Malachi Wilson, “Constellation 13,” 2023, collage, 11 x 16 in.

Malachi Wilson, “Constellation 16,” 2023, collage, 11 x 16 in.

Frequent visitors to Finch Lane Gallery, may remember Malachi Wilson’s exhibit here in the Spring of 2023 (see our review) — a “drum machine” timed to the artist’s resting heartbeat, large gel medium transfer prints with embedded texts, a series of unique and ancient objects prepared for mass-produced shipping. In a way, each used the body, as the artist says, “as a literal meter stick for the state of being present, both physical and psychological in its relationship to space.”

“Constellation 13” and “Constellation 16” represent a new line of thought for the artist. “These works appropriate modernist ideas of encyclopedic knowledge, utilizing the motifs of diagrams and to reframe ideas of self, control, and space,” the artist says. The series featuries archival astronomical photography in which the stars have ben cut out and placed in a new arrangement next to the original photograph. “The gridded stars blend outdated ideas of manifest destiny, a process of imposing grids onto the unknown, with the very poetic idioms applied to celestial bodies which deal with mankind’s relationship to control and fate.”

A graduate of Brigham Young University, Wilson is an artist and curator based in Provo.

READ MORE ABOUT THE ARTIST AND VIEW MORE OF HIS WORK

Artists of Utah’s 35×35, Finch Lane Gallery, Salt Lake City, through Feb. 23

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UTAH’S ART MAGAZINE SINCE 2001, 15 Bytes is published by Artists of Utah, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah.