Utah Museum of Contemporary Art: FAX

Who sends faxes anymore? It’s far from a dead medium, as the traveling exhibition FAX attests. Joao Ribas—curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and former curator at The Drawing Center in New York—organized the show along with The Drawing Center and Independent Curators International. This is the show’s next-to-last stop since it debuted in 2009.

The fax has something in common with other genres of visual art in that its key quality is its physical status as a document. FAX has grown and mutated during its run, with more faxes being collected from Europe, Asia and the Americas. Starting with faxes from almost a hundred artists at the opening, each institution on the exhibition’s route invites additional artists to contribute. This exploration of the form includes drawings, text and even junk faxes from advertisers and businesses. Some of them are even received in real time, in the gallery space, by fax machines on display.

There is something “meta” about a show documenting a means of documentation, reproducing objects whose reason for existing is to document something. The show raises questions about reproduction, information theory and even the nature of what constitutes a work of art. UMOCA’s new senior curator of exhibitions, Aaron Moulton, has added artists to the show: Mike Bouchet, Salotto Buono, Roisin Byrne, Keren Cytter, Sejla Kajmeric, Daniel Kingery, Forniture Pallotta, Bertrand Planes, Jared Steffensen and Ignacio Uriarte. More than 200 artists have participated in all; a piece by Skuta Helgason is pictured. It just goes to show: You can’t argue with the fax. (Brian Staker)

FAX @ Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, 20 S. West Temple, 801-328-4201, through June 23, free. UtahMOCA.org