M Gallery, CICA Museum
April 16 – 20, 2025
2025.4.16 – 4.20
HAPPY FAMILY
I create monoprints using family members in familiar places we often visit, such as the dinner table, hiking trails, and concerts. Through these works, I explore how we share space within our relationships, reflecting on feelings of loss, tension, self-doubt, and isolation I’ve personally experienced and observed in others. My family serves as a metaphor for the broader human experience, and through this lens, I comment on the increasing polarization in society. The figures in my prints are often positioned in groups, yet each is framed in a space away from the others, isolated. Though they are physically together, they are not engaged with one another. The figures appear trapped in a stoic state, disconnected from one another despite their proximity. The use of acidic, abraded, and charged colors envelops each figure, creating a psychological space that conveys the subtle, often peripheral emotions that linger just beyond conscious awareness. These colors evoke the internal tension and fragmentation that many of us feel, even in moments of apparent togetherness, highlighting our emotional distance. As I transition into post-adolescent parenting, this body of work has emerged from my reflections on my own life with my family. Despite our differences, disagreements, and the challenges we’ve faced, we choose to stay close and care for one another. Our struggles are interwoven, and when one of us is affected, it reverberates through the entire family. This interconnectedness is something I want to reflect in my work, as it mirrors how we, as a society, should support each other. However, the broader society often seems to do the opposite. Instead of coming together in times of difficulty, we tend to push away those who appear different. This rejection of others can lead to feelings of alienation and detachment, which is reflected in the isolated figures in my work. In contrast to the bond I experience with my family, society frequently disregards struggles faced by others, often assuming they do not concern us. The emotional distance and disconnect in my work expresses what it feels like to live in a society where these divides grow wider, and where the sense of shared humanity is increasingly lost. This work is an attempt to process my own personal experiences and to highlight the emotional and psychological landscapes that shape our relationships—both within families and in the broader social fabric. Through this, I hope to provoke reflection on the necessity of connection and empathy in a polarized world.
John Sproul has held 25 solo exhibitions and participated in over 100 group exhibitions internationally, showcasing his work at prestigious venues such as the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City, The Painting Center in New York, Bipolar Projects in Barcelona, Galerie Metanoia in Paris, The Kunstwerk Carlshutte in Germany, the Imagoars Center for Visual Arts in Venice, Italy, and the Sienna Art Institute in Italy. As an arts advocate, he served on the Executive Committee of the UMFA’s FOCA from 2006 to 2013, acting as Chair in 2013. He founded and directed the Foster Art Program from 2009 to 2011 and the Utah Contemporary Art Think Tank from 2010 to 2011. Additionally, he owned and directed Nox Contemporary Art Gallery from 2010 to 2022, served on the board of Southwest Contemporary Art Magazine from 2023 to 2024, and has been the director of The Art Group since 2007.
