The March issue of Aeqai has just posted. It’s replete with fascinating reviews and profiles, and for those of our readers particularly interested in the digital world and its effects on contemporary art, we offer three columns which specifically address some of those issues. Ekin Erkan provides two of those; he’ll be reviewing shows in […]
Archive for March, 2019
Fairs and Affairs: The Availability of Pleasure “Paris 1900: The City of Entertainment” at the Cincinnati Art Museum, March 1-May 12, 2019
March 31st, 2019 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
The visual richness of Paris during the Belle Epoque would have followed people wherever they went, even out of doors. Posters must have been everywhere, depicting products for sale and announcing events and attractions both large and small on lithographed newsprint affixed to walls, fences, and kiosks specially designed for the purpose. The marketing of […]
Review: The Armory Show 2019
March 31st, 2019 | by Tony Huffman | published in *, March 2019
This year’s iteration of The Armory Show marked its 25th anniversary, placing a considerable amount of pressure on Director Nicole Berry to execute the event at the level stakeholders in the art world have come to expect. First launched in 1994 at the Gramercy Park Hotel, The Gramercy International Art Fair has morphed into New […]
The Womanist Movement: Bridging the Gap
March 31st, 2019 | by Marlene Steele | published in *, March 2019
March is nationally celebrated as Women’s History Month. In keeping with its stated mission of eliminating racism and empowering women, the Greater Cincinnati YWCA has mounted an exhibition encompassing the expressive works of nine local women who examine their own attitudes of identity, entitlement and personal experiences of victimization. The exhibiting artists are: Yvonne van […]
From the “California Ideology” to Tiqqun’s “Total War:” Tracing net.art’s Archival Poetics
March 31st, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in *, March 2019
As a researcher, theorist, and something of a contemporary continental philosophy-bent author in, my interests in new media theory, film studies, and comparative media are necessarily political, often siding with a turn towards “speculative realism,” Quentin Meillassoux’s “correlationism,” or François Laruelle’s “non-standard philosophy” at the expense of affect theory or those “poetics” that salvage media […]
Profile of Ena Nearon Menefield
March 31st, 2019 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
“Cincinnati is a good city for creating a place for yourself,” Ena Nearon Menefield, who has been here since 1996, says. Her own background, as a woman of color, makes her an experienced judge in such matters. Originally from New York City, the place where she raised her children, and later resident in California, she […]
“/just to be alive/ An Exhibition of the Contemporary Female Artist,” 1628 Ltd., through May 31, 2019
March 31st, 2019 | by Karen Chambers | published in March 2019
I confess. I’m prejudiced against exhibitions of artists lumped together because of traits they can’t change (or only change with much effort), not aesthetics. That puts the focus on the maker not the art. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve just had back-to-back months of such presentations: Black History Month in February and Women’s […]
Artists Break Bans and Bridge Barriers in "Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video"
March 31st, 2019 | by Annabel Osberg | published in March 2019
Forty-two photographs and videos present a panoptic view of Persian youth culture in “Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video,” the third Iranian photography biennial at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles. Sponsored primarily by Farhang Foundation, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Iranian art, this sweeping juried exhibition suggests that despite our respective governments’ […]
Letter from Oaxaca: The 18th Biennial of Painting Rufino Tamayo
March 31st, 2019 | by Saad Ghosn | published in March 2019
I recently visited the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the State of Oaxaca, in Mexico and had the chance to view the 18th Biennial of Painting Rufino Tamayo at the Museum of Contemporary Arts of Oaxaca (MACO, Museo of Artes Contemporaneos de Oaxaca). Founded in 1982 by the internationally known Oaxacan artist, one of […]
Conspiratorial Aesthetics at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts: Why does so much new art look conspiratorial?
March 31st, 2019 | by Megan Bickel | published in March 2019
“Why does so much new art look conspiratorial?” In preparation for attending Conspiratorial Aesthetics at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts I read the curatorial statement. In it the curator, Christopher Reitz, asks the question above. And it’s all I can remember of the statement. Why does so much new art look conspiratorial? Why does […]
Inverting Vulgarity: Harmony Korine’s Florida Films, “Young Twitchy,” and Hauntology
March 31st, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in March 2019
Harmony Korine’s second show at Gagosian Madison in the last six months, closely following “Blockbuster” (which ran from September – October, 2018), “Young Twitchy” (showing from March 14 – April 20, 2019) is a step in both a more formal painterly order and, arguably, in a direction that runs parallel to Korine’s recent filmic interest […]
“Appreciating Our Past and Present Surroundings”
March 31st, 2019 | by Stewart Maxwell | published in March 2019
As a city that is 231 years old, Cincinnati has enjoyed numerous buildings of various styles, some of which fortunately still have survived. An exhibition at the Downtown Cincinnati Public Library entitled “Cincinnati Historic Architecture: An Overview of 150 Years of Architectural Styles” will be on-view until April 28 and is worth visiting to appreciate […]
Fotofolio: Sunjoo Lee
March 31st, 2019 | by Kent Krugh | published in March 2019
“Memorabilia 3” Sunjoo’s statement: I started collecting wrapping papers during my travels around the world. I visited gift shops, and I was taken away by the wrapping papers’ vivid and playful statements. At first, I purchased them on a whim and in fleeting moments, but over time, I became more mindful of each unique sheet […]
Ron Isaacs at Manifest Gallery
March 31st, 2019 | by Jonathan Ryckman | published in March 2019
The impact of Ron Isaacs’ paintings is greater than their subdued colors and modest dimensions. At first impression, the viewer is taken by an effortless technique which does not reveal its construction, which is straightforward nonetheless. Over the past four decades Ron Isaacs has developed his means and methods to arrive at a workflow uniquely […]
Clint Woods – PRACTICE March 4- April 25, Park National Bank Gallery, UC Clermont College
March 31st, 2019 | by Amy Bogard | published in March 2019
There is a strong sense of the sacred in the work of Clint Woods. His own words offer the work as “employing a triggering device – a call to seek and reflect; that makes conscious what has been buried in the unconscious, drawing the viewer into awareness.” Through images and form he shares with others […]
Bill Davis No Dark in Sight: Light and the Night It Transforms
March 31st, 2019 | by Zsolt Bátori | published in March 2019
“Featuring a new body of work by Bill Davis, Associate Professor and Area Co-Coordinator of Photography and Intermedia, the exhibition No Dark in Sight examines light pollution in such locations as Kalamazoo, MI, Las Vegas, NV, and Machu Picchu in Peru. Pointedly questioning our social and physiological relationship to artificial light, Davis’ work considers how synthetic lighting affects […]
Art Design Consultants, Inc.
March 31st, 2019 | by Laura Hobson | published in March 2019
Fine art abounds at Art Design Consultants, Inc., owned and managed by Litsa Spanos for over twenty-five years. It is now located at 310 Culvert Street, originally an old warehouse, in downtown Cincinnati, where she has many clients. Her art for sale includes paintings, sculpture, mixed media, glass and photography. She originally had just two […]
Khaled Khalifa’s “Death is Hard Work”
March 31st, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in March 2019
A new voice in fiction, at least for Americans, is that of Syrian writer Khaled Khalifa, whose new novel, “Death is Hard Work”, is both grimly humorous and deadly serious concurrently. Khalifa, who is still living in Damascus, sets this new novel right in the middle of the Syrian civil war. Three siblings, all grown […]
Elizabeth McCracken’s “Bowlaway”
March 31st, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in March 2019
“Bowlaway”, by the hugely gifted novelist Elizabeth McCracken, is currently my Number l best novel of 2019 to date. Part fairy tale, part realism, “Bowlaway” exists in a world so finely delineated and created, and walks such a fine line between various genres, that you’ll be astonished at how quickly it seduces you and moves […]
Winter 2019 Issue of Aeqai Online
March 3rd, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in Announcements
The Winter (Jan./Feb.) issue of Aeqai has just posted. We bring twenty-two columns in this issue, rich with critical anaylsis, profiles of artists, and book reviews. The two museum shows this month are Jonathan Kamholtz’s exceptional review of modernist paintings from The Phillips Collection in Washington–and what a collection it is!–and Karen Chambers’ review of […]
Both Ends of the Brush: “Winslow Homer to Georgia O’Keeffe: American Paintings from the Phillips Collection” at the Taft Museum of Art, February 9-May 19, 2019
March 3rd, 2019 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
High modernism is well over a century old by now, and its roots are even older. How could that even have happened? The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. was the first American museum devoted to modern art, opening in 1921, some eight years before MOMA. Though the title of the loan show at the Taft […]
The Window of Clarity: Eric Hatch’s “Faces of Addiction"
March 3rd, 2019 | by Christopher Carter | published in *
Award-winning writer and photographer Eric K. Hatch has made his reputation by focusing on landscapes and the built environment. So when an acquaintance who lost a son to an overdose encouraged him to address drug addiction, he at first hesitated, feeling unprepared to take on such a project. Yet after a meditative cross-country trip and […]
Close Reading: Proximity of Syllables by Migiwa Orimo at the Weston Gallery
March 3rd, 2019 | by Susan Byrnes | published in *
A pair of curtains adorned with a large set of parentheses hung at the entrance to the exhibit “Proximity of Syllables” at the Weston Gallery make a pronouncement: as you pass through, you are entering a space of meaning made not by what is directly stated, but by what is implied, unsaid, sidelined, redacted, absent, […]
“Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150: A Celebration in Drawings and Prints,” Cincinnati Art Museum, through April 28, 2019
March 3rd, 2019 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
If there were any question about the importance of the Art Academy of Cincinnati (AAC) or the quality of its teachers and students, the thoughtful “Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150: A Celebration in Drawings and Prints” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM) puts that to rest. The exhibition presents 90 drawings and prints by […]
On a Certain Tendency of Contemporary Installation Art
March 3rd, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in *, Winter 2019
British installation artist Alex Hibbitt’s Rhizome: Falling (2018) has traversed numerous gallery locales throughout the States in the last few years and hangs, suspended and static, in the Weston Gallery’s atrium ceiling. The work – a horizontal web of variegated materiality and form – while weighty, sputters a certain recherché of the ethereal, culling to […]
What Rich Mix Is This?
March 3rd, 2019 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in Winter 2019
Judy Pfaff New Prints Isaac Abrams Paintings + Drawings Kirk Mangus Drawings + Ceramic Works This handsome show of a trio of artists opened in late January and continues through to April 6, 2019 at the Solway Gallery in the west end. Judy Pfaff is the giant in the room with exciting new prints in the largest gallery rooms at […]
Deb Brod at The Carnegie
March 3rd, 2019 | by Alice Pixley Young | published in Winter 2019
In The Carnegie’s Open Source series of exhibitions, Trajectory engages the gallery space with swooping arcs of fabric and fiber that weave and stretch across one corner of the large open room. Deb Brod, the artist, has mined collections of fabric handed down from her mother and grandmother as well as from her daughter and […]
SIMILITUDE: A survey of contemporary portraiture
March 3rd, 2019 | by Marlene Steele | published in Winter 2019
Dreams, dragons and confrontation with contemporary overtones– “Similitude” is an exhibit of current portraiture work by contemporary, largely regional, artists at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. Paul Loehle’s large oil on panel is entitled “Self Portrait with Purple Dragon”. A split segment of Loehle’s head with single wide open eye forms the foundation of a […]
On the Question of How to Approach a New Visual Language?
March 3rd, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in Winter 2019
Synthetica, which showed at the Weston Art Gallery from November 30, 2018 – January 27, 2019, professed a keen logic of material innovation accompanied by a significant theoretical undertaking –these nine local artists sought not only to transfigure two-dimensional surfaces with an array of diverse materials but, also, how to consequently render new linguistic applications […]
The Terrace Plaza Hotel: Recognizing Greatness
March 3rd, 2019 | by Stewart Maxwell | published in Winter 2019
Cincinnati is fortunate to have a number of noteworthy examples of architecture and history, recognized with numerous listings on the National Register of Historic Places. Placement of buildings on this list is important in order to bring recognition, but offers little protection from insensitive remodeling and destruction, except where federal dollars are involved. Designation of […]
ZVIZDAL [Chernobyl- so far so close] Berlin
March 3rd, 2019 | by Will Newman | published in Winter 2019
![ZVIZDAL [Chernobyl- so far so close] Berlin](http://aeqai.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/1-3-150x150.jpg)
ZVIZDAL is the latest documentary-installation by the Dutch company Berlin. It comprises a large double-sided projection screen over three diorama tables depicting a primitive Ukranian farmhouse. The documentary film is interspersed with magnified footage from remote controlled cameras which move to display images of these farm dioramas on the projection screen. The documentary itself uses […]
STATE Ingri Fiksdal
March 3rd, 2019 | by Will Newman | published in Winter 2019
Ingri Fiksdal’s STATE explores the role of dance as ritual in society and was performed in the Contemporary Arts Center’s black box theatre. Accompanied by live performance of Lasse Marhaug’s noise music soundtrack, STATE uses a combination of modern dance choreography and improvised movement to bring Fiksdal’s commentary on dance and ritual to life. The […]
Fotofolio – Susan Patrice
March 3rd, 2019 | by Kent Krugh | published in Winter 2019
“The Enveloping Landscape” Susan’s statement: The Enveloping Landscape project began as a way to heal. Much like the Appalachian landscape itself, my body holds a map of multi-generational trauma. Too often expressed as violence against women, mirrored in our exploitation of the land, our history carries with it a shame so deep that it looms […]
Emma Webster's Complicated Vistas of Human Nature in Dioramic Landscapes
March 3rd, 2019 | by Annabel Osberg | published in Winter 2019
Nothing seems right in Emma Webster’s No Man’s Land (all works 2018): toadstools are weirdly spotlighted; wispy arboreal cutouts contain more than mere foliage; and a nearby cervine, possibly an antelope, is impossibly dwarfed by a distant moose. Such incongruities lead one to wonder: what sort of location does this painting depict? Webster painted No […]
"Art School"
March 3rd, 2019 | by Hannah Leow | published in Winter 2019
I’ll never forget my first day of art school. It was my freshman year at UC’s DAAP and I had been instructed by my professors to bring with me a laundry list of art supplies to my various studios. What resulted was a portfolio full of the usual inventory: pads of drawing paper, a T-Square, […]
Saying Goodbye to an Icon
March 3rd, 2019 | by Jenny Perusek | published in Winter 2019
While fashion is an ever-evolving industry spurred by constant winds of change, some things are just predictable. We know that four cities will present runway shows all unique and interesting in their own ways. We know new designers will emerge from the pack seemingly out of nowhere. We know that we what we see on […]
Stewart Goldman
March 3rd, 2019 | by Jane Durrell | published in Winter 2019
Stewart Goldman has been making art longer than many viewers – although not this writer – have been alive, a circumstance that does not seem to hamper either his relevance or appeal. By his mid- 20s, when the 20th century itself was in its sixties and seventies, Goldman’s work began appearing publicly with considerable regularity. […]
Movies Filmed in Cincinnati Have a Visual Arts Influence
March 3rd, 2019 | by Laura Hobson | published in Winter 2019
Visual arts play a part in many movies, according to Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Film Commission Executive Director Kristen Schlotman. Hollywood producers have shot movies, such as Carol, Old Man and the Gun, Marauders, Reprisal and Gotti, here. Most recently is Dry Run, filmed here in early 2019. Dry Run is based on a […]
Visionary Artist Reilly Stasienko: Chronicling Consciousness Through Oil Paintings
March 3rd, 2019 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in Winter 2019
Some art seeks to capture, in stark detail, the beauty of the natural world around us. Other art turns inward and seeks to transcend the natural world, illustrating the colors and symbols of the worlds within and the worlds beyond. The artwork of Reilly Stasienko — a 17-year-old visionary artist living in Miamisburg, Ohio — […]
Robert W. Fieseler’s “Tinderbox”
March 3rd, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in Winter 2019
Gay Liberation in America is generally thought to have begun with the Stonewall Inn protests in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1969. Homosexuality was, at that time, still considered a psychiatric disease by the so-called helping professions in America, and gay and lesbian people marginalized to a kind of status of non-people, a hidden […]
Guy Gunaratne’s “In Our Mad and Furious City”
March 3rd, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in Winter 2019
Guy Gunaratne has written a powerful and important novel, “In Our Mad and Furious City”, which takes place in contemporary London, or those parts of it where new immigrants, almost all people of color, have been marginalized into wretched tower block housing. Gunaratne focuses his novel around the lives of a number of young men, […]
Tessa Hadley’s “Late in the Day”
March 3rd, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in Winter 2019
The English writer Tessa Hadley is rapidly becoming one of that country’s foremost fiction writers; her work in the past couple of years has expanded to include a wide American audience. At times, Hadley’s writing, which is completely magnificent, reminds me of the late, great Anita Brookner’s, who wrote perfect, flawless prose in an increasingly […]
