Exhibitions | Salt Lake Area Exhibitions

Brooklyn Johnson: As Light Passes Through Water at UMOCA

Salt Lake City
January 17 – March 29, 2025

Opening Reception: Friday, January 17, 2025, 7–9 PM

As Light Passes Through Water is an evocative exhibition by Brooklyn Johnson that delves into the parallels between physical refraction and the emotional distortion of memory and loss. The show explores the transformation of light as it bends and fades beneath water, mirroring how grief alters and fragments our perception of those we’ve lost.

Through the refractive properties of water, colors diminish at increasing depths, with red disappearing first and violet lingering longest. Johnson draws an analogy to the way memories shift and fade over time, likening the process to decoding messages from an unfamiliar and fluid environment.

The paintings in this exhibition capture this sense of transition and loss. Billowing rainbows, stretched pearls, and fragmented petals evoke the fleeting nature of memory. Red, the first color to vanish in water, appears only in mixtures, never fully itself. The compositions oscillate between calm and chaos, reflecting the waves of grief and the persistence of light penetrating the depths.

Location: Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, 20 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Admission: Free and open to the public

utahmoca.org

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.