The June issue of Aeqai has just posted. We offer a wide variety of reviews from our region and from other major American cities as well. We’re particularly taken with LA critic Annabel Osberg’s review of Jurassic Technology , which we’ve run first, and hope you read as we’re asked to distinguish between what may literally be real and what’s wholly invented in the arts (we sometimes wonder about the use of excessive linguistic posturing in some contemporary art theory). Joelle Jameson’s column from Boston (well, Cambridge) is also passionate and timely, looking at two shows at the Harvard Art Museums, “Analog Culture” and “Survivor’s Remorse”. Ekin Erkan, who’ll be departing for graduate school at Columbia University soon and will write for aeqai from New York, offers two reviews of exhibitions at The Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, mixed media work/installation by Chris Larson in one review, and work by Allison Crocetta in the other; both reviews are brilliant, engaging, and address the most cutting-edge issues in contemporary art and theory.
Susan Byrnes returns to Aeqai this month with her splendid review of “Women to Watch”, at The Riffe Gallery in Columbus , Ohio women artists engaged in sculpture, which was co-curated by Matt Distel and Ann Bremner. And Byrnes’ own new work is reviewed by Hannah Leow, who’s also back with aeqai, at 124 West Pike Street Gallery in Covington. Jonathan Kamholtz looks at photographs by Andrew Burowiec at the Iris BookCafe in OTR, Cincinnati, curated by William Messer, whose long curatorial career in that space will be ending soon; these photos of the Rust Belt MidWest are exceptionally haunting. Karen Chambers offers a critical look at “Atmosphera” , a three-person show at Kennedy Heights Arts Center, while Jane Durrell reviews another three-artist show at Eisele Gallery in the Fairfax area of Cincinnati. Will Newman takes a look at a two-artist show at Cincinnati Art Galleries in downtown Cincinnati. Chelsea Borgman, who’ll soon be departing for graduate school, too, offers a wonderfully exuberant look at the recent annual “Duct Tape” show in and around DAAP, curated by Joe Girandola. Megan Bickel, our Louisville correspondent, interviewed pop-up photographer Bill Daniels while he was there in an exceptionally engaging interview.
Both Karen Chambers and I offer tributes to the late Enquirer theater critic and force of Nature Jackie Demaline, who died very recently.
On the journalistic front, Jane Durrell offers a history of The Art Academy of Cincinnati, the art college that will be celebrating its 150th anniversary in 2019. Laura Hobson gives a fascinating feature on the Dayton Visual Arts Initiative in Dayton, Ohio, a terrific nonprofit space there. New aeqai critic/journalist Russell Hausfield takes a look at this year’s combined SOS and Art for a Better World exhibitions (art/literary arts), curated annually by Saad Ghosn, at The Art Academy of Cincinnati. Kent Krugh’s Fotofolio offering this month are photographs by Robert Dash.
Ekin Erkan also reviews a new book by Aeqai writer Chris Carter, titled “Metafilm”, and my own two book reviews this months are “The Overstory”, a new masterpiece by Richard Powers, and a near masterpiece by America’s finest younger writer (in my opinion), Rachel Kushner’s “The Mars Room”.
It’s quite an eclectic group of columns this month, which we hope will stimulate you; we only do one summer issue, July/August, as things slow down some in the summer, and we’ll be back in the latter part of August with our July/August issue. As always, your comments are more than welcome (as are any donations you’d like to make to Aeqai, a nonprofit arts organization).
Good reading to you; go to www.aeqai.com/main to go directly to the site.
–Daniel Brown
