{"id":38101,"date":"2017-07-08T22:12:15","date_gmt":"2017-07-09T04:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38101"},"modified":"2025-11-12T20:21:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-13T03:21:17","slug":"let-it-rain-michael-ryan-handleys-sublimation-at-umoca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/let-it-rain-michael-ryan-handleys-sublimation-at-umoca\/","title":{"rendered":"Let It Rain: Michael Ryan Handley\u2019s Sublimation at UMOCA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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S<\/span>ince completing his MFA at Yale in 2014, Michael Ryan Handley has been busy. A native Utahn, he now operates out of studios in Philadelphia and New York. His artistic processes are complex and experimental, combining a western fascination with the land with a typically eastern penchant for industrial materials. \u201cI\u2019ve always used multiple processes for making work\u2026it\u2019s very reactionary, impulsive and methodical,\u201d he says. Such dueling aesthetics and approaches work surprisingly well together, evidenced by Handley\u2019s exhibition\u00a0Sublimation<\/em>, now on display at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.<\/h4>\n

Broadly speaking, the show explores \u201cthe importance of water, or lack thereof, and its generative power to change the look and feel of areas experiencing prolonged drought, as well as its creative ability when left unhindered,\u201d according to UMOCA\u2019s press release. Water serves as the show\u2019s theoretical underpinning and a conduit to a dynamic conceptual and phenomenological experience for viewers. Indeed, water, or a lack of it, is as pressing a concern as ever, as massive droughts are connected to attenuated political events such as the civil war in Syria and economic decline in South Africa.<\/h4>\n

Entering the gallery space, viewers are met with an assortment of two and three-dimensional works curated in a simultaneously plethoric and highly ordered fashion. On each wall hang tightly grouped horizontal paintings, which are arranged at varying intervals and heights. With a muted yet jarring yellow base, Handley uses water as a conceptual medium that inscribes brown stripes across the base of the painting once it evaporates. While utilizing a similar process for the entire series, these \u201cevaporation paintings\u201d are also distinct, allowing \u201ceach process\u2026to run its course with the moisture eventually disappearing, leaving a record of their previous states of existence,\u201d according to UMOCA\u2019s release.<\/h4>\n

The fact that the evaporation paintings are placed at varying heights on each wall may frustrate traditionalists, however their effect is dizzying, inducing a phenomenologically rich experience that departs from traditional art exhibitions. For Hadley, this effect is meaningful, \u201ceven though each painting is unique the paintings are intended to be taken in as a whole experience. As one work. I feel the varying height of the work is representational of how one would take in the terrain of a descending landscape. I wanted the viewer to be positioned in that experiential space.\u201d<\/h4>\n

While a single drop of water can dramatically alter the surface of these paintings, water, or lack thereof, signals more dramatic changes for Handley\u2019s large sculptural structures, which face each other magnificently in the gallery space. Hanging above the two-dimensional pieces, the sculptures resemble military weaponry from a battle long passed. They are coated in iodine-exposed silver leaf, creating photonegatives which cause the sculptures to change with exposure to the light in the museum. Their existence is at once monumental and fragile, altering color with each passing day they remain in the gallery space. Silver iodine was used in daguerreotype photography, the source, Handley notes, \u201cof how we have come to know the world through pictures over the past 150+ years,\u201d but it is also used in the process of cloud seeding, or industrial age rain-making, and the sculptural forms refer to the mechanism attached to the wings of airplanes in the cloud-seeding process. \u201cI wanted to represent this object in the form of an oculus and in the organic shape of an eye. But I feel there is very much a sense of assault or military presence in these works.\u201d<\/h4>\n

When Handley left Utah, he reversed the migratory trajectory of artists like Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, who came west to further their artistic dialogue, but he continues to be part of the dialogue they began. The seminal Land Artists of the \u201860s were keen to explore the conceptual properties of landscape for its own sake, and, in America, were careful to avoid the political implications of land use that accompanied their interventions. It appears that in 2017, however, we can no longer ignore the consequences of sustained land use. In an increasingly divisive political climate, the government\u2019s role in advancing ecological preservation and renewable energy hangs in a perilous balance. The pressing need to acknowledge and adapt to climate change shrouds an artistic fascination with the American landscape with a sense of alarm and worry. Indeed the struggles we now face render the Land Artists\u2019 grand artistic gestures somewhat na\u00efve. This sense of urgency need not create a fissure between today\u2019s artists from the Land Artists, however. Instead, artists can broaden the visual and intellectual language of Land Art, affirming that while human intervention may be harmful, its effects can be instructive. Hadley supports this idea, noting, \u201cI want to progress the canon of Land and Landscape art.\u00a0My art practice is focused on the evolution of what we call Nature and\u00a0I do believe there is a strong relationship to climate change with my work.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Sublimation<\/em>\u00a0by Michael Ryan Handley at\u00a0UMOCA<\/a>, Salt Lake City, through September 9.<\/sup><\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since completing his MFA at Yale in 2014, Michael Ryan Handley has been busy. A native Utahn, he now operates out of studios in Philadelphia and New York. His artistic processes are complex and experimental, combining a western fascination with the land with a typically eastern penchant for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1534,"featured_media":38102,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/Michael-Handley-1076x800.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 07:02:19","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\/38101","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\/1534"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98583,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38101\/revisions\/98583"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}