Jorge Rojas: Material Witness @ Granary Arts
Ephraim-based Granary Arts (86 N. Main St.) offers a mid-career exhibition of Utah artist Jorge Rojas in Material Witness, spanning nearly 20 years. Until recently the director of learning and engagement at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Rojas has also spent several years in New York, including stretches in the mid-1990s and early-2000s. The exhibition draws on the influence of those years, incorporating traditions like minimalism and color field work into his exploration of his own cultural history, including Mesoamerican art. The works include painting and sculpture ("Quantum Grid," 2021, is pictured), and demonstrate Rojas' wide-ranging use of whatever material might suit the project of the moment. "I begin a piece with a feeling, rather than an idea," Rojas says in his artist statement. "It is in the act of making that meaning is revealed.
Material Witness runs May 25 – Sept. 23 in conjunction with two other new exhibitions: Chiasma, by Salt Lake City's Laura Sharp Wilson, taking on the biological concept of paired chromosomes in works that mixes organic elements with recurring patterns; and Jane Roberts DeGroff's Gifts of the Sanpete Land, representing the Japanese dyeing tradition of shibori in a wall hanging representing life in the Sanpete Valley. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Wednesday – Saturday. Visit granaryarts.org for additional information.
Jaclyn Wright: High Visibility (Blaze Orange) @ Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
In a multimedia exhibition currently featured at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (20 S. West Temple), artist Jaclyn Wright makes use of materials collected at gun ranges on public lands, while also exploring the intersection between photography and reinforcing notions of land use.
The title of the exhibition, High Visibility (Blaze Orange), comes from the bold color often used for clay pigeon shooting targets, employed because of their vivid contrast with the blue sky; those fragments, along with items like bullet casings, become part of the work ("Blaze Orange" is pictured). Wright describes that color juxtaposition as representing greater tensions between "the natural/anthropogenic, visible/invisible, material/bureaucratic, prudent/reckless, and sustainable/nihilistic." The artist further explains, in her artist statement, that the existence of these recreational shooting ranges in the traditional home of the Goshute people connect with aspects of the colonial mindset and the mythology/psychology of the American West, including notions of "rugged individualism, and American exceptionalism, that perpetuate colonial ideologies and undermine the goals of egalitarianism and environmentalism."
High Visibility (Blaze Orange) runs through June 18, with gallery hours 11 a.m. – 6 p.m. Wednesdays – Saturdays, and general admission for an $8 suggested donation. Visit utahmoca.org for additional information.
Eric Fairclough: Memory Mechanics @ Finch Lane Gallery
"I have always been captivated by geometric patterns," Salt Lake City artist Eric Fairclough says in his artist bio. "I see them everywhere I go, from tile floors, to architecture, and even in nature. The precision that is required to createa successful and intriguing pattern has always fascinated me."
That fascination is on display in Memory Mechanics, currently featured at Finch Lane Gallery (54 Finch Lane), a solo exhibition highlighting Fairclough's work with repetition of patterns ("Alternate Reality" is pictured). The artist has described his detailed, pattern-oriented work as a way to exercise a sense of control, in response to his life-long struggles with anxiety. Underlying elements of disruption in those patterns speaks to the way he thinks of his brain working, with art and psychology representing a kind of tension between harmony and disorder.
Memory Mechanics runs through June 10 in conjunction with Common Threads, a group exhibition of work in textiles ranging from woven paper to sewn objects, featuring Annie Laurie Mackay, Jean Richardson, Jen Watson, Jethro Gillespie, Kathryn Knudsen and Daniel Barney. Gallery hours are Tuesdays, 9:30 a.m. – 8:30 p.m., and Wednesdays – Thursdays, 9:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Visit saltlakearts.org/finchlanegallery for additional information.