superHUMAN and New Mystics at the CUAC
Geoff Wichert examines two new shows at the CUAC that explore works that tap into various cultural narratives, from the super heroes of comic books to the mystic shamans of primitive cultures.
Abstract Realism: Exhibits by Matthew Choberka at CUAC & Finch Lane
Matthew Choberka, a well-liked and influential painting professor at Weber State, can briefly be seen in overlapping exhibits in two of the most progressive galleries in Utah. His work could be called postmodernist, or painterly– environmentalist, but it seems to me that he partakes of a mainstream movement […]
Nicaise & Goss: Dueling Diptychs at the CUAC
While carrying out his pivotal role in the early days of Modernism, Cezanne found time to set a precedent for one of its characteristic exercises: in sixty-some paintings of Mont Sainte-Victoire and uncounted tabletop arrangements of apples, pears, bowls, and bottles, he showed that an artist can paint […]
The Unexpected Nature of Installation
Sometimes an installation gets an unexpected boost from nature: so it was in the outdoor sculpture garden at the Central Utah Art Center this week. One of the rare sumptuously beautiful works of art with critical credibility, Roscoe Wilson’s Waste Not, Want Not (see our December issue) saw […]
“It is if you like it” Tracy Featherstone: Domestimutation & Roscoe Wilson: Waste Not, Want Not at the CUAC
Back in the twentieth century, the meticulous, pedestrian questions of art criticism were swept aside by a racy substitute that captured the public’s fancy in a way academic discourse never could. In a foretaste of what was about to happen to art itself, the response “But is it […]
A Still Life: Ron Richmond at Snow College
In his “Lamentation Over the Dead Christ, with Saints Jerome, Paul, and Peter,” Botticelli makes one of the Renaissance’s more subtle claims for the status of art and the artist. After all, of the three men he shows present at the crucifixion, one was not yet born, one had yet […]
Sean Slemon at the CUAC
Public vs. Private: Who Owns the Light? Sean Slemon and Herman Dutoit at CUAC by Geoff Wichert From ten feet away it appears that in Tied Up/Tied Down, Sean Slemon has filled a shadow box with bits of leafy foliage and then overlaid lengths of orange ribbon in […]
Peter Finnemore @ CUAC
The camera looks out through a small, square window set high in a wall overlooking some trees and what might be a garden run wild. Through it we see an odd figure shamble into view, walking away from us. His shapeless clothing and bucket-like hat hide any sense […]
Encoding the World and Getting the Joke: Stefanie Dykes at C.U.A.C. in Ephraim
Printmaker Stefanie Dykes, whose mostly black-and-white relief prints dating from 2002 till 2005 are on exhibit at the Central Utah Art Center until October 3, apparently finds the present (pun intended) easier to swallow when it’s dressed up to look deceptively like the past. One of the more […]
What is Art: Sean Morello at the CUAC
At first sight, Sean Morello’s two-dimensional works seem too slight to support a title that properly belongs to an encyclopedia. But to view What Art Is as a summary is to look through the wrong end of the telescope. Morello, like Art Danto in “The Transfiguration of […]
Sexual Dimorphism & the Sacred Profane: Casey Jex Smith and Sara Osebold at C.U.A.C.
I. If it has become a cliché that art usurps the place in modern life once held by religion, it’s an ironic cliché, for of all the subjects and sources of our art, religion is surely one of the least respected. In fact, in its purest sense […]
