{"id":106849,"date":"2026-11-05T11:33:34","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T18:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=106849"},"modified":"2026-11-09T14:11:35","modified_gmt":"2026-11-09T21:11:35","slug":"steven-chodoriwsky-everything-and-a-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/steven-chodoriwsky-everything-and-a-place\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Chodoriwsky: Everything and a Place"},"content":{"rendered":"

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In 2023, Steven Chodoriwsky, then an assistant professor in Multi-Disciplinary Design at the U of U, set up in the front gallery of Finch Lane<\/a> a witty, physical model of the technology that goes into activities like teaching, which he labeled \u201cA picture of a nondescript corner in a temporary and reviled building taped up in a nondescript corner of a permanent and beloved building.\u201d This month he has brought an expansion, or perhaps a more candid version, or, anyway, something related, to the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art’s AIR Gallery, but he can\u2019t refer to this venue as a beloved building, since it\u2019s already scheduled to be vacated and demolished, and those who might otherwise object have chosen to cut their emotional losses by telling themselves that\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

Chodoriwsky’s plan this time is much less elaborate than three years ago, but the effect is, if anything, more complex. For \u201cAn ad hoc ad infinitum cul de sac but good\u201d he\u2019s packed up what he says is the entire design department\u2019s moveable property and deposited it in the gallery space, largely in heaps and boxes, and appended a statement that, if one takes the time to read it, does a superb job of explaining what\u2019s up. That said, here\u2019s what your arts writer thinks:<\/p>\n

The current limit of human knowledge, which was honestly teased out of real events by mathematicians over the last four centuries or so, is that while there are patterns in the real world, nothing is absolutely controlled, least of all by the human occupants who behold it. Patterns emerge from random events, but they don\u2019t replace randomness. Walk around the AIR gallery and see how a place exists for everything, but those things keep spilling over into spaces meant for other things, and half the effort of doing anything is spent making it possible to begin. Design, the meeting ground of science and art, is clearly one place where this is easier to see, and Professor Chodoriwsky has brought the bleeding edge of what can be known before us in an exhibition that replaces the false aesthetics of a cultivated image with the generalizable experience of what\u2019s actually happening.<\/p>\n