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.
Most of “The Sound of Many Books” is taken up by the wall of tomes: going on five shelves of them, no two the same, the gaps between them like missing teeth that testify to regular use. This is an avid reader’s library. Who that reader may be […]
Walking into Allen and Alan Fine Art—(or ‘A’ Gallery, as it’s generally known)—it’s clear you’re stepping into a space that reveres artwork. Past the desk, on the left, two large-scale paintings by Jennifer Rasmusson draw you in with a subtle yet dignified seduction. The space, lit by natural […]
Writing for 15 Bytes, the temptation is always to go straight to the art. In the case of the current show at Art Access, that might mean Allianys Pupo Restrepo’s “Royalty Playing Cards”—decks of classic playing cards that have been digitally printed. The actual decks are laid out […]
How long does Connie Borup tinker with her drawing, shifting and rearranging it, erasing and starting over? Or is it possible that she is lucky enough to find these graceful, elegant lines already composed by nature’s calligraphy? Borup’s recent work, currently on display at Phillips Gallery, continues her […]
Downstairs at the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Making a Scene highlights a burgeoning West Coast art scene, charting developments in abstraction and surrealism in the 1940s and 1950s (see our review here). Upstairs, two shows focusing on Los Angeles show us what happened next. Alongside the […]
If you visited the Utah Shakespeare Festival this summer you may know how crowded with art the Southern Utah Museum of Art has been. The venue is usually packed — constructed as part of the architectural trend where designing an art museum focused more on creating an interesting […]
It’s well known that sensations like flavors, odors, and sights tend to be unpleasant on first encounter—a mechanism that protects individuals from unknown dangers—but that with further experience they may come to seem neutral, even positively delightful. Captured in a single image, the phenomenon might take the form […]
What was happening on America’s other coast as New York City was poised to become the center of the international art world? The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art explores this question by digging into its surprisingly rich vaults to stage San Francisco, the Golden Years 1930-1960: Making […]
What happens to an artist’s work when they die? The select few will be fought over at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Most will become a burden to their heirs: what to keep, what can sell, what to do with all the rest? Somewhere in between, among the mid-tier artists […]
This May, when residents of Alpine, Utah mourned the demolition of the town’s last remaining pioneer-era home, the Carlisle House—razed to make way for an expanding charter school—painter and sculptor Dennis Smith was among them. He grew up in this Utah County town, nestled beneath the soaring granite […]
For much of the 20th century, painting and photography felt like mortal enemies. Any history of Modernism will explain how the camera forced artists into the varieties of Abstraction, among other things. That the schism has now healed is shown by Maggie Davis in her “Windowpane Poppies,” a […]
Dozens of ceramics line a back gallery at the Southern Utah Museum of Art. Some are so smooth yet tactilely tempting that you’ll want to reach out and caress them—or, maybe inspired by Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures in the adjoining gallery, you’ll be tempted to pluck them with […]
If there isn’t a narrative illustrated by “Flight of the Oculus,” viewers can be excused for inventing one. The appropriately highest panel on the wall depicts something that earlier generations would have pegged as science fiction: a drone floating in air on four spinning propellers. To the side, […]
A large drawing—large by most standards, but not by comparison with others hanging nearby—titled “Hazel’s Room” places an ancient symbol of menace, a wolf, at large in an up-to-date child’s bedroom. It’s every bit the nightmare image it appears: Hazel is the artist’s daughter, still an infant when […]
There will always be artists who start out by looking closely at the world, then by copying it in one way or another. Doing so makes sense, after all, since appearances are often where knowledge begins. Later, it may become necessary to look beneath the surface, to the […]
Now on view at Finch Lane Gallery, “Life, Death, Decay (Olympic Peninsula) and Greenhouse” consists of a shadow box, the back of which depicts the Olympic Rainforest, the closest mainland USA comes to a tropical wilderness. In front of this dense forest of huge trees springing from lush […]
In a vitrine in the lobby of the Library of Congress lie the objects that were in Abraham Lincoln’s pockets when he was shot, one of which is a pair of reading glasses repaired with string. Contemplating these real objects is about as close as one can come […]
