience, was both revealing and limiting: it revealed an engaged mind with the ability to physically encapsulate abstract spatial and temporal concerns; but that single exhibit could not possibly begin […]
