Event: "Tin" Exhibition @ Rio Gallery (SLC: May 17)

“Tin” Exhibition Opens in Rio Gallery

SALT LAKE CITY — Utah Arts & Museums presents “Tin,” opening in the Rio Gallery May 10 and running through June 14, 2013. There will be an artist reception on Friday, May 17, 2013 from 6-9 p.m. The Rio Gallery is located inside the Rio Grande Depot at 300 South 455 West.

“This show represents a cross-section of a decade at Brigham Young University’s Art Department, from the early 90s into the early 21st century,” noted Utah Arts & Museums Interim Director Lynnette Hiskey. “The 40+ artists in this exhibit graduated about a decade ago, and since those crucial formative years, the students have become professionals.”

“Every artist in this show shares in common sets of influences at an influential time in their development – the time and place that seems to be the location for artists to develop in this country at this time – college,” said curator and artist Jared Clark. "During the years apart, each has accrued his and her own mixture of influences and decisions beyond the shared experience of art school.”

Clark explained that committing to one genre or medium as an art student is a thing of the past. Art schools increasingly mirror this change with new department names such as “New Genres” and adjectives such as “Interdisciplinary.” “However,” said Clark, “it can be argued the artists in this show were on the threshold of this paradigm shift in their formative years and felt both the pressure to commit to a way of working (and, therefore, to an identity) and the contrasting new freedom blossoming to shed labels and expectations.”

As the metaphoric metal representing ten-year anniversaries, “Tin” describes a reunion of these artists 10 to 20 years after their time at school. The artists share a general age group that spans both Generation X and Generation Y. Any time a group of work is shown, the acts of comparing and contrasting are inevitable. In this case those comparisons may lead to identifying similar influences from the artists’ developmental stages, while the contrasts may reveal where artists have further honed or left those influences behind.

Photo: Ai Childress, “Saint Joseph and the Dragon (Shield of Faith),” 14-gauge steel, LDS family home storage #10 cans, steel and aluminum rivets