UMOCA | Buster Graybill: Informalism

Installation photograph, Buster Graybill: Informalism, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, May 25—Sep 8, 2018, photo © UMOCA

Informalism centers itself in the principles and aesthetics of Modernism (a rejection of previous art movements and a focus on materials and processes to produce forms rooted in abstraction). Graybill’s sculptures, installation, and lawn chair strap paintings “…celebrate the formal nuances and conceptual potential of objects and materials often tucked away in garages, found on the shelves of sporting goods stores or loaded in the bed of a pickup truck for a weekend vacation. Exploring Modernist tendencies through a rural working class perspective, the work challenges perceived notions of value and hierarchies imposed on objects of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture. Like a miner panning for gold, I sift through my environment with a playful but discerning eye, finding beauty, humor, poetry and value in the sediment of everyday life.”

Supported by ZAP and George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation.