{"id":35800,"date":"2018-01-30T08:36:15","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T14:36:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=35800"},"modified":"2025-11-04T17:09:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T00:09:47","slug":"dont-box-him-in-denis-phillips-takes-over-the-dibble-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/dont-box-him-in-denis-phillips-takes-over-the-dibble-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Don’t Box Him In: Denis Phillips Takes Over the Dibble Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>
\nIf you want to put Denis Phillips in a box, make sure it\u2019s a big box \u2014 to quote singer\/songwriter Dan Bern \u2014 \u201cwith lots of windows, and a door to walk through.\u201d Call that box, if you will, \u201cone of Utah\u2019s most talented abstract painters,\u201d as Bob Olpin once did, but make sure it\u2019s a duplex of a box (at the very least), to fit both Phillips\u2019 expressionist and his hard-edge stuff; with maybe an annex for those overall paintings; a guesthouse for the landscape work; and an ample garage to house everything else: the drawings, sculpture, collage, found objects, etc.<\/h4>\n

As mild-mannered as he may be in person, Phillips is a creative manic in the studio and you\u2019ll find a surprising variety of his work \u2014 from all the boxes mentioned above, plus more \u2014 at his show this month in the Dibble Gallery, Phillips Gallery\u2019s more intimate downstairs space. As one of the gallery\u2019s big hitters (not to mention owners), Phillips usually shows upstairs, but the artist says he\u2019s always wanted to show in the Dibble. Besides, he needed the upstairs gallery for\u00a0the exhibition he\u2019s curated<\/a>\u00a0of the work of 45 artists, spanning a hundred years of Utah art.<\/h4>\n
\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSouthern Utah Landscape,\u201d 12\u2033 x 16\u2033<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

It may be hard to tell when Phillips\u2019 exhibit starts. Halfway down the stairs, the gallery tags transition, without fanfare, from the gallery\u2019s traditionally printed tags to ones hand-drawn by Phillips, announcing that yes, that digital collage of a dozen nostalgic images or that southern Utah river scene in oil are his, are part of the \u201cshow.\u201d Turning the corner into the gallery proper, the additional landscapes that greet you on the first wall may be a surprise for those who think of Phillips as an abstract painter. His scenes of the southern Utah desert or Wasatch farmland prove he can hold his own with the state\u2019s many landscape painters. More impressive are his works inspired by the landscape but filled with the abstract. In \u201cCanyons,\u201d he uses the palette knife like a trowel, building up layers of color, like so many millennia of geologic time, so that in the micro we see scores of abstract expressionist moments, made dynamic by color and weight, but the macro becomes easily identified with what we might see down any canyon of the Colorado Plateau. Equally exciting are the paintings based, as their titles suggest, on the San Rafael Swell. The landscape is seen from a high vantage point, the earth below evoked by various mark-making techniques fighting for attention and providing a base for the works\u2019 real focus, an expansive, sweeping, color-infused sky. Seeing these works in the context of the upstairs exhibit, you\u2019ll notice the cues Phillips has taken from predecessors like George Dibble and Doug Snow, while making these works wholly his own.<\/h4>\n
\n
\"\u201c#982\u2033<\/a>

\u201c#982\u2033 acrylic on canvas, 48\u2033 x 60\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Phillips builds up his surfaces in a markedly different way in the kraft paper paintings, where drips, sprays and blotches of paint pool into shifting clouds of color. In these works, one suspects the artist has used an airbrush before, but wanted to make its results more \u201chuman,\u201d so turned to a spray bottle. The surface for these works \u2014 chosen possibly for its easy ability to quickly absorb the paint \u2014 may have one worrying about their archival quality (the Plexi surrounding one example will not do much to assuage doubts) but the expansive, shimmering quality of the paintings \u2014 they look as if they\u2019ve been dipped in the Milky Way \u2014 should be sufficient recompense, however long they\u2019ll last.<\/h4>\n

In \u201c#982,\u201d one of the show\u2019s largest works, Phillips has incorporated this paint-splattered technique into its seemingly opposite, the hard-edge designs which were part of his last show at Phillips. He isolates the paint dusting into bands of color \u2014 turquoise here, carmine and magenta there \u2014 framing a central, hard-edge motif. In these works the compass and ruler (and plenty of masking tape) replace the brush or trowel. The motifs are crisp, the colors almost digital, but the feel of the computer age is kept at bay by the background spattering of hues that, despite our habituated prejudice, never become simply \u201cpixelated.\u201d In nearby grids of smaller works, this flirtation with the digital takes full form with an array of inventive designs displaying sophisticated understanding of both color and design, though these \u201cgicl\u00e9e\u201d works, as they are identified, don\u2019t bear a closer gaze as well as the original types. \u00a0Also in gicl\u00e9e reproduction are drawings and figurative work, as well as the artist\u2019s digital collages that bring together cartoons, drawings, and found images in visual conversations that deserve a review of their own to be fully appreciated.<\/h4>\n

\"\"<\/a>Then there\u2019s the other stuff, the 3-D work: a sculpture of found sticks (painted) and a feather on a cow pie; a paint-splattered cardboard box offering up a Hostess cupcake; a sculptural cube made of used masking tape; and a trio of works where the tools of the artists\u2019 trade \u2014 roller, brush, palette knife \u2014 are offered up as small sculptures. Derived of further context, it\u2019s hard to know what to make of these pieces, how best to appreciate them, but it may be sufficient to enjoy them as the playful works of an artist whose creative capacities are eager to turn themselves to whatever is at hand. Because, as Ann Poore wrote in her 2015 profile of Phillips, \u201che\u2019s every sort of artist.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Denis Phillips,\u00a0Phillips Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through Feb. 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to put Denis Phillips in a box, make sure it\u2019s a big box \u2014 to quote singer\/songwriter Dan Bern \u2014 \u201cwith lots of windows, and a door to walk through.\u201d Call that box, if you will, \u201cone of Utah\u2019s most talented abstract painters,\u201d as Bob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[658,157],"class_list":["post-35800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-denis-phillips","tag-phillips-gallery"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Screen-Shot-2018-01-28-at-4.07.24-PM-1.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 13:30:01","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35800"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97692,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35800\/revisions\/97692"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}