Installation view of Trent Call’s work at 15th Street Gallery with, from left, Call’s “Fuera de Servicio,” sculpture by J. Amber Egbert, “Leg Pull,” and “Parrot Tulips.”

Trent Call is such a protean inventor that anyone faced with the present task might be tempted to start by recalling any number of personal favorites: the facade facing the TRAX station at Ninth South that serves as an invitation to one of the most innovative urban enclaves in the city, or the unforgettable, multipart duet of clever, visual puzzles with which he and his dad filled Finch Lane not long ago. But the truth is—his personal list including “murals, zines, stickers, 3-D work and photographs” aside—there’s enough to talk about in the ten oils here at 15th Street Gallery. Whether it’s his subjects, their surroundings, or the revelatory, disjointed layers he places them in, even a single image challenges viewers to take it all in, leaving them with the genuine anticipation of discoveries it might take years to reach the end of. If ever.

It starts with “Fuera de Servicio” (“Out of Service”), a title that reveals the work’s focal point, the purpose behind its portrait, and the larger picture of the painter’s sense of artistic destiny. We don’t see a lot of pay phones anymore, and one of the reasons is the public abuse that makes them readily symbolic of social disintegration. Call has a more personal reason for this choice: an impulsive belief that comes to him at times like this one that he should take a picture, because the colorful, uplifting sight is under threat from homogenizing and hegemonic forces. Sure enough, he told the opening-night crowd of friends and eager collectors that in a few days the entire building had been subjected to a destructive coat of white paint.

Balanced against “Fuera” is “Leg Pull,” an innovative composition of a subject so well covered it must be hard to find such an original pose. This one may give the viewer’s own body a tug, which gives the body a renewed focus as the major thing subject and audience share in common. Not entirely incidentally, between these two oils the gallery has posed a ceramic vase by J. Amber Egbert that reflects the viewer’s own vertical posture. (Egbert is a personal and gallery favorite who is overdue for consideration.)

Trent Call, “Western Window”

Trent Call, “Parrot Tulips”

“Parrot Tulips” represents a welcome return on Call’s part to a subject he admits to having neglected—a study of a pot of flowers he brings to life by reversing the entirely proper order of building it. He first splashed his colors in a vivid take on 19th-century Impressionism, and then went back in with Renaissance pen and ink to draw the actual forms of the tulips. Finally, if I’m not mistaken (by no means assured), he returned to the background, which he’d already given a vertical treatment that emphasizes the upright stature of the bouquet, and shaded it to similarly emphasize the light falling on the parrots from the side.

Given the intimate way he treats his subjects, whether it’s a building he’s depicting or a real one he’s designing murals for, Call seems to care personally about everything he does. Details like the furniture and artworks on the walls of his interiors look like they were witnessed rather than invented. So it’s refreshing to learn that those who know him well refer to the models of his nudes by their actual names, rather than the titles of the works they model for, which in any event would be inefficient since, as they are also friends of his, most appear more than once over time. They tend to come to the openings and enjoy being recognized, and the mother of one was so taken with the situation she led some of those attending into the collection of previous works to point out earlier examples. Once upon a time, the arts were a club on the fringes of society. Here we see how that may still be true.

All this said, the most exciting thing about these ten paintings is the cumulative impact of the way they’re painted. Laying down paint layers that show, in barely visible ways, through later ones was an arguably pretentious, 20th-century approach. Capturing peeling paint layers, or even better, peeling layers of posters and advertisements, was a legitimate way to suggest time passing and more subtle facts of life. But Call’s layers are deliberately, identifiably visible through each other, which sometimes suggests tricks of the light, and at other times achieves a Cubist effect, but most effectively, I would argue, brings the painting vividly to life. If the things he paints do not dominate each other, but seem almost to sparkle along with each other, they become more like what they are—mobile, temporary-yet-visible facts. Physical science tells us nothing is really solid; it’s all just patterns of energy that interfere with each other as if they weren’t always in motion, always becoming or decaying. Trent Call reminds us that while nothing is permanent, we are fortunate participants in the dance of reality, in which the object and the observer are partners whose performance is a brief, yet eternal collaboration.

Trent Call, “No Country For Old Men”

Trent Call and Anne Wolfer, 15th Street Gallery, Salt Lake City, through Apr. 30.

Geoff Wichert

Geoff Wichert objects to the term critic. He would rather be thought of as a advocate on behalf of those he writes about.