The October issue of Aeqai has just posted, and it’s our largest issue to date. We’ve added Boston to the cities we’re covering, and, in the next few months, New York will regularly be covered, though the majority of our reviews continue to be in/of the Greater Cincinnati region. And Seattle is back in our coverage; Martha Dunham is covering the Pacific Northwest for us.
The autumn season continues in full swing. The Contemporary Arts Center’s offerings continue to excite and stimulate art-lookers; Cynthia Kukla’s lead column this month reviews the show by radical artist Swoon, and Chelsea Borgman reviews a recent performance at CAC by Tiago Rodrigues. Kukla also offers a stunning review of work by Takashi Murakami at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Chicago, showing how Pop art has conquered the art world allover. Chris Carter offers us a very insightful review of a show at Wave Pool Gallery, one of Cincinnati’s most interesting new alternative spaces; the show , “Serenade”, was guest curated by UC/DAAP faculty member Kim Paice. The Taft Museum of Art’s show “Small Paintings”, which also explains how the Taft occasionally acquires new work, is reviewed by Jonathan Kamholtz; those “small” paintings are often real gems. And The Cincinnati Art Museum’s reviewed with three shows this month; aeqai fashion critic Jennifer Perusek analyzes the work by avant-garde fashion designer Iris Von Herpen; Laura Hobson does an overview of “Art in Bloom”, and Susan Byrnes reviews the magnificent show by Anila Quayyom Agha; some of the work from that show has been acquired for the permanent collection of the museum.
Annie Dell’Aria’s been on the road again, looking at the Art Prize exhibitions in Grand Rapids, Michigan, now in its tenth year. It’s a curious kind of art fair, as two prizes dominate it: the critics’ award, and the popular vote award; Dell’Aria condenses immense amounts of visual information and makes these art fairs comprehensible for the reader, and she’s a most astute critic, as well (the fair is sponsored by the DeVos family).
We offer a large number of reviews of exhibitions dealing with social justice this month, as more and more shows examining these themes open all over the world. Los Angeles critic Annabel Osberg’s review is first in this grouping; she reviews work by Eduardo Sarabia, at the Mistake Room, part of PST: LA/LA, and the work is about the drug trade. Amy Bogard reviews the large show of Mexican prints, “Voices from Oaxaca”, curated by area artist/activist/doctor/poet Saad Ghosn, who has been curated shows relating to the theme of Social Justice for over two decades here; the show is at Kennedy Heights Art Center. Joelle Jameson reviews two such shows in Boston, one at Wellesley College’s Davis Gallery, and the other ,”Chinese Dreams” , at MassArt. (Jameson was aeqai’s Houston correspondent, but she’s now moved to Boston and will cover that area in future for aeqai). Karen Chambers examines photographer Jens Rosenkrantz’s work, “Crossing the Border”, at Clifton Cultural Arts Center. Louisville correspondent Megan Bickel reviews two such shows in Louisville, photos and collages by Paul Npagi Sepukja at Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts , and fascinating work by Sarah Martin at the gallery at Bellarmine University. We’ve put most of these reviews together, thematically, in this issue.
Laura Hobson offers an extensive feature on The Harriet Beecher Stowe house in Walnut Hills, and aeqai architecture critic Stewart Maxwell looks skeptically at the new Otto M. Budig theatre/Shakespeare theater building in OTR. Hobson also has a small feature on the brand-new “OTR Gallery”, in OTR. Jane Durrell offers an interview/artist’s profile of the two new artists in residence. Brianna Angelakis and Charlie Goering, at Manifest Gallery in Walnut Hills.
Other less thematic shows reviewed this month include Jonathan Kamholtz’s review of the show “Wildflowers” at the Lloyd Library downtown, always one of our favorite venues for art shows. Dan Burr examines the three-woman show at the Women’s YWCA Gallery downtown, mainly landscape-derived work, by Andrea Knarr, Mary Woodworth, and Didem Mert, all superb regional artists. Seattle correspondent Martha Dunham offers a double review, of work by Mel Katz at both the Russo Lee Gallery, and the Museum of Northwest Art. Regan Brown offers his critical thoughts and a video about the recent, hugely successful “BLINK” festival in downtown/OTR Cincinnati. Aeqai welcomes new critic Will Newman, whose first offering is a review of the Graffiti show at Cincinnati Art Underground in OTR. Karen Chambers reviews the “Animus/Anima” show at Marta Hewett Gallery, a two-woman show, of work by Casey Riordan Millard and Julia Oldham. Marlene Steele journeyed up to Springfield, Ohio, and reviews the work of artists Hopkins and (his wife) Boies, both regional/Appalachian artists of real painterly quality. And Kent Krugh’s fotofolio artist this month is Tami Bahat.
Our literary section this month consists of three new poems by Maxwell Redder, all meditations upon the birth and early infancy of his new daughter. I offer four book reviews this month, of new novels by important American authors Jesmyn Ward, Alice McDermott, Celeste Ng, and Jennifer Egan.
We welcome your comments and thoughts, as always. And we’ll be back in November, with another full issue. If anyone’s interested in buying some of the art from the aeqai auction, it’s on the site with instructions on how to purchase it; the funds all go to support aeqai.
We hope that you find this issue exceptionally stimulating. Please click onto www.aeqai.com/main to go directly to the site.
–Daniel Brown
