New exhibit leaves titles up to viewer

The troubling thing about an art exhibit where all the works are untitled is … all the works are untitled. More often than not, a work of art named "Untitled" irritates the lazy viewer; they require at least some clue as to a piece's direction:

"What am I supposed to see?"

"Is that a goat or linguine?"

"Why is that monstrous tongue licking the '52 Buick?"

However, if you're an astute observer who rises to the challenge of deciphering the meaning of a modern oil painting, sculpture or drawing, you'd be able to name each piece in a show, which is the gist of "Untitled," and exhibition featuring "unnamed" work by 30 of Utah's best known and up-and-coming contemporary artists now on display at the Rio Gallery, 300 S. Rio Grande St. (455 West), through June 10.

Invited curator Brad Slaugh, artist and art instructor, put this Rio Gallery's bi-annual collaborative exhibition together. "I wanted to give them (the artists) as much latitude as I could," Slaugh said. "However, I did give them one suggestion: The kind of work that I personally find the most intriguing is a narrative that has a good dose of ambiguity, can be read simultaneously as either humorous or disconcerting or both, or which might simply raise the question of what exactly is going on here."

"Untitled" marries fact and fantasy, realism and abstraction, sweet dreams and saccharine nightmares, the silly and the serene, through a myriad of mediums. To the casual observer, there is found a nearly equal distribution of men and women participating in the show.

"Certainly, I gave my selection a fair amount of thought," Slaugh said. "The short answer here is that what I have cared about exclusively is simply the selection of excellent artists: youngsters, oldsters, boysters and girlsters, with a fair amount of hand-wringing over who I had to leave out."

With so many accomplished artists participating in the show, it is impossible to talk about all the work. Even so, a handful of pieces beg discussion.

Cordell Taylor's assemblage sculpture of wood, copper and computer board consists of a theatrically complex computer board hanging on the wall, wired to a wooden chair that is tilted against the wall and attached to a thick, copper-wire umbilical cord. The chair is reminiscent of an electric chair; the computer board is proportioned to represent the design of an American flag. With its evil nature destroyed by the tilting of the chair, perhaps a title to this "Untitled" could be, "Americans Say 'No' to Execution."