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.
Although landscape may be the signature subject for Utah painters, there are as many approaches to painting the land as there are painters who paint it. Many of these approaches derive from straightforward methodology, revealing nothing more than the rocks and the hills and the sky being painted. And then there are other approaches that defy traditional definitions and do something different, attempt something new.
When the French painter Paul Cézanne headed back to the south of France, he was retreating from an art world that greeted his paintings with indifference, but he was also returning to his ancestral home, full of a bright, penetrating light so different from the moisture-laden haze of […]
Will the human body ever become cliché ? For thousands of years it has served western—and most non-western art—very well. In fact, except when specifically proscribed, it has been the centerpiece of our visual world (even during the brief interlude of abstraction’s orthodoxy, when critics rather than clerics […]
Once upon a time the border between Mexico and the United States was about land and sovereignty. It wasn’t too difficult to cross that line. But then it got complicated. Especially since 9/11, the border isn’t just about land, but about trade, undocumented immigrants, terrorism, guns, drugs, and […]
One of the best known, most extraordinary photographs of the heavens ever taken is called the Hubble Deep Field. It was made by pointing the orbiting Hubble telescope, surely one of the greatest achievements in human history, into a tiny segment of space, about 1/30 the area of […]
The Gaze: glass half-full . . . If you wanted to demonstrate that there is such a thing as a male gaze, different from the way a woman looks at the world, you might assemble pairs of photographs, one in each pair displaying a man’s perspective, one […]
Under Pressure: it’s the title of a Queen/David Bowie song, whose opening riff was famously not ripped off by Vanilla Ice (aka Robert Van Winkle); it is what we are in this modern world; but most importantly (i.e., most relevant to what you are reading right now), it’s […]
Photography liberated painting says the traditional narrative of art history. Freed by the advent of photography from the burden of faithful reproduction, artists of the nineteenth century began experimenting with their mediums, stretching their descriptive possibilities while exploring new manners of seeing and understanding the world. Something similar […]
There are limits to the extent that the artist can let us see through his eyes, in a literal sense, but speaking metaphorically, every artist has the potential to share their universe of artistic vision, wonders of meaningful emotion, and universal contribution to cognition. This is the goal […]
In 1968, the Scottish-Canadian experimental filmmaker Norman McLaren found a new use for an optical printer, a device that copies motion picture films. Any moving image will consist of a sequence of still images, each briefly flashed before the eye while the mind builds a version of the […]
Watching art and life come together in a way that seems nothing short of naturally organic is one of the joys of being an art critic. Aaron Ashcraft, whose works are on exhibit at Finch Lane’s West Gallery this month, brings his craft to full life-like fruition with […]
Justin Wheatley explores the hidden meaning of homes in Salt Lake City in this video interview.
What should artists do about styles they don’t like? Namon Bills says embrace them.
The creative process is one particularly unique from person to person. A vast array of art is generated every single day from almost nothing but an artist’s imagination. When the Kimball Arts Center in Park City teamed up with SRAM to put on the SRAM pART PROJECT, individual […]
From a blue depiction of microscopic amoeba to a life size rectangular wall of an artist’s abstract version of their life, it’s clear that residents of the St. George area will get their share of beauty from Sparkle and Glow: A Clear View, the glass art exhibition at The St. […]
The backpack is ubiquitous in twenty-first century America: it is, in fact, one of the few accessories that comfortably crosses both gender and generational lines. They vary in color and ornament, just enough for you to know your own, but they are close to interchangeable. Yet this one, […]
In the 1990s, a theory gained popular traction — though never professional credence — that in the nineteenth-century quilts were used to help runaway slaves along the Underground Railroad. Hung outside a house or slave shack, the theory went, the quilts were either signals to passing slaves — […]
Contemporary representations of parenthood are rampant in popular culture. Ranging from idyllic to distressing, such portrayals oftentimes generalize a complicated experience. Love Hours, an exhibition currently at the Alice Gallery in Salt Lake City tackles this immensely personal and time-honored experience. As a scholar of feminist art, the show’s curator […]
Walking into the current exhibit at Evolutionary Healthcare, I was struck by the contrast of a large-scale black and white drawing against a Day-Glo Orange wall — a color that signals Warning/Caution and commands passer-bys to pay attention. Regina Stenberg’s drawing of clouds on a truly cloudless day […]
