matthew1

Matthew Metzger is an artist, designer and furniture maker based in Cincinnati. His paintings are represented locally by Miller Gallery, and his furniture by Voltage, as well as other galleries and design showrooms nationally. His website is www.metzgerfinearts.com.

Art Basel Miami Beach

“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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Art Basel Miami Beach | Tags: December 2017

Tom Marioni’s Dry Fresco, Drawings and Bronze at Carl Solway Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Tom Marioni’s Dry Fresco, Drawings and Bronze at Carl Solway Gallery | Tags: * · May 2016

Shinji Turner Yamamoto’s Sidereal Silence, at Weston Art Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Shinji Turner Yamamoto’s Sidereal Silence, at Weston Art Gallery | Tags: * · April 2016

Artist:Body at Lexington Art League

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Artist:Body at Lexington Art League | Tags: March 2016

Matthew Kolodziej’s “Patch Work” at Carl Solway Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Matthew Kolodziej’s “Patch Work” at Carl Solway Gallery | Tags: * · February 2016

A Thousand Invisible Threads | Mapping the Rhizome

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on A Thousand Invisible Threads | Mapping the Rhizome | Tags: * · October 2015

Max Unterhaslberger at Phyllis Weston Gallery

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. […]

Read | Comments Off on Max Unterhaslberger at Phyllis Weston Gallery | Tags: * · Winter 2015

David Benjamin Sherry’s Western Romance

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. […]

Read | Comments Off on David Benjamin Sherry’s Western Romance | Tags: * · October 2014

Christopher Le Brun’s New Paintings at Friedman Benda

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, […]

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Deborah Butterfield’s New Sculptures, at Zolla Lieberman Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Deborah Butterfield’s New Sculptures, at Zolla Lieberman Gallery | Tags: * · Summer 2014

Toward a Holistic Approach to Art and Design, or To Love a Soup Bowl

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Toward a Holistic Approach to Art and Design, or To Love a Soup Bowl | Tags: * · Features · June 2014

Kay Hurley’s Purely Pastels, Random Acts of Beauty

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Kay Hurley’s Purely Pastels, Random Acts of Beauty | Tags: * · May 2014 · On View

Fresh Air: Art from the Bernheim Arboretum Review

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, […]

Read | Comments Off on Fresh Air: Art from the Bernheim Arboretum Review | Tags: * · April 2014 · On View

Alice Aycock Review

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 […]

Read | 1 Comment | Tags: * · April 2014 · On View

Paintings without Irony: Ryan Cobourn’s Pastorale at Nancy Margolis Gallery, in conjunction with a Slow Art talk by Jennifer Samet, Ph.D.

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Paintings without Irony: Ryan Cobourn’s Pastorale at Nancy Margolis Gallery, in conjunction with a Slow Art talk by Jennifer Samet, Ph.D. | Tags: * · February 2014 · On View

Ron Thomas’ Take it from Me at The Carnegie and Kim Krause’s The Eleusinian Mysteries at Marta Hewitt Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Ron Thomas’ Take it from Me at The Carnegie and Kim Krause’s The Eleusinian Mysteries at Marta Hewitt Gallery | Tags: * · January 2014 · On View

Bruce Riley’s Science Fiction, at Miller Gallery

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Bruce Riley’s Science Fiction, at Miller Gallery | Tags: * · November 2013

Evolution, Jeremy Johnson and Aaron Kent

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 […]

Read | Comments Off on Evolution, Jeremy Johnson and Aaron Kent | Tags: * · October 2013