“Utah is my favorite place on Earth.” - Billy Schenck
Modern West is honored to debut an exhibition of nineteen new paintings by Billy Schenck in his first-ever landscape-only exhibition. Comprised specifically of Utah-specific landscapes, the exhibition, Schenck's Utah: A Land Less Traveled, will be on display January 21 through March 11, 2022.
Early in his career, Schenck became known for utilizing cinematic imagery, reproduced in a flattened,
reductivist style, where colors are displayed side-by-side rather than blended or shadowed. His art
incorporates techniques from Photo-Realism and Pop Art to both praise and mimic classic western images. His work is characterized by hot colors, surreal juxtapositions, and patterning which explores clashes between wilderness and civilization, the individual and community, nature and culture, freedom and restriction. For these new paintings, isolated Utah landscapes take front stage over the dramatic western Pop figures of his past works. These landscape paintings intentionally focus on the grand details of his favorite place on earth, from color-pairings which highlight the less-traveled aspects of the Utah wilderness to concentrated forms found only within the Utah desert: pluming clouds, grand mesas, and forlorn fenceposts and tombstones. While the Utah desert weathers continuously, Schenck’s take on Utah is bold, monumental, and vibrantly long-lasting.
Schenck’s work can be found in numerous major collections throughout the world, including the
Smithsonian Institution, Denver Art Museum, The Autry Museum of Western Heritage, Booth Western Art Museum, Tucson Museum of Art, and many more. Schenck’s work has been the subject of seven museum retrospectives, including The West as It Never Was, at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art.