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.
Whoever wrote that art is not progressive—that it doesn’t advance as artists learn how to better express themselves and pursue their goals—certainly didn’t look at the way the century of Surrealism has progressed. When, in 1924, André Breton published his Manifesto of Surrealism, he spoke to artists who […]
With an exhibition title that riffs on Andy Warhol’s 1966-1967 Exploding Plastic Inevitable—which featured a series of multimedia events that extended the exhibition beyond the gallery—Exploding Native Inevitable is, similarly, both multimedia and a reference to life beyond the gallery. Curated by artist Brad Kahlhamer and now-retired Director […]
Alissa Landefeld is one member of a small-but-mighty segment of the Utah arts scene. Originally from Montana, she started out to be a biologist, earning honors at UVU and traveling the world to connect with other students of the science of life. She found, however, that her urge […]
Kristina Lynae’s Flesh and Sinew, on view at The Gallery at Library Square through October 10, turns to the human body—deconstructed, recombined, and reimagined—to probe questions of identity, intimacy, and fragmentation in the present day. Born in California in 1999 and based in Salt Lake City, Lynae came […]
Walking upright on two legs is arguably the most essential human trait. Walking—and the vertical posture that enables doing it—are believed to have freed early hominids’ hands to develop and exploit fine skills, which in turn called on their brains to grow larger and more versatile. Walking thus […]
In Master Classes, we were taught never to start an essay with a dictionary definition and to avoid the thesaurus at all costs. So I’m going to break two expensive rules by quoting the thesaurus here, concerning the title of one of artist Jordan Layton’s pieces, currently on […]
On Friday evening, as part of the August Gallery Stroll, the ever-gracious and most erudite David Ericson and his staff hosted the Wheatley family of artists in their cozy gallery in the Avenues. In an exhibition titled Date Night, pride of place went to Justin Wheatley, fresh from […]
“I just want somebody that sees my work to get an experience they wouldn’t get anywhere else”—Jeff Juhlin, 15 Bytes, 2011 His supporters at ‘A’ Gallery have assembled a small but eloquent introduction to the revolutionary new direction Utah native Jeff Juhlin has taken over the past few […]
Utahns have an unprecedented opportunity over the next five months to see exceptional examples of art history spanning 600 years. The Sense of Beauty, at the BYU Museum of Art, offers highlights from the collection of the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. While the Museo […]
Housed in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s Street Gallery, Mariposa unfolds in a corridor of curated light. Carlos Rosales-Silva’s paintings range from small, intimate works to expansive site-specific wall pieces, each alive with high-key color, bold geometry and textured surfaces. Encountered together, they feel both deeply familiar […]
Unexpectedly situated in the westernmost gallery space at Finch Lane, Underground Library presents the paired works of Andrew Rice and Jason Manley. The exhibition’s title evokes secrecy, buried knowledge, and invisible systems of thought, and the two artists deliver dramatically different yet eerily complementary contributions to this theme. […]
Memories and dreams, ceremonies and dancing, family and community—all are reflected in the BYU Museum of Art’s Irrititja Kuwarri Tjungu (Past and Present Together), where stories are told in meandering pathways of paint and pattern. Curated from the collection of the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of […]
“I paint what I feel through what I see.” —John Sproul “If I’m going to be isolated, I’d rather do it alone and not in a crowd.” This familiar wish of one beset by strangers comes to mind when contemplating the art of John Sproul. Consider the painting […]
There’s a tree-lined, shady lane in a Salt Lake City suburb that isn’t quite a dead-end street, blending as it does almost imperceptibly into the grounds of the local grade school. In the middle of that final block, behind a hand-forged iron gate, sits a modest-looking home—a house […]
“What is the answer?” And after a pause, “What is the question?” These famous last words of Gertrude Stein, spoken from a hospital bed to her lifetime partner, Alice B. Toklas, in 1946, seem to echo the question asked every year for the latest quarter century by The […]
An American became and remains an international figure in his art in spite of never having spent a day in art school. Asked about the sources of his creative approach, he complained that he was always “reinventing the wheel,” that is, struggling to find techniques that he later […]
Utah artists and their audiences are no strangers to the salvage of discarded objects possessing the power to suggest rich associations between these things and new ideas. Nor do we lack experience with assemblage, the bringing together of unrelated bits and pieces to stimulate the cerebral and aesthetic […]
Josh Winegar’s Future Monuments, currently in the Projects Gallery at UMOCA (behind the gift shop, which the gallery doesn’t employ as an exit) includes 12 untitled, heavily manipulated, black-and-white composite photographs assembled from, among other things, photos of carved stone sculptures (presumably originating from monuments). Winegar has gone […]
If there is an artistic form that the Utah audience might survive seeing less of, surely it’s the landscape: a medium that is tolerant of exploitation almost to a fault, and which has seemingly been shown in every way imaginable. Of course, discerning individuals might argue that what’s […]
