Modern West will open In Dialogue, a two-person exhibition with artists Fidalis Buehler and Mitch Mantle. The show will be on display September 13 through November 1, 2024. In Dialogue features an engaging curation of paintings, collages and prints from artists Fidalis Buehler and Mitch Mantle. Buehler and Mantle have been colleagues, collaborators and friends for nearly a decade and frequently discourse while making their work, with Buehler sharing “...our conversations are meaningful and stem from familiar ground about family life, spousal relationships, being a dad, vulnerabilities and fears.”
Buehler and Mantle’s work both embrace a childlike naivety, exploring themes of introspection and domesticity through the act of intuitively layering eccentric materials, textures and patterns. Each artist’s process likens to an improvised performance and, displayed together, conclude in a place of playful dialogue.
Fidalis Buehler is a mixed-media artist based in northern Utah. His life and work is a blend of two cultures – one of Euro-American descent and the other of Pacific Island heritage. His practice manifests complex representations of identity, with each piece becoming a self-portrait of fear, anxiety, mythology, dreams, revelation, magic, mysticism and ritual.
Mitch Mantle is an artist from Southern Utah who now lives and works in Arizona. His large-scale, vibrant paintings are layered and often incorporate unexpected moments of collage and exuberant mark making, creating dreamlike scenes of personal narratives translated through a universal lens.
“Fidalis and I have a great understanding of one another, and it shows in our friendship,” says Mantle. “We continue to work together and push one another’s idea boundaries.”
The opening reception for In Dialogue will take place on Friday, September 13, 2024.
