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.
I have to admit it: I had no idea landscape arches vibrate and thus create sound (albeit through frequencies inaudible to the human ear). Learning this fact alone makes attending Displacing Vibrations, on view at Nox Contemporary through April 5, worthwhile. Ambitious in its scope and message, the […]
In her profile of Joseph Ostraff for the Artists of Utah publication Utah’s 15: The State’s Most Influential Artists, Laura Durham focuses on the artist’s tendency to seek engagement from others in his work — from the artists and individuals who have influenced him, to the scores of […]
What if women were the pioneers of the West? Would our relationship with Native Americans be different? What about our impact on the environment? What would our society look like today had our region been founded under a matriarchy? These are a few questions raised by Jennifer Nehrbass’ […]
What Edward Bateman does is as much in the realm of science as art — as reminiscent of Leonardo and Edison as of Michelangelo. Which is to say that unless you can grasp what he’s about on his computer, it becomes difficult to explain the results of his […]
“Part of what artists do is call attention to things that have been overlooked, and do so in a way that causes people to start noticing on their own,” Jim Frazer said in early 2018 while working on a project in which he transformed the trails of bark-beetle […]
The dynamism of the natural world surrounds us: we are part of systems that grow and decay, process and alter on a continual basis. Nothing is static as matter and substance morph sometimes imperceptibly, and sometimes so dramatically it’s jarring to witness. These changes are at the heart […]
“A one-inch grid covering a square. Within each of the one-inch squares 1) Vertical black lines 2) Horizontal yellow lines 3) Diagonal right red lines Or 4) Diagonal left blue lines As many lines as are desired, but at least one line in each square. Colored pencil” These […]
In Matt Flint’s paintings, creatures —owls, wolves, bears, horses, swans — emerge from the gloaming, the twilight thicket. Gloam, meaning the making or growing of twilight or dark, now called “an archaic Scottish verb,” was drawn from Old English glom, for “twilight,” and glowar, which meant “glow.” […]
By the end of the 1860s locomotives could travel at a rate of roughly 30 to 40 miles an hour. In an age of jet travel and fiber optics this may not sound like much — you may be traveling twice this pace while reading these words — but in the 19th century, this was life-altering speed. Together with photography and telegraphy, steam locomotion was believed to be an annihilator of time and space. Never before in history had humans been able to travel at such a rate, communicate instantaneously over such great distances, and see the entirety and variety of the world in a print. Together these cutting-edge technologies transformed the way humans engaged and perceived the world — a world that now seemed a little bit smaller.
Planning is useful. It provides structure, focuses energy. But, as Zachary Proctor’s new works at Park City’s Terzian Galleries attest, getting lost in the work has its advantages as well. In Destinations Unknown, Proctor is exhibiting with longtime friend and past exhibition partner Lane Bennion. The pair usually […]
Reverse of Volume, Yasuaki Onishi’s ethereal, transformative installation at Weber State University’s Mary Elizabeth Dee Shaw Gallery, is created from simple material yet alludes to complex phenomena. Light and gravity contribute to the work’s perceptual illusion in which a wavering plastic sheet appears to float in midair with […]
The conundrum: dirt is bad; dirt is sometimes beautifully dramatic. Dirt and dust make sunset beautiful, many-veiled: that’s the magic particulate richness of dust. We’re alive due to excess, things leftover: cast-off matter forms planets; stars are globbed accumulations of recycled matter. We are of dust/dirt, as […]
Suburbia: a term which not only refers to the outer parts of a town stereotyped for its comforting (or discomfiting) uniformity but descriptive of a way of life associated with the people who occupy its margins. Both isolation and collective community can be found in these ubiquitous spaces. […]
Ties between Utah and China run deep: from the contributions of Chinese laborers that helped complete the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 to former Gov. Jon Huntsman’s appointment as U.S. Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China from 2009-2011, residents of this quintessentially Western state have access to numerous […]
“By the Sea,” the characteristically collectible catalog Susan Meyer put together for her annual presentation of Brian Kershisnik’s new directions for 2019, includes a challenge from the artist to everyone who’s ever written, or even thought about, his art: The heavy symbolic weight of books in my […]
“The artist Guy Dill has carved out a unique niche for himself on the borderline between abstract and figurative sculpture.” That’s the metaphor that first comes to mind, but the thing is, it doesn’t really work, because he doesn’t carve. They’re assembled in that distinctly American geometric style, […]
Tolerance, a worldwide touring poster exhibition, has made its way to Salt Lake City. This project, devised by New York-based Bosnian comics artist Mirko Ilić, explores and brings together various interpretations and understandings of what tolerance is through graphic art. Having opened in Slovenia in 2017, the project […]
With so much political art being made and shown these days, it would be easy enough to conclude that social criticism and satire are about the only ways art can help in troubling times. Yet however much contemporary art’s moralizing encourages its fan base, it’s far from being […]
“I want to take a viewer somewhere”—Roland Thompson There’s something that in theory can happen to any artist, but is particularly wonderful when it happens to one who has chosen an arduous path: one that imposes some external standards of its own on the craft of art making. […]
