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.
In the enigmatic “Nowhere On” the term “figure drawing” initially sounds ambitious: only the lower legs, from the knees to the feet, are drawn. Above them, a cloud of almost cubist marks could be anything at first, or nothing. In essence, then, the figure reads in reverse, from […]
Mi Vida – My Art, the Pilar Pobil retrospective at Weber State University’s Stewart Library, is appropriately named: as will be clear to anyone that visits the show, Pobil’s life and art are deeply and inextricably intertwined. Viewing Pobil’s work feels like a visual autobiography. She opens her mind, […]
Corinne Geertsen’s many-layered art images, which begin as photographs, are magic tricks. They contain ghosts of the photographed past, people wearing clothing time has almost forgotten — derby hats and waistcoats, huge hats covered with flowers, children in proper attire — people, largely, in awe of being photographed, […]
There’s one life-size, cast-bronze golfer in the middle of this gallery, and a mysterious cut-out of a doorway, which staff-only can enter, behind a counter. Which leads one to feel that a mysterious and dreamy, miniature game of golf is being played here, in/at Salt Lake City’s Brushworks […]
There are those who believe that Brian Kershisnik never changes: that from year to year he paints the same subjects in the same way. While they may be right about some of the details — the dogs, birds, fruit, the flames, the haloes, and the palm-sized bicycles — […]
Those who value the beauty of empty, open spaces on a canvas will find a warm welcome in the paintings of Leslie Duke, now on display at Salt Lake City’s 15th Street Gallery. Mainly still lifes of flowers and citrus, her works are vibrant and lively while also […]
The ancient Romans liked to build gardens next to their homes to open up space and provide vistas. Where that proved impractical, as in urban Rome, they painted those gardens on the walls instead. Even today, the House of Livia — wife of Augustus, the first emperor — […]
At this show, you’ve really, for all effects and purposes, been invited into Brent Godfrey’s studio. Postponed for over a year by the pandemic, the exhibit contains Godfrey’s social-statement (“social studies”) paintings, enormous abstracts, small and large figurative paintings, woven canvas pieces, works on paper. Called Matter of […]
A mola is a hand-assembled textile conceived and made by the Guna people of Panama, in Central America, and Colombia, in South America. These vividly colorful, highly geometric, stylized plant and animal portraits are a popular trade item, and discerning travelers to the Guna’s homelands study, purchase, collect, […]
Space is a commodity with resounding significance as of late. The isolation necessitated by the Covid-19 pandemic has made more immediate the symbolic power of spaces — home, work, school among them — and the perceived absence or overindulgence of one, which may drastically alter our relation to […]
A drive — or better yet, a stroll — through the South Salt Lake City neighborhood just south of downtown, along Main Street, will treat the observant eye to mural after mural from one building to the next. Natural scenery has returned to this commercial district in the […]
The title piece of Taylor Wright’s collection of ten paintings at Bountiful Davis Art Center is The Bell That Never Rings, a verbal paradox that labels a visual riddle. To be sure, there is a heavy brass bell, its shiny surface reflecting the view out a window where […]
The role the Art Barn has played in nurturing contemporary art in Utah cannot be overstated. Now known as the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, which is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a retrospective exhibition in its Street Level Gallery, the community-driven organization was created during the Great […]
“The medium is the message.” First coined by the Canadian theorist Marshall McLuhan in 1964, this pithy phrase has dramatically shaped our understanding of postmodern theory, language and aesthetics. For artists like Vik Muniz, however, it is both a creed to uphold and an ideology to subvert. In […]
Sweetheart, because your letters make me feel “that certain way” please don’t fail to write them often ‘cause I love them The above is from a hand-written love letter that Sue Bradford used as the background for a solarplate relief and chine colle print, titled “Sweetheart,” of a […]
