The April issue of Aeqai has just posted. We bring a variety of reviews, one profile and one feature this month. Cincinnati-born, Brooklyn-based performance artist Rachel Rampelman’s work about gender, in particular, is reviewed this month by Annie Dell’Aria; the show’s at The Weston in downtown Cincinnati in The Aronoff Center. Dell’Aria examines three different […]
Archive for April, 2019
Rachel Rampleman at Weston Gallery
April 30th, 2019 | by Annie Dell'Aria | published in *, April 2019
A shallow stage, dramatic floor to ceiling curtain of silver mylar, pink lights, and disco ball have recently transformed the ground floor of Weston Art Gallery. Alluding to the settings of over-the-top performances of artifice, this open space literally sets the stage for Rachel Rampleman’s labyrinthine exploration of drag subcultures, body builders, make-up artists, and […]
Floating Signifiers: holmes+riordan (collaborations) at Clay Street Press
April 30th, 2019 | by Christopher Carter | published in *
Visual artist Diana Duncan Holmes and poet Timothy Riordan sustained a creative partnership across three decades, reaching from the late twentieth into the early twenty-first century. In his many years of service to Xavier University, and hers to Northern Kentucky University, they produced a range of multimedia artifacts that disclose the poetry of images, the […]
Opening Space for the Imagination: Archive As Action at the Contemporary Arts Center
April 30th, 2019 | by Susan Byrnes | published in *
“In a culture where derangement and disequilibrium are the constant and inescapable climate of a politics of bewilderment, the militant tactic is not intoxication and excess but to come to our senses and learn to live in the space they open up” –Thomas A. Clark, from “Imagination” I return again and again to this line […]
An Authorized Version: “For America: Paintings from the National Academy of Design” at the Dayton Art Institute, February 23-June 2, 2019
April 30th, 2019 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Whatever you think of the outcome, the Dayton Art Institute’s exhibit of 100 paintings from the collection of the National Academy of Design has been curated multiple times and by multiple standards. Since its founding in 1826, current members of the National Academy (NA) have chosen the artists who will admitted each year to add […]
Art of the International Parks Exhibit at Eisele Gallery
April 30th, 2019 | by Marlene Steele | published in *, April 2019
The best public park views in the world are the subject matter of the best painters in the current exhibit at Eisele Gallery, Cincinnati. Mountain tops and serene valleys, rushing waves, hot springs and thermal pools are moulded into aesthetic statements by the nationally noted artists in a variety of media: oil, acrylic, pastel and […]
“Vessel” at Hudson Yards: A Capitalist Christening and Architectural Narcissism
April 30th, 2019 | by Tony Huffman | published in April 2019
In 1996, Tom Otterness installed a bronze sculptural grouping of anthropomorphized houses and coins off the banks of Roosevelt Island in the East River titled The Marriage of Real Estate and Money (Figure 1). The figures are executed in a playful manner while offering a trenchant critique of the troubling relationship that continues to exist […]
The “Right to Look” and Nari Ward’s “Amazing Grace”
April 30th, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in April 2019
French-born American-Cuban essayist Anaïs Nin’s diaristic reflections on Havana reveal the nostalgic caprice that a city can wield – its atmospheric impulse-potential to “cure negative states of being,” as Guiliana Bruno terms it (211). Reminiscing on Havana entering her field of vision, her mood suddenly uncannily boosted, Nin’s diary entry notes that “with this, the […]
Joseph Keckler – 21c Museum Hotel – April 13, 2019
April 30th, 2019 | by Will Newman | published in April 2019
The Contemporary Arts Center’s inaugural performing arts festival, “This Time Tomorrow”, featured almost thirty acts over four days in April. Spread out over Cincinnati and into Covington, the festival aimed to unite a community of patrons in time and place. Curator of the event Drew Klein wrote “[performance’s] ephemeral nature requires a presence, an assembly, […]
Getting Lost in Rob Thom's Crowds
April 30th, 2019 | by Annabel Osberg | published in April 2019
Rob Thom’s paintings resemble funhouse mirrors tilted towards pleasure-seeking crowds, magnifying follies and foibles that extend to American culture at large. His works in “The Beast” at M+B depict mostly white middle-class throngs at leisure in typical venues such as zoos, carnivals, and wrestling matches. Each scene appears ordinary enough until you notice comical panoplies […]
“Because I Said So… ,” Kennedy Heights Arts Center, through June 8, 2019
April 30th, 2019 | by Karen Chambers | published in April 2019
Robin Hartman and Kim Margaret Watling, the curators of “Because I Said So… ” at the Kennedy Heights Arts Center, neatly state the exhibition’s thesis: “Because I Said So…” (is) an exhibition encompassing the range of experiences that occur when growing up with parents or parental figures. Everyone has a story about their parents; good, […]
Severe Ascesis: Shusaku Arakawa’s Object-Oriented Ontologies and the Spectral Event
April 30th, 2019 | by Ekin Erkan | published in April 2019
This takes me back to some of my Japanese reading, in particular to my beloved Dôgen, who belongs to a Zen tradition that is particularly severe insofar as it is particularly sensitive to the sensible. . . . The problems here are very close to those of medieval aesthetics. . . . Must creation be […]
“Everything Connects” highlights designer Christien Miendertsma’s research into the ethics and manufacturing of industrial fiber products
April 30th, 2019 | by Russell Hausfeld | published in April 2019
“Everything Connects,” exhibiting at the Art Institute of Chicago through October 20, showcases the process and discoveries of Dutch designer Christien Meindertsma. Meindertsma’s practice bridges the gap between sleek designer and obsessive fiber researcher, examining the stories of products and their raw materials. The exhibition, displayed in the Department of Architecture and Design, highlights Meindertsma’s […]
Fotofolio: James Friedman
April 30th, 2019 | by Kent Krugh | published in April 2019
“Interior Design” James’ statement: Although I studied with Minor White in an experimental graduate program in photography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and admired his iconic photographic abstractions, for most of my career my chief interest has been in portraiture as a personal documentary and street photographer. I never felt personally connected to abstraction […]
Jens Rosenkrantz: Profile
April 30th, 2019 | by Jane Durrell | published in April 2019
Pendleton Street Photography is a new Over-the-Rhine gallery in an area long linked to visual arts; in it founder Jens Rosenkrantz expands the area’s coverage of the constantly enlarging field of photography. Rosenkrantz, retired now from a career in the investment/brokerage field and a brief fling in the restaurant business, is a serious photographer himself […]
Cincinnati Arts and Technology Studios: A Hidden Resource for High School Students
April 30th, 2019 | by Laura Hobson | published in April 2019
Many people may not have heard of Cincinnati Arts and Technology Studios (CATS), a non-profit agency that uses the power of the arts and other proven methods to help at-risk students stay in high school, graduate and succeed in life through art studio courses in fine arts, college and career preparation and Bridging the Gap, […]
Amy Hempel’s “Sing to It”
April 30th, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in April 2019
Since William Trevor’s death last year, American Amy Hempel is probably the finest writer of short stories anywhere in the world. Her new collection, “Sing to It”, is her first book in fourteen years, although the stories in it have been published in various magazines and journals elsewhere. For those of you enamored of incredible […]
Leila Aboulela’s “Elsewhere, Home”
April 30th, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in April 2019
Leila Aboulela’s new collection of short fiction, “Elsewhere, Home”, is another superb selection of short stories. The narrator of each story is generally a woman from Africa, mainly from The Sudan (I assume the writer herself was born there), and who is living in either London or Aberdeen (Scotland), either temporarily or permanently. Highly educated, […]
Nathan Englander’s “kaddish.com”
April 30th, 2019 | by Daniel Brown | published in April 2019
Nathan Englander moves into the front ranks of American fiction writers with his new novel, “kaddish.com“. Earlier books of short fiction and his last novel “Dinner at the Center of the Earth”manifest an enormous creative talent, a writer who can be extremely serious as well as sarcastic and funny. “kaddish.com” falls into the latter category; […]
