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.
One thing 15 Bytes editor Shawn Rossiter neglected to mention in his recent and invaluable introduction to the medium of silkscreen was that the highest price ever paid for a 20th-century “painting” — $195 million paid in May for Andy Warhol’s “Shot Blue Marilyn” — was actually paid for […]
To approach the figure portraits of Pamela Beach, on view in the main gallery at Bountiful Davis Art Center until September 10, you must pass a crowded assortment of colorful and often familiar-looking objects drawn from the era of Pop art, which can distract and detain the casual […]
Where mountains stretch across the canvas, clouds roll across the ridgeline, dissipating into whispy streaks of white. A full moon rises through the clouds in the delicate hours before darkness takes over. Filling the foreground of the painting, Great Salt Lake’s blue tones reach out to the viewer, […]
If there’s such a thing as a leading strategy among Utah artists in the 21st century, it most likely has to do with working in layers: physical, metaphorical, conceptual. For some it’s the traditional array, from primer coat to underpainting and so on through glazing. For others, it’s […]
Twisted and overlapping tendrils cascade through Laura Sharp Wilson’s paintings like a jungle of vegetation and bright plastics. Overall, the painted forms resemble plants, however Wilson revels in intentional ambiguity, where the content of her paintings balances between being identifiable objects, abstracted botanics, and non-representational forms. These knotted […]
A pair of photographs includes a full-page copy of a hand-written letter. Dated “Sat” at the top of the sheet, it’s addressed “Dear Jackson,” followed by travel notes of a visit to Paris, with added plans to continue to “the South of France” before continuing on to Venice. […]
If the number of selfies taken beneath it at the opening is any measure, the most appreciated work in the 18th Face of Utah Sculpture survey must be Nic Corry’s “Reach,” a giant hand that projects from the wall as if it were somehow passing through it. Cracked […]
As a general rule, masks are intended to conceal the wearer’s identity. Why, then, does Hakeem Olayinka routinely conceal the faces of his Nigerian subjects from view? Nigeria is a country that has seen its environment destroyed by outsiders seeking petroleum, even as its own government murders citizens […]
“Sandwich” a shower into your week! At first, this sounds like rather tepid encouragement in the interest of hygiene, but further investigation reveals it to mean something altogether different. Trudy White, the late and sorely lamented grandmother of Alise Anderson — the Artist in Residence who titles this […]
One title, “Coffee Cake with Salmon Cream Cheese,” conjures in the mind’s eye a painted plate, an appetizing dessert, whether on a breakfast table or an inviting café setting, a sweet slice of crumbly baked goods supporting a thick layer of creamy pink frosting. Instead, though, while there […]
Photography brought many things to the visual arts, like permission to cut a figure in half at the edge of the canvas, or leave some undesirable empty space, neither of which was done much, if ever, before the camera made them necessary and convincing visual facts. The shutter […]
As it happens, the root meaning of the word “design” is to mark. That could be because designers do a lot of drawing, but it’s just as likely to be because what designers want is to leave their marks on the world. That might explain the significant changes […]
At Ogden Contemporary Arts (OCA), which just received the Utah Cultural Alliance’s 2022 Utah Exceptional Cultural Contribution Award, Survey: The West is an exhibit composed of Ya La’ford’s signature geometric design and ethnography. La’ford is an internationally recognized painter, installation artist, muralist, social practice artist and educator from […]
The cover of a chaise lounge looks more like a painter’s canvas than an invitation to lie down. One plant shades it, but another grows right through it. Yet it appears someone has succeeded in drowsing here, and further that whatever troubled their sleep has left a record: […]
In the foreground of “I Dreamt I Could Help You,” a large oil and acrylic painting on canvas by Eli Kauffman, two young persons confront each other through the open, driver’s side window of a bright, flame red car. We see the driver through a spiderweb of cracks […]
These must be some of the least iconic images of Utah ever to grace the walls of the State Capitol building. In place of, say, that monument to eons of slow erosion, Delicate Arch, an isolated monolith standing in a virtual sea of bare red rock, “Azure Stream” […]
In response to the historical challenge presented by the camera, painters have sought, and found, ways to surpass the limits of photography by doing things with paint that far exceed anything the camera can do. But since most of the art we see still comes to us through […]
Art is play. It’s also work, hard work: work so challenging many people assume they can’t do it. But that’s because they think it’s nothing but work. Better they thought it was play. To be sure, Mike Whiting works very hard on his art. The precision demanded by […]
I met Devanie Johnson on location, during the shooting of the feature documentary Tomb of Joseph. That was a year ago — June, 2021 — in historic Nauvoo, Illinois. Devanie was on the crew, taking still photographs. She shot all her photos with an iPhone, mostly using an app called Hipstamatic that transformed the photos to look like tintypes from the mid nineteenth century.
