Utah Visual Arts articles published in 15 Bytes, arranged by category.
The view is straight down, so that the desert hillocks and washes look like an abstract painting, all contours and curves on a completely flat canvas. Then the view rotates, the viewer seeming to circle down, around the focal point, moving from above the spot to looking at […]
If Afrofuturism’s purpose is to imagine new futures and rewrite past narratives, Chelle Barbour’s collage portraits embrace a surrealist approach to keep those narratives open, vibrant and strange. An exhibition at Ephraim’s Granary Arts, featuring scores of works by the LA-based artist, creates an artistic dialogue that does […]
The casual visitor to Ogden Contemporary Art Center’s current exhibit—the passerby or art aficionado who stops in on any given weekday—will miss an important aspect of Luis Álvaro Sahagún Nuño’s work. It’s the lived experience, the performative aspect—the various healing ceremonies that undergrid the artist’s practice and were […]
On first sight, the painting rings like a chime that echoes through the memory of art. The presence nearby of two more works from the same time and place confirms that the painter surely knew of and appreciated the great Mexican muralists, including Diego Rivera (once Mexico’s foremost […]
Long live the SLC Performance Art Festival. In an article published last year—a profile of Salt Lake City artist Kristina Lenzi and the festival she has helmed for more than a decade—we reported that the Salt Lake City Performance Art Festival was soon to be homeless. After ten […]
“It’s not as if they’ll have any Goya, or Velázquez,” the couple remarked, chuckling, as they entered the museum. They were at Brigham Young University to view the Museum of Art’s widely-publicized, widely-anticipated blockbuster event of the year, Spain and the Hispanic World—an exhibition billed as hosting “treasures […]
“Apologia” is a technical term that, while related to “apology,” actually means “explanation.” The connection is historical, since an explanation functions like an apology, in clarifying why something is different from what’s expected. On her website, Rebecca Klundt offers an elaborate “apologia” for her work, which she puckishly […]
Given so many bad stories and ill-will in our national conversation these days, it’s easy to overlook those artists who still want to share their by-no-means-universal appreciation, and even gratitude, for the positive works they witness and the good lives they enjoy, but do not presume to feel […]
A stroll to FICE Gallery and Boutique offers the observant visitor a live experience of historical Utah, albeit not so much the “Wild West” of fantasy as the gritty, urban jungle of black-and-white Noir films from the 1930s. This downtown neighborhood is a rare survivor of a lost […]
The wind was howling, but people were talking about the art, not the weather, at Maureen O’Hara Ure’s packed opening on Friday evening at Phillips, her longtime gallery, where she’s presenting the second set of mixed-media panels she began with on-site sketches while traveling through Spain in 2022 […]
The paintings Linnie Brown is currently showing at ‘A’ Gallery bring to mind transparency as a visual fact, but also as a concept. Her layered images more than anything recall the cinematic lap dissolve, in which as one scene fades out, instead of the screen going dark, then […]
The picnic table anchors this installation. It grounds the floating veils and sky-yearning columns that dominate the space, suggesting a narrative without ever explicitly revealing it. In this large-scale, site-specific installation, Gail Grinnell has transformed Weber State University’s Shaw Gallery into a reflective space that resonates with the […]
Her name may be a bit superfluous: surely no one would question that Laura Wilson is sharp as well as Sharp—sharper than many of us who write about her. Calling her recent body of work “Chiasma” revealed her to be acquainted with the latest genetic science, which is […]
Downy Doxey-Marshall must be one of the most autobiographical painters on the scene today. She’s well aware of this quality, which is deliberate, and speaks of it not only in her conversation, but in her gallery statements. The most recent of those accompanies Bloom, her exhibition of 13 […]
The relationship of success and freedom is anything but simple. Successful artists, to take one example, often complain that their work sells only so long as they repeat a winning formula, and they may openly pine for their days of obscurity, when they could follow their imaginations freely. […]
The growing number of pottery studios in Salt Lake and Utah counties suggests an uptick in ceramics interest in the area. Sadly, an accompanying expansion in venues to enjoy and discover the very best the medium has to offer has yet to manifest—at least not in these locales. […]
The early 20th century was a period of rapid innovation in Western art, with artists seeking to break free from the representational shackles of the past. In the scrum of early modern painting that was Paris, Stanton Macdonald-Wright (1890–1973) was one of the few Americans who stood out, […]
The half-dozen large, brilliantly mis-colored images by Diane Tuft currently on view, mostly at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA) but at least one at Modern West, could almost be Color Field paintings, if they didn’t contain so many photographic hints and clues. There’s another, also at […]
