We’ve combined two issues of Aeqai, late-August and all of September, in order to offer you the best selection of reviews and profiles for the beginning of the art season here and nationally, so it’s a very large issue. And we wanted to accomodate some of the early exhibitions under the FotoFocus banner; those shows opened starting in mid-September. We’re doing our best to cover a good selection of FotoFocus exhibitions; four reviews appear this month (a splendid interview between Aeqai critic Jonathan Kamholtz and FotoFocus Curator Kevin Moore, on the nature of the UnDocument, this year’s FotoFocus theme; a review of Christy Lee Rogers’ nearly Baroque photos at Miller Gallery in Hyde Park by Marlene Steele; a very insightful look into “After Industry”, the show recently opened at The Weston Gallery in the Aronoff Center; and Jonathan Kamholtz’s review of the Joshua White photo exhibition at NKU Galleries). Aeqai will have about 8 further reviews in our next issue.
Fran Watson reviews the just-opened show of woodcuts (and film, and music, and more) by Cincinnati artist extraordinaire Jay Bolotin, long a fixture of the Cincinnati arts scene, and long represented by Carl Solway Gallery , as well. And Emil Robinson takes a critical look at the recently opened exhibition of paintings by Glenn Brown at The Contemporary Arts Center. Fran Watson also reviews a late summer group show at Cincinnati Art Galleries, now under new ownership; all the artists in this show are regional and very much alive. Dan Burr’s review, too, is of a late summer show at Brazee Studios in Oakley; curated by Frank Satogata, it includes work by the curator, Bukang Kim and Eunshin Khang, and examines how and where East meets West in all their paintings. Karen Chambers also reviews a late summer show, which looks terrific, at The Art Academy of Cincinnati, masques by alumna Carolyn Thomas, many associated with Mardi Gras floats and masques in New Orleans. Katie Dreyer bravely let herself be blindfolded to watch a kind of conceptual film at The Carnegie, called “Blind Cinema”, created by artist Britt Hatzius.
Tim Karoleff, Aeqai’s design critic, went to the design conference OFFF at The Contemporary Arts Center, and shares his observations about said conference and thoughts on contemporary design in this issue. Chelsea Borgman looks hard and happily at new work by Antonio Adams at ThunderSky Gallery in Northside; Adams’ career has been snowballing in recent years, too. Aeqai fashion critic Jenny Perusek looks at two designers whose work showed well during Fashion Week, who used to collaborate and have now become the Top Designers at Dior and at Valentino; both seem to work beautifully solo, too, and Perusek continues to educate us on how fashion designers look at contemporary women, and their psychological strengths and empowerment, rather than as objects to be clothed and draped by others. Laura Hobson’s profile of People’s Liberty, a very unusual grant-giving venue in OTR, is exemplary, and again manifests the long, brilliant reach of The Haile Foundation in the arts in our region. Jane Durrell offers a profile-cum-review of Mark Daly, currently showing his Impressionist paintings at Cincinnati Art Galleries; a former businessman, Daly brings those skills into his marketing plans for his paintings.
Two offerings came our way, which we are delighted to post for our readers: an essay on a Japanese Abstract Expressionist painter currently working in Japan, by George Saitoh, and the whole, extended version of a catalogue essay that Bill Renschler wrote for Shinji Turner-Yamamoto’s recent exhibition at The Weston Gallery in the Aronoff Center. Space limitations in the original catalogue only left room for an afteward for Renschler, and we’re printing the whole essay here, as we find it pithy and full of Rouchefoucauldian aphorisms regarding Turner-Yamamoto’s art in this show; it’s really fascinating, insightful, often intuitive writing.
Our out-of-town reviews are integrated throughout the issue, rather than putting them near the end, as we’ve been doing before, to separate regional shows from national, which seems to us arbitrary, since we like the interchanges between regional and nationally recognized artists in our pages here. Anise Stevens returns with a splendid review of works on paper , “Brand 44” at The Brand Center in Glendale, Cal. (greater LA), and Annabel Osberg is back with a superb critique, really, of the role of museums, curators, and artists in the digital age, wherein art is often placed outside museums, and the roles of the usual personnel within museums—including artists–are rapidly shifting; Osberg’s eye is keen and sharp on where these changes are occurring, and whether anyone’s paying attention. She brings these issues to the forefront in her review of a show called “Made in L.A.”. We anticipate regular columns from Osberg in future, too. Joelle Jameson adroitly deconstructs images on display in Houston, in a show of overtly political photos by Vincent Valdez in Houston: her column, like Osberg’s, is leading into a different, futuristic kind of criticism. Jack Wood offers three review from Texas, both from San Antonio and from Corpus Christi, all of which are provocative, intelligent, sensitive and astute. I offer some thoughts on a recent two-person show in New York, including work by a former grad. student I taught way back in the nineties, Sol Kjok, whose career in New York and abroad is about to take her to China and Copenhagen. Her figurative work has a real signature style, and she seeks an ethereal universalism in her work.
Our literary section this month includes three new poems by Maxwell Redder, poems and haikus by Louis Z. Bickett of Lexington; a movie review of “Sully” , by Steven Havira, one book review by Jane Durrell, and four book reviews by me: summer was an unusually fine time for excellent fiction, and that’s rare, as so-called “beach reading” generally takes over in the summer.
We hope that you find much to enjoy and much to stimulate you in this new Aeqai. We’ll be back in another six weeks, as we’re doing a second combined issue, mostly to accomodate those FotoFocus shows and lectures, symposia, and the like, so we’ll be posting again in mid-to-late November. We welcome your comments, and we always welcome donations, as Aeqai is a nonprofit organization. Thank you, and go right to www.aeqai.com to start the new issue.
–Daniel Brown, Editor, www.aeqai.com
