Modern West Fine Art’s new location at 242 E. South Temple in Salt Lake City, where Unbound: Art of the West inaugurates the gallery’s expanded public-facing space.

Modern West opens a new chapter with Unbound: Art of the West, the first exhibition staged in the gallery’s new space at 242 E. South Temple in Salt Lake City. On view through March 20, 2026, the inaugural show introduces the gallery’s presence along one of the city’s more visible cultural corridors. The front exhibition area is an open glass room, with space for a key work to be installed directly behind the street-facing wall. From the sidewalk, sightlines extend directly into the gallery, allowing foot traffic to engage the artwork on view before ever stepping inside. This architectural openness allows passersby to encounter the exhibition in advance, extending the visual reach of the show into the flow of foot traffic.

Curated by director Shalee Cooper, the exhibition brings together a cross-section of artists engaging the visual and cultural legacies of the Western region, including Shonto Begay, Angela Ellsworth, Ed Mell, Arlo Namingha, Billy Schenck, and historical anchors Louis Ribak and Beatrice Mandelman. Cooper expressed enthusiasm about the move, noting that the new location offers a heightened sense of accessibility and positions the gallery to more actively participate in the Salt Lake Gallery Stroll. “This location allows us to be fully integrated into the Stroll,” she said, “with visitors moving between galleries along South Temple throughout the evening.”

Installation view featuring a painting by Kevin Red Star, whose depictions of Crow (Apsáalooke) life anchor one of the exhibition’s historical groupings.

Kevin Red Star’s paintings anchor one of the exhibition’s most historically grounded groupings, bringing forward depictions of Crow (Apsaalooke) life that balance cultural specificity with a distilled visual clarity. In “Thunder Sky,” a more minimalist composition than some of his narrative works, a lone archer on horseback is rendered in stark silhouette against an open field of color. The figure’s white headdress and the circular marking around the horse’s eye punctuate the otherwise restrained palette, directing attention toward gesture and symbolism rather than environmental detail. The reduced landscape places emphasis on presence, with rider and horse suspended in a field of white paint.

Nearby portrait works show Red Star working in a more detailed, narrative style. In “Crow Mother and Daughters,” the figures are arranged in a maternal grouping, with an infant secured in a cradleboard positioned in front of the mother. The cradleboard carries bright ornamental detail that punctuates the composition, set against more grounded tones in the surrounding garments. The mother and daughter wear clothing decorated with rows of elk teeth, alongside beaded belts patterned with small red floral motifs. Cadmium accents move quietly through the painting, in beadwork, trim, and surface detail, creating a visual rhythm without overwhelming the figures themselves. “Plains Indian Warriors with War Paint” turns toward a more martial subject. Facial markings, regalia, and stance take focus, with each figure rendered in a composed, frontal presence. Detail remains consistent, with beadwork, ornament, and painted elements carefully articulated, while cadmium red reappears in war paint and decorative patterning, carrying the eye across the surface. Seen together, the portraits move between family structure and warrior identity, grounded in tradition but presented with a clarity that holds its own within the contemporary exhibition space.

A quieter moment in the exhibition comes through the work of the late Ed Mell (1943–2024), whose paintings “Cactus Coral” and “Sun Washed Bloom” are presented in custom gilt frames designed and signed by the artist. Both canvases focus closely on desert blooms, filling the picture plane with magnified petals and sculptural plant forms. Set against deep, dark backgrounds, the flowers seem to radiate outward, their edges catching light in sharp contrast. Mell’s handling of illumination is deliberate but warm, with color pushed toward saturation so that the blooms carry a sense of heat and sun even within the darker field. The effect is less atmospheric than graphic—petals, spines, and organic curves articulated with clarity. Comparisons to Georgia O’Keeffe naturally come to mind in the scale and subject matter, but Mell’s higher contrast and darker grounds give the works a different weight, emphasizing light diffusing through the petals.

Ed Mell, “Cactus Coral,” 2006, oil on linen 24 x 30 in.

Work by Diné (Navajo) artist Shonto Begay introduces a more kinetic landscape language into the exhibition. Born near Flagstaff, Arizona, Begay was one of 16 children and spent his early years herding sheep while attending a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school—experiences that continue to shape both his subject matter and his relationship to land. He has often likened his painting process to a kind of visual chant, a rhythmic act of mark-making that builds energy across the surface. In “Road to Skeleton Mesa,” that energy moves visibly through the composition. Trees, mountain forms, sky, and grasslands all seem to ripple in unison, carried by Begay’s characteristic swirling brushwork. The motion is immersive without becoming chaotic—invested in using repetition and curve to animate the landscape. The effect is less about depicting a fixed place and more about conveying the living movement within it. “Yucca Tree” continues that upward momentum. The blooming yucca sends out a burst of vertical energy that pulls the eye skyward, echoed by the rise of a tree form behind it. Brushstrokes radiate outward and upward, giving the plant structure a sense of expansion rather than stillness. Across both works, Begay treats the desert not as static terrain but as something breathing and in motion, shaped as much by memory and rhythm as by topography.

Billy Schenck’s stylized Western landscapes hang alongside sculptural vessels, emphasizing the exhibition’s dialogue between graphic imagery and material form.

Billy Schenck’s “San Manuel Valley” serves as one of the exhibition’s visual anchors, drawing the eye from across the gallery with its expansive sunset palette. The composition centers on a silhouetted figure and tree rendered in flat black, set against a wide sweep of red rock canyon and sky. Bands of color move outward in layered gradients—reds, purples, and gold-toned highlights describing the last light of day as it settles across the landscape. Related works, including “Back Canyons” and “Utah Landscape,” extend this visual language into a cohesive series. Across the paintings, Schenck leans into a graphic, poster-like sensibility, with sharply delineated color zones and matte surfaces that resist painterly blending. The effect recalls mid-century tourism posters, where place is distilled into bold color, clean contour, and immediate recognizability. Sunset tones recur throughout the group, creating continuity from canvas to canvas while reinforcing the staged, cinematic quality of the scenes. Rather than atmospheric diffusion, Schenck builds the land through flat planes and contrast, giving the Western landscape a stylized, design-forward presence within the exhibition.

Moving up the stairs into the other gallery room, Sheldon Harvey’s “Mai Deshgiizii Ni (Jagged Edge)” occupies an immediate focal point. At a distance, the work reads like a painting, its fractured planes and stark contrasts recalling early 20th-century cubist or surrealist compositions. As you get closer, the surface begins to shift. What first appears painted reveals itself as sculptural, with shapes physically extending off the canvas. The dimensional layering casts subtle shadows and creates depth, turning the work into something that exists between wall object and constructed relief. A related work, “Untitled 01, 2022,” remains strictly two-dimensional while continuing the same visual language. Here, dark and light contrasts structure the composition, with interlocking shapes held in quiet tension across the surface. Without the built extension, the focus settles more fully on form and spatial dialogue.

Works by Sheldon Harvey explore the boundary between painting and sculpture, combining fractured geometric forms with dimensional surface construction.

Woody Shepherd—originally from Birmingham, Alabama, and now based in Utah—presents a monumental landscape that shifts the viewing position again. The scene unfolds as if seen through dense brush, with branches and foliage obscuring much of the terrain beyond. The heavy layering of limbs and leaves pushes the composition toward abstraction, breaking the landscape into fragments of color, shadow, and line. Rather than offering a clear vista, Shepherd places the viewer within the thicket itself, where obstruction becomes the primary visual experience.

As an opening show in the gallery’s new location, Unbound: Art of the West sets a clear tone for what’s ahead. Rather than narrowing the region into a single style or point of view, the exhibition moves across generations and approaches, placing modernist foundations alongside contemporary work and culturally specific perspectives. Installed throughout a light-filled, highly visible space that invites public interaction, the show feels grounded in place while still looking outward. More than a look back, Unbound reads as a starting point: a sense of where Modern West is positioning itself, and the range of artists it intends to carry forward in this next phase.

Woody Shepherd, “Riverside Hollow,” 2025, acrylic on hardwood panel 48 x 66 in. 

Unbound: Art of the West, Modern West Fine Art, Salt Lake City, through Mar. 20

Hannah McBeth

Hannah McBeth studied art history, classics, and Mediterranean archaeology before getting a Master’s at Cambridge University. She enjoys writing, hiking, and traveling to far-off places. Follow her on Twitter @hannahmcbee.