A section of Devil in the Details at Urban Arts Gallery, where horror-inspired paintings fill the walls from floor to ceiling.

There certainly is no shortage of talent exhibited at the Urban Arts Gallery. Dozens of local artists display their work throughout the high-ceilinged retail space the gallery occupies in the Gateway Mall—a perfect stop for tourists and locals alike to pick up gifts or souvenirs from the Salty City. From cyanotypes exposing digital negative images of the Great Salt Lake to screenprints on metal that recall roadside sign art, there’s a style for everyone packed onto those walls.

Now showing through November 2, Devil in the Details is a curated exhibition featuring three artists—Mars Apa, Stella Bagozzi, and Mara Turner—and their works in the macabre, the eerie, and the mysterious: horror art crossing mediums. The show uncovers the extent to which the genre has gripped artists in its slender, bony fingers, giving the starving, disillusioned creators an outlet for their internal strife—or a reflection of the frightening reality we are subjected to—externalized through their art practice.

Although Devil in the Details highlights these three artists specifically, the Halloween season has horror artists crawling out of the woodwork, and the space is pocked with other artists working within the genre, exposing the dark side of mortal existence and the treacheries of what could be beyond this life. There’s no better time of year for shadowy creatures or metal-studded demons on canvas to see the light of day. Even if they are nocturnal.

Installation view featuring works by Mars Apa, including “St. Don Bosco of Brains” (top right) and “St. Anthony of Lost Jaws” (bottom right), alongside other paintings in Devil in the Details at Urban Arts Gallery.

Mars works in digital painting, finding subtle horrors in the religiosity of bishops’ regalia and sainthood. The figures look up as if God is just out of the frame, His wrath about to punish the subjects for their grave sins. “St. Januarius of Blood” wears a red mitre like a bishop, his hand across his heart, aghast at God’s fury about to rain down. “St. Anthony of Lost Jaws” depicts a young St. Anthony crying out in agony, fingers curled and jaw agape, his mandible exposed—perhaps ripped off in punishment—a witty, subtle play on the Catholic nursery rhyme “Tony-Tony-turn-around,” a schoolyard ode to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost items. The lore goes that you say the catchy alliteration while chasing your tail, turning in circles, asking him to help you find what’s been lost, and the item reappears through St. Anthony’s intercession. The halos encircling each figure’s head further evoke religious trauma—the horrors of forced belief systems and the absurdity of praising figments from an ancient book. The Catholic guilt bleeds from Januarius and Tony, perhaps offering insight into Apa’s own story.

Stella Bagozzi, “Intimate Intruder,” charcoal

Stella Bagozzi’s work mostly features bodiless skull creatures—fleshy, with exposed teeth and sunken sockets rendered in black and red oils. “Impish Inquisition,” “Primordial Painter,” and “Machination of Mastication” use texture and raw flesh tones to skin the creatures, placing them in settings of torture within the black abyss of our worst nightmares. There is a feeling of no escape, the floating skulls encircling us in mischievous menace, the atmosphere claustrophobic, the stretch of flesh taut and tortured. “Intimate Intruder” uses the starkness of charcoal to emerge a face from the depths, the negative white space gleaming along cheekbones and forehead until the figure retreats into our nightmares, waiting for us at our most vulnerable. The fingerprints from the charcoal outside the black frame evoke a struggle—grasping, begging. “Callous Confession” uses pen and ink to draw a nun-like figure screaming in agony—not unlike St. Anthony and his exposed mandible—staring beyond the frame at an unseen horror. God seems so upset by confessed sins that no amount of repentance can appease His callous wrath.

Mara Turner turns to pencil to create small, intricate characters from a mystical nightmare. The tree-men of Turner’s imagination haunt the forest after sundown. The trees come to life when we aren’t looking, following us back to our bunks, their cracking branches and howling winds tormenting us into sleeplessness. The “Lightbulb Monsters,” with their toothy smiles and bulbous groins, saunter through our dreams, their long legs moving slowly until they catch a whiff downwind—then their athletic builds give chase. In “Egg Collect,” a phantom carries an oblong egg in its grasp, seemingly having stolen a mother’s most prized possession. “Sideways Mouth Portrait” and “Woody Unraveling Face” depict intricately woven amalgamations of veiny, fleshy body horror—more inhabitants populating this nightmare town.

The artists delivered on the show’s promise of macabre beauty, but the gallery setting struggled to match their intensity. The exhibition description promised the macabre and mysterious, yet the space was too fluorescent to draw us into the eerie depths the artists explored. There needed to be a clearer distinction between the featured show and the other works for sale. The Devil in the Details pieces were scattered among unrelated works—some bright and fantastical—creating a jarring shift in attention. Bright graffiti art has been hung just down the way from Elizabethan-style portraits of women and children, neither of which this show sought to highlight but both of which could easily steal the focus. Perhaps placing the regularly available artwork at the front of the gallery while condensing the horror-themed work—including other artists dabbling in the genre—into a dedicated back zone would have allowed the atmosphere to cohere. Darker lighting with spotlights could have gone a long way toward setting a corresponding mood. Otherwise, the horror art risks feeling kitschy and slapstick when shown alongside pieces exploring identity, the self or the drying Great Salt Lake. In its own realm, the horror art—at the precipice of Halloween season—could have breathed, allowing the haunt and spook their rightful space. A chance for these horror artists to shine, even in the darkness of their work.

Drawings by Mara Turner in Devil in the Details at Urban Arts Gallery. Rendered in graphite and charcoal, Turner’s “Light Bulb Monsters,” “Egg Collect,” and “Tree Man” series blend human and organic forms in eerie, finely detailed compositions.

Even so, amid the bright lights and competing colors, these works manage to cast their own shadows. The figures and faces still writhe and scream, their agony undimmed by the surrounding noise, and powerful enough to reach out and haunt our own dreams. As viewers, we are not privy to what makes these characters writhe in pain or scream in agony, but the emotion they evoke is palpable and disturbing. Their torturers remain outside the frame, leaving us looking over our shoulders—on edge from the hidden torment lurking within this retail maze.

Devil in the Details, Urban Arts Gallery, Salt Lake City, through November 2.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.