“To spend time in Miami is to acquire a certain fluency in cognitive dissonance.” – Joan Didion Both Miami and art fairs in general leave one feeling simultaneously elated and defeated, so an art fair in Miami is a natural choice. The Swiss figured this out about 15 years ago when they decided to bring […]
How are we to understand the intentions of a conceptual artist like Tom Marioni when he mounts an exhibition of objects using traditional mediums like fresco, drawing and bronze sculpture? It’s true that with conceptual art the medium is dictated by the idea (as Marioni has said with typical humor, a conceptual artist is “free […]
Turner-Yamamoto’s paintings and sculptures are so commanding yet austere that, depending on temperament, a viewer either pays little attention or becomes lost in front of them. The latter of course is preferable and, I would suggest, the point of art, conjuring an experience of a new thread of reality; and with any luck becoming a […]
Editor’s Note: This column is reprinted courtesy of UnderMain, an online publication in Lexington. Self-portraiture can be an unfortunate expression of ego, and until the last hundred years or so this has been its dominant motivation. The humanism of the renaissance elevated the individual artist into subjects worthy of examination in art, displacing, but by […]
In the early part of last century abstraction began considering something as simple as the power of multiple intersecting lines. The clarity of the grid evolved to become, in Rosalind Krauss’ words, “modern art’s will to silence, its hostility to literature, to narrative, to discourse.” Matthew Kolodziej’s paintings begin at this point in more ways […]
A Thousand Invisible Threads | Mapping the Rhizome at the Herndon Gallery at Antioch College, finds its influence from Deleuze’s and Guttarai’s postmodern classic, A Thousand Plateaus. A theme is the rhizome, a biological term for a type of root structure, used as a metaphor for philosophy, social structures, or ways of thinking that are […]
One senses a materiality trying to escape from these paintings. In some of them Unterhaslberger traps the work behind a clear acrylic screen by applying the paint, sometimes thickly, to the back of the acrylic leaving us to view a perfectly flat surface. Guessing at the dimension that lies beneath is joyful rather than mysterious. […]
Western Romance aims to create a dialogue between David Benjamin Sherry’s photographs of vast landscapes saturated with synthetic color and the tradition of Western landscape photography. The subjects appear at first glance to be similar, but intentions are different. Sherry’s photographs are more about color and light than capturing the grandness of the western frontier. […]
Le Brun’s paintings have always treaded diverse stylistic ground. They’ve explored classical literature, Wagnerian music, poetry and history through quintessentially romantic “subjects” like, forests, knights, adventurers, horses and gallivants. Whatever the subject, with Le Brun’s work we find ourselves in that misty area where what is represented is not actually portrayed. A type of art, […]
Deborah Butterfield’s sculptures are not like the sculptures of the civilized and perfectly groomed horses standing beneath important men that adorn public places. They’re just themselves, seemingly contemplating their own existence with a serenity that belies their power. At Zolla Lieberman Gallery most of them gently stand while one lays prone, each comfortable with their […]
by Matthew Metzger It’s difficult to talk about the unnecessary rift between art, design and craft without being somewhat didactic and hypocritical. The “disciplines” need to be separated to some degree to begin a conversation about them in the first place. It’s ambiguous at best to later backpedal and claim that art, design and craft […]
by Matthew Metzger Kay Hurley’s art has been, quite simply but very profoundly, an exploration of the beautiful. Luminous, tonal, unpeopled landscape has unabashedly been her exclusive “genre”. Her commitment to her art has been steadfast, second only to actually living life. Or more aptly put, perhaps, would be to say she has appropriately combined […]
by Matthew Metzger Fresh Air: Art from the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest at the Ascent Private Capital Management building was curated by Elizabeth Leach of Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland Oregon, with direction from Martha Slaughter, Bernheim’s Visual Arts Coordinator. It presents works by current and past artists in residence at the Bernheim Arboretum, […]
by Matthew Metzger Alice Aycock’s Super Twister at the University of Cincinnati Medical Science Building Alice Aycock was a seminal presence in the New York avant-garde art scene in the 1970s, and has since continued to create work that simultaneously dissects and combines aspects of monumental sculpture, architecture, science and modern machinery. In stride with […]
by Matthew Metzger Editor’s Note: Aeqai receives an increasingly large number of press releases for exhibitions in other cities. So we thought we would experiment, and try to review one from afar, without the direct experience of seeing it live. The first review, by Matt Metzger, is of a show by Ryan Coburn at the […]
by Matthew Metzger Ron Thomas’ Take if from Me and Kim Krause’s The Eleusinian Mysteries ran concurrently at The Carnegie and Marta Hewett Gallery, offering a nice opportunity for a symposium (at least in writing) of two very different types of abstraction. I provide a bit more coverage for Thomas’ work simply because, to my […]
Bruce Riley’s Science Fiction, at Miller Gallery by Matthew Metzger Bruce Riley’s lyrical, organic forms glow through layers of paint and resin, resembling something we can’t quite remember, materializing from a ground we can’t quite locate, coalescing with other forms, then receding back into the abyss. The coalescence is like the moment in between sleep […]
Evolution, Jeremy Johnson and Aaron Kent At Prairie Gallery By Matthew Metzger Science is fertile ground for mystery. Neo-Platonic notions of the fertility of the soil; animal magic; the cooperation of the tribe; the numinous atmosphere; the ungraspable vastness of the universe; infinity; the void. Our best scientists are by necessity also poets and […]
