The October issue of aeqai has just posted. We have numerous reviews, this month, of FotoFocus shows; this year’s theme is “Open Archives” and it’s been interpreted admirably by all sorts of talented artists at venues both conventional and unconventional. New York Curator Kevin Moore is , once more, the general Curator of FotoFocus. Annie […]
Archive for October, 2018
Performing Masks: Gillian Wearing at Cincinnati Art Museum
October 28th, 2018 | by Annie Dell'Aria | published in *, October 2018
Masks serve multiple metaphorical and social functions in the world. In ancient Rome, wax masks were cast directly from the faces of the dead, preserving the countenance beyond the life of the body. Ritual societies often employ masks spiritually, transforming the wearer into a being from the spirit world as part of a rite of […]
Reverent Encounters: "Re-Adorned" | Catharsis at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company
October 28th, 2018 | by Christopher Carter | published in *
Tucked into a passageway on the second floor of the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company’s new building, re-Adorned | Catharsis displays the lavish results of collaboration among artistic specialties and diverse media. Photographer Tina Gutierrez and clothing designer Da’Mon R. Butler (a.k.a. NOMAD3176) mix cultures and materials in ways both delicate and flamboyant, bringing her Cuban-Appalachian sensibilities […]
I’m Also Going to Breathe: Ann Segal’s “Through the Lens of Time” at Cincinnati Mini Microcinema, October 6-October 20, 2018
October 28th, 2018 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Ann Segal hasn’t done an ad for the iPhone camera, but—if it weren’t for her decision a long time ago to walk away from the commercial side of photography—she could. For the last 10 years of a 45 year career of taking photographs, she has exclusively used her iPhone, with remarkable success. In a professional […]
Preservation Par Excellence: Union Terminal Restored For Posterity
October 28th, 2018 | by Stewart Maxwell | published in *, October 2018
One of America’s most architecturally significant buildings will be reopening in November after a substantial $230 million restoration by GBBN Architects: Cincinnati’s Union Terminal. Completed in 1933 at the height of the Great Depression, this Art Deco palatial masterpiece was dedicated to passenger railroad transportation and travel at a scale in size and exquisiteness, with […]
“Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott,” Taft Museum of Art, through January 20, 2019
October 28th, 2018 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
In my mind Eugène Atget (1857-1927) and Berenice Abbott (1898-1991) are intrinsically linked, like peanut butter and jelly, or, for the grownups, gin and tonic. So I was surprised when Kevin Moore, FotoFocus artistic director and curator and curator of “Paris to New York: Photographs by Eugène Atget and Berenice Abbott” at the Taft Museum […]
Karon Davis' "Muddy Water" Immerses Gallery Visitors in Flood Victims' Distress
October 28th, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in October 2018
Karon Davis’ sculpture installation at Wilding Cran Gallery transports you into an eerie dreamlike flooded world where time has been suspended and all that remains is a melancholy sense of emptiness tinged with despair. This show’s simple evocative atmosphere poignantly distills disaster victims’ sorrows and black Americans’ larger struggles. A recent evacuee from devastating California […]
TK TK
October 28th, 2018 | by Bret McCabe | published in October 2018
Maren Hassinger’s “Interlock” sculpture looks like a coiled stretch of rope hanging on the wall, its frayed ends a tangle of strands. As first encountered when entering the galleries for The Spirit of Things, her compact career retrospective at the Baltimore Museum of Art, it looks like something you might be able to lift off […]
Riffing on Picasso Caza Sikes Gallery, Cincinnati’s invitational exhibit Channeling Picasso
October 28th, 2018 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in October 2018
Picasso’s genius as an artist hovers over the cultural landscape like a giant zeppelin. Not just in the 20th century but into our 21st century as well, as the exhibit Channeling Picasso at Caza Sikes Gallery reveals. Any quick search of the top artists in the world for all times has Picasso as one of […]
GUITAR: The Instrument That Rocked The World
October 28th, 2018 | by Will Newman | published in October 2018
Cincinnati Museum Center is the current host of The National Guitar Museum’s traveling exhibit designed as an ‘all ages’ display and interactive experience. With a dual focus on the science as well as the culture of fretted instrument evolution, visitors can touch family friendly displays of the physics of string vibration as well as magnetic […]
Hubbs Review
October 28th, 2018 | by Ben Michaelis | published in October 2018
As a genre, portraiture is fraught territory. The intertwining of concerns, recognition and identification, or representation in its social and cultural complexities, is always going to make for a rough ground to tread upon—to summon Wittgenstein. As old as the genre of portraiture is, and as carefully considered its forms have been, the difficulty, the […]
New World Refugees and Immigrants Photograph the Experience of a New Life in America
October 28th, 2018 | by Amy Bogard | published in October 2018
University of Cincinnati Clermont College Park National Bank Art Gallery September 4 – October 31, 2018 Park National Bank Art Gallery September 4 – October 31, 2018 Artists: Luke Kellett, Sadiq Onanuga, Bhim Rai, Bhimla Rai, and Lourdes Santos Curator: Kent Krugh nor·mal /ˈnôrməl/ adjective: conforming to a standard; usual, typical, or expected. Upon stepping […]
“Jewish Cincinnati: A Photographic History” J. Miles Wolf’s Exhibit at The Skirball Museum Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion
October 28th, 2018 | by Laura Hobson | published in October 2018
Local photographer J. Miles Wolf delivered several unique facets in his exhibit “Jewish Cincinnati: A Photographic History” at Cincinnati Skirball Museum on the campus of Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion, running from October 11, 2018 to January 6, 2019. Early days of Jewish congregational life in Cincinnati are depicted in a style […]
Profile of Robert Flischel
October 28th, 2018 | by Jane Durrell | published in October 2018
Robert Flischel is someone who can’t get enough of looking. He speaks of seeing abstraction in porches, in tool heads, in 300-year-old pavement – “all the lines” – and says he learned long ago that “the body is an abstract composition.” He talks of “the series of lines that work underneath the picture’s composition within […]
Jens Rosenkrantz illustrates the road-tripper’s world-view in “Small Towns and Long Views”
October 28th, 2018 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in October 2018
Road trips: an integral part of the ethos of modern man. If you haven’t taken a character-building, eye-opening road trip yourself, you’ve surely travelled — at least in spirit — with Jack Kerouac, Christopher McCandless, or Chevy Chase on their misadventures on the open road. There is a reason this story is played out over […]
Fotofolio – Audra J. Shields
October 28th, 2018 | by Kent Krugh | published in October 2018
“These are my words, essay 1” Audra’s statement: I am very comfortable in solitude and silence and have always been drawn to the more unfrequented, quiet places. My photographs are captured during the solitary moments at diverse set of places. Isolation can happen anywhere, on the prairies, in a cemetery or even a city street. […]
A Touching Tribute
October 28th, 2018 | by Jenny Perusek | published in October 2018
When people pass away, there’s always a reverent sense of loss, thinking about how the world will never be the same without them in it. When a fashion designer dies, especially suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere, many often think about the art that would have been created … what could have been. We saw […]
Film Review: "Gunshi Kanbei," A Saga of Power and Betrayal in Feudal Japan
October 28th, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in October 2018
You likely haven’t heard of taiga dramas, and even more likely, have never watched one. Let me employ my first contribution as AEQAI’s film critic towards attempting to remedy that, for these classic yearlong Japanese television programs deserve far more attention than they receive in the U.S. Taiga dramas: a brief introduction Not to be […]
Daniel Mason’s “The Winter Soldier”
October 28th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in October 2018
World War I continues to inspire many a novelist, partly because both the social and political structures of Europe died in the trenches of that war, ushering in the modern era, the 20th century, the most barbaric recorded in human history. Daniel Mason’s “The Winter Soldier” is a superb addition to such literature. Reading either […]
Stephen Markley’s “Ohio”
October 28th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in October 2018
The novelist Stephen Markley, author of the new book “Ohio”, is new to me. “Ohio” describes life in a small town in Northeastern Ohio, where all the industries have left, drugs are rampant and no one has much to do. Markley’s novel revolves around the lives of a number of high school students, mainly juniors […]
Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Unsheltered”
October 28th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in October 2018
A new novel by Barbara Kingsolver, one of America’s finest writers, is a real literary event, so I ordered “The Unsheltered” the day it was released. (Her last two novels were first on my “best fiction of the year lists). “Unsheltered”, however, disappoints, more so because Kinsolver’s writing about some very important, topical themes. Things […]
September Issue of Aeqai Online
October 8th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in Announcements
The September issue of Aeqai has just posted. We waited one extra week to post so that we could begin to cover some of the numerous FotoFocus exhibitions that are all over the region, under the title “Open Archive”, curated, again , by New York Curator Kevin Moore. FotoFocus is now the largest photography festival […]
From Heart to Brush
October 8th, 2018 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *
Collecting Calligraphy: Arts of the Islamic World Cincinnati Art Museum September 7, 2018–January 27, 2019 Long before the Middle East came into the political spotlight in recent decades, the Cincinnati Art Museum has been collecting Islamic calligraphy. It has done so since the 1940s. While Islamic calligraphy was originally developed to nourish and enlighten […]
Outside In: Chris Engman’s Prospect and Refuge at the Weston
October 8th, 2018 | by Christopher Carter | published in *
Chris Engman’s Prospect and Refuge teaches us not to trust our eyes. On display at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery through November 18, the exhibit unsettles our senses of depth and scale, interior and exterior, origin and reproduction. It ushers us into artificial spaces and then immerses us in the tropes […]
Artistic Detritus, the Circulation of Power, and Intervening in the Historic Record at The 8th Floor
October 8th, 2018 | by Tony Huffman | published in *, September 2018
“…[power is] a multiple and mobile field of force relations where far-reaching, but never completely stable effects of domination are produced.”[1] –Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair is the most recent exhibition at The 8th Floor, an alternative art space affiliated with the Rubin Foundation and dedicated to expanding artistic […]
“Flyover Country” at the Xavier University Art Gallery, September 29-October 27, 2018
October 8th, 2018 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
There is nothing ordinary about Erika NJ Allen’s photographs of downtown Cincinnati. Taken with a pinhole camera set at an exposure of nine days, the city looks as if it has been underwater for a millennium. We are not likely to take the pictures’ minimal suggestions of color for granted. It is unsettling how they […]
As American as Whale Oil: “Loomings” by Christopher Volpe
October 8th, 2018 | by Joelle Jameson | published in *
In high school and college classrooms, Herman Melville’s 1851 novel “Moby-Dick, or, the Whale” is commonly used to illustrate Romantic and Naturalist themes. While it’s because of Keats that I picture Romanticism as a gasping tendon writhing under the holiness of the heart’s affections, my image of Naturalism—an ocean wave indifferently carrying us, screaming, an […]
Clothes Encounter Behringer-Crawford Museum FotoFocus Biennial 2018 Exhibit
October 7th, 2018 | by Jenny Perusek | published in September 2018
“Style is where you find it …”, these words stood out when starting a journey through the past, looking at the storied history of photographer Melvin Grier in his own words and pictures. Style I suppose is where you find it, out in the world not just in the glossy pages of magazines and newspapers. […]
Jeff Keen's Idiosyncratic Worlds of Collaged Films and Cinematic Drawings
October 7th, 2018 | by Annabel Osberg | published in September 2018
“We are all collage artists today, switching from one channel to another, re-editing as we go,” the late British artist Jeff Keen (1923-2012) once declared. In this age of ubiquitous smartphones, where we devour and re-synthesize words and images in staggering quantities at lightning speeds, Keen’s idea has accreted new resonance; and so has his […]
Raquel André Collection Of Lovers Performance and Photography
October 7th, 2018 | by Will Newman | published in September 2018
The performance of Collection Of Lovers begins with the audience filing in as André recites names over a droning and ominous soundtrack. The recitation of this list itself drones on as André stands next to a projector and laptop. She then begins to provide a statistical breakdown of the activities she has engaged in with […]
“Remembrances by PJ Sturdevant,” Xavier University Art Gallery, through October 27, 2018.
October 7th, 2018 | by Karen Chambers | published in September 2018
When I walked into native Cincinnatian PJ Sturdevant’s 1exhibition, “Remembrances,” at Xavier University, my head exploded with a jumble of images of the work of other photographers. The title of the show, thus, was an apt one for my reaction. But being able to reel off the names of other photographers (in no particular order, Jean-Eugène-Auguste […]
Phillip Levine shows “Stories” at Prographica/Koplin Del Rio in Seattle’s Pioneer Square
October 7th, 2018 | by Martha Dunham | published in September 2018
Phillip Levine’s sculptures are a sculptor’s dream. These are sculptures to learn from, more eloquent than any text and more accessible. To see the work in person is to step into an intimate space, graced with a lightness of spirit. We are invited to wander through that space, allowing our sense of gravity to lead […]
Best of America NOAPS Exhibit @ Eisele Gallery
October 7th, 2018 | by Marlene Steele | published in September 2018
Subjectwise, still lifes, interiors, portraits, landscapes and plein air scenes, there is a little something for everyone in this year’s curated exhibition at Eisele Gallery. Thematic trends are also a popular consideration, elements that are ‘trending’ or relevant to current news or polarized politics are found . Of much more importance to the potency of […]
Reflejos by Karla Batres Gilvin Thomas More College Eva G. Farris Art Gallery August 20- September 6, 2018
October 7th, 2018 | by Amy Bogard | published in September 2018
Set amidst the hustle and bustle of the back-to-school atmosphere at Thomas More College in suburban Northern Kentucky is a vibrant show of recent work created by Karla Batres Gilvin, a self-described Chicana artist. Batres Gilvin works in the traditional Mexican art form of hojalata, featuring tin, lacquer and mirrors formed into colorful, festive sculptural […]
Fotofolio: Enrique Leal
October 7th, 2018 | by Kent Krugh | published in September 2018
“A selection of photogravures” Enrique’s statement: My work focuses on apparent and sub-visible phenomena made possible through experiments with materials, media, and technologies of production, and the chance occurrences that result from their shared sympathies. This allows for new understandings of the extended creative forces of nature and the reciprocal flows between matter, process, and […]
Margaret Rhein’s Papermaking Career
October 7th, 2018 | by Laura Hobson | published in September 2018
Hidden away in Westwood, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, is an eclectic house and bright studio of artist Margaret Rhein and her now-retired jeweler husband Stuart Golder. Her son Aaron, a graphic designer, lives on the same street; it’s a quiet, modest neighborhood. At the back of the house, amidst overhanging trees, one meets Rhein as […]
Kevin T. Kelly at Alan Avery Art Company
October 7th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in September 2018
Kevin T. Kelly has created a new body of paintings for this exhibition at Alan Avery Art Company in Atlanta, and they are his most complex, his most biting, his most urgent in his long career as one of this country’s foremost painters. Long associated with a neo-Pop style, which he probably learned in his […]
Michael Mergen: Epilogue to Mars
October 7th, 2018 | by Christopher Carter | published in September 2018
Michael Mergen lives, works, and raises his family in Farmville, Virginia, though his catalog of photographs evokes the ethos of a wanderer, moving freely across the American landscape and calling it all home. That catalog features a determined layering of past and present, along with examination of the spaces where relationships happen and identities form. […]
donottellmewhereibelong: drawing and sculpture by Joan Tanner Curated by Julien Robson Cressman Center for Visual Arts / Hite Art Institute / Department of Fine Arts / University of Louisville
October 7th, 2018 | by Megan Bickel | published in September 2018
“A curiosity to engage contradiction…might be kindled from memories of listening to my father talk about the perils and challenges in practicing medicine…Disease. Malady. Disfigurement. Imperfection. Structural weakness. I probably did not realize then, but I was already hooked.” —Joan Tanner, Interview with In the Make: Interviews with West Coasts Artists, June 2014. Joan Tanner’s […]
“Replace With Fine Art” at the Art Academy of Cincinnati
October 7th, 2018 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in September 2018
What is God? A Westernized ideal, for one, in the monotheistic sense. But, God can also be interpreted as an energy or a sustaining force. God is universal truth, the unpredictability and breadth of the natural world, the ability of the cosmos to function — the cycles of life and death, themselves. China, like many […]
Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”
October 7th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in September 2018
Ottessa Moshfegh has burst upon the literary scene mostly in the past 18 months, with, first, a book of short stories, and, now, her novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”, although she’s written two other novels of which I was unaware. Brought to my attention by my reading friend Kevin Ott, who also recommended […]
Pat Barker’s “The Silence of The Girls”
October 7th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in September 2018
Pat Barker, the English woman writer, is, at her best, one of the world’s greatest living novelists. She may be the finest novelist writing about men at war; her “Regeneration Trilogy”, one novel of which won the prestigious Booker Prize for Literature, is written about soldiers suffering from what was then first called “shell-shock” in […]
Gary Shteyngart’s “Lake Success”
October 7th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in September 2018
Gary Shteyngart is usually one of the finest, most biting satirists in America. The Russian-born, US raised Shteyngart has both satirized the Russian Mafia in America, the life of the new immigrant here; he has a keen, fine eye for the absurd and for the hypocritical. His new novel, “Lake Success”, however, is big disappointment. […]
Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”
October 7th, 2018 | by Daniel Brown | published in September 2018
August is usually a slow month for me, and I’ve often read 19th century novels during the summers over the years, novels I didn’t read along the way or in school decades ago. This year’s big novel was “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy (which, in Russian slang, means “fat lion”). I was amazed at […]