The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) series of contemporary art from around the globe presents an exhibition that brings 10,000 solar eclipses to Salt Lake City.
salt 13: Katie Paterson, on view October 27, 2017 through May 20, 2018, presents recent works from the Scottish artist, whose explorations of space and time often use technology to bring together the commonplace and the cosmic. Paterson’s exhibition is the thirteenth in the UMFA’s salt series of contemporary art and the first since the newly remodeled Museum reopened in late August.
The literal centerpiece of Paterson’s show is Totality (2016), a large, rotating ball covered with approximately 10,000 images of historic solar eclipses printed on tiny squares of mirror. The images, recorded by mankind at locations across the planet, span hundreds of years from drawings made in the eighteenth century to early photographs taken in the nineteenth century to the most advanced telescopic images generated today.
The other works on view, Ideas (2014–ongoing), are concise phrases that take shape in the imagination of whoever reads them. They may or may not come into physical existence but can exist as small, silver wall-based word sculptures—which is how they’re rendered in the salt exhibition—or as fully executed artworks enacting the Idea. This semi-poetic language is crucial to Paterson’s practice: Every work she creates begins as an Idea. Ideas describe works that exist, that are yet to exist, or that may only ever exist in the imagination.
For more information call (801) 581-7332 or visit www.umfa.utah.edu
