{"id":2448,"date":"2011-06-01T23:05:59","date_gmt":"2011-06-01T23:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=2448"},"modified":"2025-11-12T21:45:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T04:45:21","slug":"frank-mcentires-reliquieries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/frank-mcentires-reliquieries\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank McEntire’s reliQUERIES"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reliquary for a Host of Broken Hymns by Frank McEntire<\/p><\/div>\n

Frank McEntire is the rare courageous artist for whose aesthetic mill everything is grist. He overlooks nothing, even the clouds of language, abstract words, that trail his artwork until they eventually burn off under the heat of gallery lights. Left behind are exquisite objects originally encountered as discards. McEntire transforms this raw material, its former meaning dissipated like vapor, into talismans: reinvigorated vessels filled by, and with, his faith. And his faith is uncompromising, encompassing the recognition that we humans spend too much time living by symbols, arguing over symbols, fighting on what we think is behalf of symbols, and not nearly enough time in touch with the transcendental facts these symbols set out to represent.<\/p>\n

reliQueries<\/em>, the title of his upcoming show at Nox Contemporary, is an example of Frank McEntire\u2019s hunger to refashion whatever he finds, not just lending it a new purpose, but refurbishing it, using his skill to bring out the craftsmanship that went into its original construction. Reliquaries are sturdy, albeit precious vessels that derive a transient value from the rich materials and skill employed in their making, but acquire their lasting value from their originally mundane, carnal contents: a fragment of skeleton, a scrap of textile, something left behind. In his assemblages, McEntire seeks to find and set forth the limit of exchange between sacred value and secular price. In an overwhelmingly materialistic age, when the street corner preacher is as likely as a broker to advocate material goals, when investment and accumulation are considered equivalent to prayer, Frank McEntire challenges us to distinguish price from value.<\/p>\n