{"id":98487,"date":"2025-11-12T05:31:46","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T12:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=98487"},"modified":"2025-11-11T13:58:58","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T20:58:58","slug":"between-structure-and-decay-the-material-poetics-of-carson-cahoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/between-structure-and-decay-the-material-poetics-of-carson-cahoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Between Structure and Decay: The Material Poetics of Carson Cahoon"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Carson Cahoon, “No Filter,” mixed media, 14×170 in.<\/p><\/div>\n

The metal air filters should be your first clue that Carson Cahoon is interested in materials. Six of them, in a row, without comment or adornment, frame one end of his exhibit Dead or Alive<\/em>, on the basement floor of the SLC Main Library, where Cahoon, a Salt Lake City-based artist, presents a body of dozens of mixed-media works that explore the relationships between material, structure, and decay.<\/p>\n

Cahoon\u2019s practice draws from a background in architecture and urban ecology, and that sensibility runs throughout the exhibition. Many works resemble fragments of walls, facades, or industrial remnants, their surfaces layered and eroded like the city\u2019s own infrastructure. In several pieces, broken frame moldings and steel strips form partial enclosures around textured panels, suggesting both containment and collapse. Others, such as the suspended frame constructions, treat negative space as an active element, making the void itself a part of the composition.<\/p>\n

The materials\u2014cement, mesh, rusted steel, found wood, and photographic prints\u2014carry the marks of previous use. Cahoon does not disguise their histories. These traces of wear and damage become integral to the work\u2019s visual language so that what might otherwise appear as debris or residue is recontextualized as evidence of transformation, inviting reflection on how human systems interact with natural processes over time.<\/h4>\n