The semicircular handle of a wicker basket frames the angelic face of a young woman, which is doubled by reflection from the silvery surface of its contents. A pair of blue-gloved hands supports the basket’s bowl, while concentric pink ovals of satin and roses, a pink lace bow […]
News that one of the world’s most exciting landscape painters has moved to Utah, adding the Rockies and Wasatch mountains to an already stunning resumé, sounds a little like saying another ship full of coal has arrived in Newcastle. After all, no other paintable subject is more popular […]
In a few weeks it will be ten years since Jorge Rojas first showed his art in Salt Lake City, bringing him to 15 Bytes’ attention and eventual inclusion in Utah’s 15. Since then, as one of the foremost arts activists in Utah, he has alternated between showing […]
It did seem too bad about the video. I mean, here’s this uber-intriguing show at UMOCA — joyful, absorbing, edgy, impactful, magical, riotous both in color and often also in mood — a superb conveyance of works-to-date by the genius Beat-origin artist and wordsmith, a professor of humanities […]
The floor of a dark room sprouts fifteen narrow white pillars, three rows of five, laid out like an orchard. Each slightly more than waist-high pedestal supports a different object; some are large and protrude into the surrounding space, balanced in defiance of gravity, while others are compact, […]
In order to enter Material Issues, the pieces of which can be seen from above, spread invitingly across the ground level gallery of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, you must cross the familiar steel bridge and descend the switchbacks of the staircase, first walking away, into the […]
If you hit UMOCA on Saturday night, opportunity for fame awaits: the chance to digitally distort or enhance the work of a respected local or nationally or internationally famous artist and get your resulting image in a database and printed catalog. Not only that, but at 8:30 sharp […]
In the darkened gallery they float like apparitions, life-size outlines of figures captured in poses that shift between submission and aggression, carved masks sprouting from their flattened surface suggesting fear, defiance, bafflement, awe. Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez’s Casta Paintings, currently on exhibit at the Street Gallery of the Utah Museum […]
A teacup rests on a saucer, an accompanying spoon at its side. Covered in coarse fur, the seemingly innocuous objects’ deviation from the familiar is jarring and uncomfortable. Swiss artist Méret Oppenheim’s iconic “Luncheon in Fur,” from 1936, is the ultimate Surrealist sculpture, a work that invariably elicits strong responses […]
We are fascinated by nature. We study it, copy it, theorize about it, and long for it. We also sometimes dislike it. We get allergies and curse the trees or step on a sharp thorn and resent the bush in our path. Nature excites us, but we are […]
Working Hard to Be Useless, currently on display at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, is framed as a revisiting of the ideas of the Situationist International. Though art and artists were integral to its earliest phases, Situationism (1957-1972) was, at its heart, a revolutionary movement that, among […]
Secluded in a small, pitch-black viewing room in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, a troubled musician suddenly breaks into a virtuosic drum solo. Both terrifying and impressive, the performance unleashes a combination of sounds that is just shy of chaos. After a few minutes of what seems […]
