{"id":91823,"date":"2025-04-02T06:53:45","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T13:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=91823"},"modified":"2025-04-02T19:24:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T02:24:59","slug":"brian-christensen-traces-time-and-pressure-through-petrified-clay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/brian-christensen-traces-time-and-pressure-through-petrified-clay\/","title":{"rendered":"Brian Christensen Traces Time and Pressure Through Petrified Clay"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abstract,<\/div>\n

Brian Christensen has been spending a great deal of time\u2014and craft\u2014creating ceramic works that look like chunks of rock, the kind you might find littering the Utah landscape. He spends hours building this illusion: forming the mass, carving striations, staining the surface with mineral-like hues. And then, he pokes a hole in it. Literally.<\/h4>\n

In Petrified<\/em>, Christensen\u2019s exhibition at the Salt Lake City Public Library, organized in conjunction with the NCECA conference and continuing through April 25, the ancient rhythms of geology meet the expressive potential of clay. The show plays with the boundary between natural object and sculptural artifact, turning the illusion of permanence into a site of conceptual inquiry. A professor at Brigham Young University, Christensen has long been interested in material transformation and layered meaning. In Petrified<\/em>, he draws direct parallels between clay\u2019s mutable states and the geological forces that shape Utah\u2019s mountainous terrain. His sculptures resemble weathered shale, black limestone, rust-colored sandstone \u2014 and yet they are not rocks. Closer inspection reveals circular apertures, intentional patinas, and slightly uncanny details that betray the artist\u2019s hand.<\/h4>\n

In “Rock Vessel,” Christensen mimics the black limestone of his backyard, the Wasatch Range, complete with the chalky white patina that forms through lime accretion. The surface is convincingly natural, the work appears as if lifted from a canyon wall, bearing the authority of deep time. And yet…embedded in the side is a cavity that feels both functional and mysterious. The concentric ridges draw the eye inward, implying a hidden depth or a point of entry into the sculpture\u2019s imagined history.<\/h4>\n
\"Dark,<\/div>\n

A similar circular element appears in a second work, a precariously balanced stack of reddish-brown forms streaked with green patina, evoking oxidized copper or ancient bronze. What makes this piece particularly striking is the play of tension and stability. The stacked elements feel like they\u2019re in the process of settling or shifting\u2014an echo of tectonic movement or the slow collapse of eroded stone formations. There\u2019s a sense of time frozen in mid-motion. That ambiguity\u2014between stability and collapse, object and artifact, nature and artifice\u2014is key to the emotional power of the work. It feels like a ruin \u2014 the weathered remains of some ceremonial structure \u2014 caught mid-collapse or mid-formation.<\/h4>\n

Both sculptures feature this embedded cavity, this hole. A third work in Christensen\u2019s practice, not on view here but tellingly titled “Crude Tap,” suggests a possible interpretation. The word tap implies access\u2014to oil, memory, emotion\u2014while crude underscores the rough, invasive nature of that access. It\u2019s hard not to think of Utah\u2019s oil shale deposits and the machinery that pierces seemingly untouched landscapes. If you\u2019ve traveled the state enough, you\u2019ve seen it: wild, remote terrain suddenly punctuated by the industrial apparatus of extraction.<\/h4>\n

The third work on view at the library features two fractured ceramic forms, each with rounded protrusions on one half and matching concave voids on the other\u2014like puzzle pieces or a mold and its cast. The forms seem on the verge of reunion or as if they were freshly separated. It’s a quiet, poetic meditation on rupture and potential repair. Materially, the piece again demonstrates Christensen\u2019s mastery over clay\u2019s transformative qualities. The surface is convincingly rock-like, with rich layers of grays and dark earth tones, subtle striations, and weathered textures that evoke the passage of time, that suggest formation by centuries rather than kiln-fired weeks ago. This piece, like the others, fuses tactile immediacy with conceptual subtlety.<\/h4>\n
\"Pair<\/div>\n

Across this body of work, Christensen plays with scale, illusion and metaphor. His sculptures don\u2019t merely imitate rocks\u2014they suggest what rocks might remember. They invite us to think about pressure and transformation, about the layers of time embedded in material, and about the tools\u2014literal or symbolic\u2014we use to reach into the past.<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Petrified<\/em>, Salt Lake City Library<\/a> (4th Floor), Salt Lake City, through April 25.<\/p>\n

All images courtesy of the author.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Christensen has been spending a great deal of time\u2014and craft\u2014creating ceramic works that look like chunks of rock, the kind you might find littering the Utah landscape. He spends hours building this illusion: forming the mass, carving striations, staining the surface with mineral-like hues. And then, he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91825,"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":[],"class_list":["post-91823","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\/2025\/04\/IMG_9029_2-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 08:40:36","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\/91823","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=91823"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91829,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91823\/revisions\/91829"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}