Fallen Fruit of Utah

Fallen Fruit of Utah brings together two types of collections through the common ground of fruit. One is sweeping – museums and historical archives – and the other is personal and intimate. Fruit is seen both as deeply symbolic and simply decorative, both ordinary and special, sometimes at the same time. Eight historic collections and archives and over twenty families agreed to collaborate with the artists of Fallen Fruit to assemble works that range from spiritual and symbolic to representational landscapes to the commonplace (or everyday objects). This exhibition draws our attention to the meaning of fruit, a way to investigate symbolism, the aesthetics of deliciousness, and the bounty and goodness of the familiar.

The artists of Fallen Fruit use fruit as their lens to look at how we live in the modern world, at ideas of community and at new forms of citizenship. Fruit can be a subject, an object, a noun, a thing, or a symbol. Fruit often triggers a childhood memory – it’s emotional, universal, familiar to most everyone on the planet. Many of these things are linked to place and family, and many echo a sense of connection with something very primal and good.

Fallen Fruit is David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger.
–Leviticus 19:9-10