A Greater Utah Surveys the Artistic Output of an Entire State
While many of the figures in UMOCA’s A Greater Utah are familiar, the ambitious scope of the project allows for new perspectives outside of the state’s metropolitan center.
Sep 28
Utah
Sep 25
Jared Steffensen: Nosey Taily and the Leftover Review Features Sculptural Transformations from Busted Skateboards
Jared Steffensen, a Salt Lake City-based artist and curator, repurposes broken skateboard decks into enigmatic, nearly inexplicable sculptural artworks in the Current Work exhibition Nosey Taily and the Leftover Review.
Sep 21
Torrey House Press, the “Intermountain West’s Only Nonprofit Environmental Publisher,” Reworks Western Identity
Torrey House Press, an Intermountain West nonprofit environmental book publisher founded in 2010, renews its commitment to Western voices with a new focus on diverse perspectives.
Sep 20
Kimball Art Center’s Three-Part Exhibition Examines the Human Impact on Land
Kimball Art Center completes the year-long exhibition project Between Life and Land with the closing chapter entitled Crisis.
Sep 13
Moab’s Mid-Century Cave Dwelling is an Ode to Bad Taxidermy and Jesus Christ
Hole N” The Rock—a 1930s excavated cave that honors Jesus Christ and Franklin Delano Roosevelt—is a feat of do-it-yourself architecture just off Highway 191 near Moab, Utah.
Sep 01
Talking Trash at Building Man, Utah’s Festival of Junk
FeatureUtahVol. 8 Medium + Support
Building Man, an annual, week-long desert rave and art festival in Green River, Utah, celebrates artists who work with found and reclaimed materials.
Sep 01
Lenka Konopasek: Paper Tendrils, Threatening
Studio VisitUtahVol. 8 Medium + Support
Salt Lake City–based artist Lenka Konopasek disrupts and decenters anthropocentrism with her three-dimensional paper sculptures, whose prickly paper strips instill aversion and attraction, as if growing out of the wall.
Aug 30
Kheng Lim and Colour Maisch Team Up at Bountiful Davis Art Center
Although the thematic connection feels strained, the pairing of works by Kheng Lim and Colour Maisch creates a visually rich and compelling exhibition that invites us to relish process and material.
Aug 22
An Ode to Trees: Southern Utah Museum of Art Presents Reaching for the Sky
Experience works exploring the juxtaposition between trees and the well-known red rocks of southern Utah landscapes in Reaching for the Sky, on view through September 23 in Cedar City.
Aug 16
Rafael Fajardo Turns Border Issues into Video Games
Rafael Fajardo’s 8-bit video game diptych YOU MADE OUR REALITY INTO A GAME?!?! engages border issues by humanizing migrant characters with Rasquachismo, kawaii, and comic sensibilities.
Aug 08
Ogden Contemporary Arts Announces Two August Exhibitions
Ogden Contemporary Arts presents two exhibitions delving into the profound theme of artwork as a cathartic release of trauma. Holly Wong: Emergence and Stephanie Leitch: Spellbound are on view through October 16, 2023.
Aug 01
Alexis Rausch Unpacks America’s Desensitization to Violence
Alexis Rausch continues raising questions about mass responses to traumatic events and how her identity comes into play through the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition Nobody likes it here.
Jul 25
In A Dream Deferred, Southern Utah Museum of Art Presents Works by Aïsha Lehmann and Vitus Shell
A Dream Deferred at Southern Utah Museum of Art explores the Black experience and inequality in education, wealth, and housing. The exhibition is on view through September 23, 2023.
Jul 24
A Greater Utah at UMOCA Hopes to Offer a More Authentic View of the State
A Greater Utah, a major survey at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, aims to be more representative of regional artmaking than the predecessor show, Utah Biennial: Mondo Utah.
Jun 23
Eric J. García’s Latest Community Mural and Video Game Allow Players to Interact with Colonial “Aliens”
Ogden Contemporary Arts’s second artist in residence Eric J. García invites us to scrutinize the principles upon which American history and identity are based in a dazzling and multifaceted artistic project.
Jun 08
Curator Profile: Jessica Kinsey at Southern Utah Museum of Art
Jessica Kinsey heads a small but growing team at the Southern Utah Museum of Art, a Cedar City institution that aims to replace culturally insular stereotypes with a community focus.
May 25
Work in Progress with David Brothers
David Brothers of SLC evokes dark, dingy worlds through the derelict sets he builds. Photos from his latest project, Peed Upon, offer a dire caricature of our current times.
May 22
“America’s Most Scenic Dump” Draws Artists to Moab Arts Reuse Residency
Moab Arts Reuse Residency program in Utah, which attracts worldwide artists to make pieces out of rubbish, challenges the concept of detritus and trash.
May 09
Brand New UVU Museum of Art Foregrounds Communities of Color
Utah Valley University is set to open a new museum inside of an old manor. The debut super exhibition, The Art of Belonging, centers BIPOC voices with connections to Utah.
May 08
Many Wests Shows Us How American Existence is Not One Size Fits All
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea explores the erasure of Black, LGBTQ+, Indigenous American, Asian American and Latinx culture through contemporary art.
May 02
Eric J. García’s Aim High Explores Concepts of “Aliens,” Space Invasion, and Colonialism
New Mexico-based artist Eric García presents solo exhibition Aim High at Ogden Contemporary Arts and unveils a community mural, the culmination of a two-month residency at OCA.
May 02
Bands of Light: Matthew Sketch’s FAM(ily)
Matthew Sketch’s FAM(ily) exhibition at UMOCA comprises a series of untitled mixed-media pieces that explore the relationship between light and land.
Apr 26
Environment, Disability, and the Drying of the Great Salt Lake
As Utah faces the evaporation of the Great Salt Lake, Utah artists are finding ways to orient themselves in disaster by considering the relationship between disability and environment.
Mar 30
Jiyoun Lee-Lodge Tackles the Bogeyman of Loneliness in Waterman
Jiyoun Lee-Lodge of Salt Lake City grapples with themes of isolation and belonging—in comic book-style works influenced by Korean folk art—in her ongoing Waterman series.
Mar 20
The Gallery as Slaughterhouse: Tamara Kostianovsky’s Mesmerizing Flesh at Ogden Contemporary Art
Mesmerizing Flesh, Tamara Kostianovsky’s exhibition of textile sculptures, encapsulates a compelling, if harrowing contradiction between industrial violence and the beauty of corporeal and organic forms.
Mar 07
Horacio Rodriguez’s Boombox Benefit Amplifies a Bygone Relic
The Horacio Rodriguez-curated exhibition and auction Boombox Benefit at UMOCA, a multi-artist showcase of ten ceramic pieces patterned from Rodriguez’s 1980s childhood boombox, aids ten different social justice-centric organizations.
Mar 03
“Great” Salt Lake No More: How Utah’s Worsening Drought is Inspiring Artistic Reflection and Activism
FeatureUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
The depletion of Utah’s Great Salt Lake is a symbol of the state’s worsening water crisis and has, throughout the past few years, inspired a diverse array of artistic responses.
Mar 03
Between Life and Land: Material at the Kimball Art Center, Park City
ReviewUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Between Life and Land: Material at Kimball Art Center stuns not by virtue of its star artists, but from those that highlight the wonder and horror of our natural world.
Mar 03
Douglas Tolman
ArtistsUtahVol. 7 Finding Water in the West
Salt Lake City-based Douglas Tolman's project Where Are you? interrogates map-making and deepens community connections to place.
Feb 09
Mesmerizing Flesh with Tamara Kostianovsky
Ogden Contemporary Arts presents Mesmerizing Flesh, a solo exhibition of work by globally recognized textile artist Tamara Kostianovsky.
Feb 03
Utah’s New State Flag, To the Disappointment of Some, Won’t Depict the State Fish Wielding the State Firearm
During the Utah state and Salt Lake City flag competitions, residents fall in love with Grant Miller’s dark-horse design heavy on clowning state symbols and imagery.
Jan 27
Work in Progress with Wren Ross
Wren Ross, a Park City, Utah, painter and social worker, plumbs our collective unconscious with stirring, uncanny work, where movement becomes a crucible for visual creation.
Jan 25
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea
Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in Salt Lake City examines the perspectives of dozens of artists who offer a broader and more inclusive view of the American West.
Jan 23
Fate of Utah’s Outsider Art Site The Christian School Remains In Flux
Salt Lake City’s Christian School, the brainchild of late artist Ralphael Plescia, is in limbo as an arts organization’s preservation efforts are hampered by the recent sale of the property.
Jan 13
Under New Leadership, the Springville Museum of Art Remains Essential to Utah Arts and Arts Education
Springville Museum of Art, newly helmed by Emily Larsen, is one of Utah’s oldest visual arts institutions—and a crucial component of the state’s arts education networks.
Jan 04
Curator Profile: María del Mar González-González Sparks Conversations About Latinx Art
María del Mar González-González, a Utah-based curator, bolsters artist voices that are too often relegated to the fringes of discussions about Latinx art.
Jan 03
The Center Can Not Hold Illustrates the Temporal Nature of Our Cores
The Center Can Not Hold—curated by Hikmet Sidney Loe and featuring works by Anne Mooney, John Sparano, and Hannah Vaughn—explores the varied meanings of holding space through architecture.
Dec 15
Local Utah Gift Guide 2022
Our next gift guide travels to Salt Lake City and Provo, where shoppers can score upcycled clothing, wood-burned prints, and gender-affirming underwear.
Dec 06
A Reimagined Gallery Celebrates Jimmie F. Jones at Southern Utah Museum of Art
The Southern Utah Museum of Art celebrates the legacy of Utah artist Jimmie F. Jones with a new semi-permanent exhibition space and permanent, interactive touchscreen kiosk.
Nov 30
The Sentience of Sediments: Elpitha Tsoutsounakis’s Alchemy of Ochre
Elpitha Tsoutsounakis’s Unknown Prospect explores the material possibilities of ochre to showcase the beauty and agency of the Utah landscape and its nonhuman inhabitants.
Nov 17
“Pornographic” Mural in Salt Lake City Suburb Causes Confusion, Outrage
Midvale, Utah recently instituted a cultural revitalization project to enhance its downtown. A large mural depicting two nude figures and a ghoulish specter has become the talk of the town. […]
Nov 14
A Rift Out West: Salt Lake City’s Arts Community Confronts Issues of Indigenous Representation at Local Gallery Modern West
New Mexico artist Billy Schenck has made a successful career of cowboy-and-Indian pop-art imagery, but a recent exhibition of his work brings present-day debates over representation and authorship into the harshest of spotlights.
Oct 25
Salt Lake City Bids Farewell to John Sproul’s Beloved Nox Contemporary
John Sproul, a prominent local artist and owner of Nox Contemporary, will close the gallery following the end of Jared Steffensen’s exhibition Idem, Norms, Dorms Mine on November 4, 2022.
