For centuries, Western artists labored to understand and reproduce the appearance of the natural world. Art created in the 19th-century academies of Europe testifies to their eventual success, so that by 1905, Picasso could move on, reminding writer and collector Gertrude Stein that, according to previous standards, the […]
It’s fairly obvious to the discerning that our environment is changing in challenging ways. It’s also apparent that so far, the process remains deniable. Each new degree of temperature, each addition to the severity of storms, soon becomes the “new normal,” so that the continuing slide into inhospitality remains concealed. What Jensen seeks to do in her art is to elevate that almost subliminal transition until it becomes ominous, but to do so without losing track of the appeal of the places she represents. …
We may be done here. From time to time, a new effort in a human enterprise so fully exceeds what has gone before that it becomes impossible to speak of the new in the language that was adequate to discuss what came before. Imagine trying to explain to […]
There’s a device filmmakers use to show the passage of time. It starts with a closeup of a calendar—the type where each day is a single page that is torn off to mark the arrival of a new day. On film, the pages slip off as if being […]
There are a lot of whale bones in the AIR. (That’s the gallery at UMOCA where their Artists In Residence cap their experience with a one-person show.) There are also a number of red herrings, which can happen when an artist tries to do something unconventional. In Razorbacks, […]
There can be few more mysterious and daunting creative tasks than designing new buildings. In recent centuries, the process inevitably began with the shape of a box, the result of natural construction materials, the need for stability, and for the final product to fit with existing usage. The […]
It looks like a blanket, though it might be a flag. There’s an image on it, taken from the most famous work of Josiah Wedgwood, the English potter, entrepreneur and abolitionist who founded the Wedgwood pottery works, with its signature cameo effect, in 1759. In 1787, he made […]
In her video installation, Who’s Coming to Save You? artist Christy Chan undermines what has become a too-familiar impulse in the population at large. That is, as her title suggests, the assumption that salvation, either political or something stronger, is our only hope for the future and so must […]
The paintings of Heydar Rasoulpur include some of the most vivid dreamscapes, capturing the most telling and painful memories, to have emerged from the ship-wreckage of nations that have literally cast so many homeless millions onto stormy seas in the decades since the Millennium. It should perhaps come […]
The main upstairs gallery at UMOCA boasts a long front room, in which two dozen or so vibrantly colorful paintings of sumptuous foodstuffs currently hang. They surround a couple of tables placed end to end, on which are arranged a dozen pairs of clamshell take-out boxes. The congruence […]
“Here” is always “between there,” just like now is always between then and anyone is between others. Whoever seeks an explanation of what John Sproul’s art says is making a categorical error. It doesn’t render judgments; it illustrates possibilities. Not what is but what could be. Not all […]
Tobias Fike has filmed what it feels like … not to die, but a related experience we never have for ourselves. Most of us know what it is like to lose a loved one, a dear friend, or even a stranger we admired above all others. We know […]
As a general rule, masks are intended to conceal the wearer’s identity. Why, then, does Hakeem Olayinka routinely conceal the faces of his Nigerian subjects from view? Nigeria is a country that has seen its environment destroyed by outsiders seeking petroleum, even as its own government murders citizens […]
Photography brought many things to the visual arts, like permission to cut a figure in half at the edge of the canvas, or leave some undesirable empty space, neither of which was done much, if ever, before the camera made them necessary and convincing visual facts. The shutter […]
In Renaissance workshops, artists often specialized: for a nativity scene or portrait of a noble, one artist might work on all the background landscapes, while another might be called in to paint the folds in a saint’s robes and a third would show off their skills on delicately […]
Every museum or community art center needs a really big room. At the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, the biggest gallery extends like an atrium up through the floor above, so when they wanted to showcase Salt Lake’s explosive mural art movement, which has decorated buildings of every […]
Located in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s Codec Gallery, Shattering the Pictures in Our Heads uses multiple screens to deconstruct stereotypes of the “Mythic Indian.” Shattering the Pictures in Our Heads is the most sophisticated exhibit currently running at UMOCA, presented in a gallery that uses “codec” […]
Deadline: Dec. 8, 2023
35×35 is Artists of Utah’s showcase of work by Utah’s young generation of visual artists. Occurring every three to four years, this exhibit features work by 35 artists 35 years old or younger, providing the artists with a unique exhibition opportunity as well as extended media coverage to help further their career.
