October 22nd, 2013 | by Matthew Metzger | published in *, October 2013
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 […]
October 22nd, 2013 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
Marta Hewett Gallery: “This is contemporary art.” By Karen Chambers Even though the computer ate gallery owner Marta Hewett’s “What Is Contemporary Art?” essay for aeqai, it set her to thinking about the question. (For how other citizens of the art world answered that question, see the September issue.) Once on this path, Hewett came […]
October 22nd, 2013 | by Keith Banner | published in *, October 2013
Radical without a Cause: “Matisse: A Life in Color” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art By Keith Banner A docent was giving a tour of “Matisse: A Life in Color” at the Indianapolis Museum of Art when I was strolling through. I overheard her say, “Matisse didn’t have any social causes in his work. He […]
October 22nd, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Deconstructing America: Telling Tales: Stories and Legends in 19-Century American Art Taft Museum of Art September 20, 2013-January 12, 2014 By Jonathan Kamholtz “Telling Tales” at the Taft makes its case for American art the hard way. This excellent loan exhibit from the New-York Historical Society surveys American painting with very few of the go-to works […]
October 22nd, 2013 | by Kevin Ott | published in *, October 2013
GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS at the Columbus Museum of Art By Kevin Ott Columbus Ohio’s favorite son of the art world, George Wesley Bellows (1881-1925), has returned to his hometown museum, the Columbus Museum of Art, for a compact but enjoyable and educational show. Bellows was, and is, a titan of American early 20th […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Keith Banner | published in *, September 2013
You Know What I Mean: Joey Versoza and JR at the Contemporary Arts Center By Keith Banner Joey Versoza’s “Is This It,” at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) through February 2, 2014, offers continual clues to a mystery that’s disintegrating while you stand inside its contexts and riddles. Versoza uses video, found objects, photography, […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
“Vessels: All the Eyes Can Hold,” Kennedy Heights Arts Center By Karen Chambers I don’t know how many exhibitions have been organized around the theme of “vessel,” or the number of shows of craft materials where the vessel form is the natural result — wheel-thrown clay, blown glass, lathe-turned wood, and spun metal. The final […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Sara Pearce | published in *, September 2013
“Balance: an exhibition of contemporary ceramics by Terri Kern” By Sara Pearce Birds face off against one another at either end of a ladder-like seesaw, perch on the edges of nests, are trapped mid-flight by ladder rungs, and barely touch down atop stacks of ladders, branches and books. There is a sense of urgency – […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
LETTER FROM NEW YORK By Jane Durrell It’s slow going on a Sunday afternoon in the new installation of European Paintings (1250-1800) at the Metropolitan Museum. The handsome spaces have been spruced up and galleries once given over to temporary shows now are part of the logical flow of ideas and innovations that can be […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Kevin Ott | published in *, September 2013
LETTER FROM CORTONA, ITALY By Kevin Ott Cortona is a walled Etruscan hill town 1 ½ hours southeast of Florence by auto, mostly via the white-knuckling auto-strada. A bit less of a tourist destination than some other Tuscan towns—smaller than Siena, maybe less charming and trampled than San Gimignano—its nearly carless, cobbled steep and […]
September 22nd, 2013 | by Aaron Betsky | published in *, September 2013
The Question Concerning Contemporaneity By Aaron Betsky The question of what contemporary art is begs the issue of modernism. Strictly speaking, any work that is done now is contemporary; it is, in other words, modern, or our modern or current age. That in turns presumes that we are always making something new; that we live […]
August 2nd, 2013 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
WOUNDED HOME, Lloyd Library and Museum By Karen Chambers “Ten years in the making” is not hyperbole when applied to the “Wounded Home” exhibition at the Lloyd Library and Museum.1 It’s just a fact. Ten years ago the guest curator, Kate Kern, participated in “Mining the Lloyd: Artists Reveal Secrets and Treasures from the Lloyd.” […]
August 2nd, 2013 | by Shawn Daniell | published in *, July-August 2013
Dig at The Fitton Center By Shawn Daniell A “wise man” once said, “Ogres are like onions.” Although this quote is from the Disney animated feature Shrek, I think it makes a valid point. Shrek’s basically saying, “Hey, onions have layers. I have layers. Dig it?” In the newest exhibit, dig, on display at the […]
August 2nd, 2013 | by Keith Banner | published in *, July-August 2013
The Fetish Line: “Andy Warhol: Athletes” and “The Art of Sport” at the Dayton Art Institute By Keith Banner “He’s SO beautiful,” Andy Warhol swoons in quoted text next to his Day-Glo portrait of O.J. Simpson in “Andy Warhol: Athletes,” a show of commissioned pieces Warhol did in 1977 installed on aqua walls at the […]
August 2nd, 2013 | by Fran Watson | published in *, July-August 2013
Small Packages/Good Things by Fran Watson Motif, Mantra & Mystery Small works by Frank Herrmann, Kim Krause and Eric Standley Marta Hewett Gallery Jun 28 – August 24, 2013 Artists need to think their way up. Great huge works don’t simply happen. They follow many little ideas which one day culminate in a masterpiece…. […]
August 2nd, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Singing for Myself: Seeing Opera Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery June 14–August 31, 2013 By Jonathan Kamholtz Mr. Sousaphone, the main character in Jay Bolotin’s remarkable 22-minute video “Kharmen,” makes it back home after a long and dangerous and partly hallucinatory urban trek. He puts an old vinyl—or possible even shellac—version of Carmen […]
June 21st, 2013 | by Emil Robinson | published in *, June 2013
Cincinnati Everyday at the Cincinnati Art Museum By Emil Robinson Cincinnati Everyday is currently on exhibition at the Cincinnati art Museum. The show pairs two Cincinnati natives, artists Courttney Cooper and Cole Carothers. Cooper is represented by three large ballpoint pen drawings on collaged paper, and Carothers displays five oil on wood paintings. This is […]
June 21st, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Pictures and Property: Photographic Wonders: American Daguerreotypes from The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art May 17–August 25, 2013 By Jonathan Kamholtz “Photographic Wonders,” a selection of daguerreotypes culled from the extraordinary collection put together by Hallmark and then given in 2005 to Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, is the real deal. In the ten […]
June 21st, 2013 | by Kevin Muente | published in *, June 2013
Faces and Figures Artisan Enterprise Center Covington, KY June 7–July 12 By Kevin Muente As an artist who draws and paints from the figure regularly, I was eager to see the current show Figures and Faces at the Artisan Enterprise Center in Covington curated by Daniel Brown. The work in this exhibition varies greatly giving […]
June 21st, 2013 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
Review of Eternal Summer: The Art of Edward Henry Potthast. By Jane Durrell The Cincinnati Art Museum has concocted a truly vacation-time exhibition with Eternal Summer: The Art of Edward Henry Potthast. Concoct is the operative word here; the installation, in a manner of speaking, is the show, with a bonus at the end. Eternal […]
June 21st, 2013 | by Keith Banner | published in *, June 2013
Stone-Cold Ineffable: Ai Weiwei’s “According to What?” By Keith Banner Ai Weiwei’s “According to What?” (currently at the Indianapolis Museum of Art through July 17, 2013) is pure perfection. An Apple-Store consumerist clarity defines and propels the whole enterprise, a clean, polished fetishism that somehow becomes spiritual in its carefulness. Weiwei is obviously a purist, […]
May 22nd, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Gazes and Shadows: Continuity and Change: The Return to Figurative Painting Cincinnati Art Galleries, May 3–June 8 By Jonathan Kamholtz “Continuity and Change” is a big and ambitious show, curated by Daniel Brown, the Editor of Aeqai who has written about art, been an art dealer, and an independent curator for several decades. The show […]
May 22nd, 2013 | by Brett Baker | published in *, May 2013
Letter from New York Jay DeFeo: A Retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art by Brett Baker Known primarily as the author of the mythic painting The Rose, Jay DeFeo (1929-1989) was an enigmatic artist whose fierce devotion to a single work became her claim to fame. It also damaged her career, and in doing […]
May 22nd, 2013 | by Cynthia Amneus | published in *, May 2013
Fashion: Visual Culture Front and Center Cynthia Amnéus In 2011 the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition Savage Beauty, celebrating the work of fashion designer Alexander McQueen, became a sensation attracting over 650,000 visitors. I had the privilege of seeing the show sans the crowds as a colleague at the Costume Institute escorted me in before […]
May 22nd, 2013 | by Christopher Hoeting | published in *, May 2013
An American Appetite for Living and Consuming By Christopher Hoeting Two new exhibits examine perspectives on domestic living spaces in site-specific collaborations about American Life. On this old fashion road trip, I discovered the dichotomy of Living and Consuming; A concept that is as American as apple pie, not just in American Life, but also […]
May 22nd, 2013 | by Keith Banner | published in *, May 2013
Super Cooper: Art without Words By Keith Banner In a New York Magazine article about the recent opening of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute’s exhibit “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” Nitsuh Abebe writes: “In music, punk remains what the critic Frank Kogan calls a ‘Superword,’ a term whose main purpose is for people to […]
April 21st, 2013 | by Kevin Ott | published in *, April 2013
LETTER FROM: New York: March 7th to 10th By Kevin Ott My flight arrives on time, the cab line is short and traffic is thin, so my arrival at the Gramercy Park Hotel is before noon, allowing for a quick lunch of Alphabet Soup and Grilled Cheese at the Terrace Restaurant, where the walls are […]
April 21st, 2013 | by Fran Watson | published in *, April 2013
Other Worlds by Fran Watson Hema Upadhyay and Atul Dodlya At the Contemporary Arts Center Both artists are are from India, both have been celebrated internationally, and both exhibit imagery which contains the multiple layers of their exotic homeland and a nearly unplumbable history. My own knowledge of Indian culture is casual, at best, […]
April 21st, 2013 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *
Letter from Chicago: Part II. “Picasso and Chicago: the Fearless Pursuit of the Modern” Art Institute of Chicago, Feb 20 – May 12, 2013 http://www.artic.edu/exhibition/picasso-and-chicago By Cynthia Kukla I returned to Chicago for the April 19th symposium on Picasso1 organized for the “Picasso and Chicago” exhibition and seeing the exhibition again strengthens my already deep […]
April 21st, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
The Pits: Empire Falling: New Photographs by Elena Dorfman Phyllis Weston Gallery, March 29-May 11 By Jonathan Kamholtz From a distance, “Empire Falling #6” (the artist’s titles are not very helpful as aide-memoires or to help us focus on the picture’s issues) might be a colorized photograph taken by a long-gone intrepid nineteenth century archeological […]
April 21st, 2013 | by Christopher Hoeting | published in *, April 2013
Atlas Points By Chistopher Hoeting Cincinnati’s Emery once again opened its doors for the third consecutive year (under the leadership of The Requiem Project) with two shows this past weekend: Atlas Points—the visual arts component of Cincinnati’s MusicNow and FORTY/40—the Contemporary Dance Theatre’s 40th Anniversary celebration. These two significant events demonstrate The Requiem Project’s continued […]
March 21st, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
“The River Having A Strong Flow”: Storm—Watershed—Riverbank The 1913 Flood Dayton Art Institute, February 23-May 5, 2013 By Jonathan Kamholtz Associate Curator Jane A. Black has curated a trio of shows to commemorate the centennial of the flood of the Great Miami River. In March 1913, following a series of wet winter storms, the river […]
March 21st, 2013 | by Denise Burge | published in *, March 2013
Subtle Bodies Denise Burge “It’s not that I don’t care about content, but content is not the only way a photograph has meaning.”1 ~ James Welling The photographic work of James Welling is recognized for its pictorial elegance, and often described in terms that suggest the mystical. This sense arises from the viewer’s […]
March 21st, 2013 | by Louis Z. Bickett | published in *, March 2013
Restaurant Cell-Phone Photography by Louis Zoellar Bickett Restaurant cell-phone photography is so ubiquitous that the act of documenting public dining has become de rigueur. Photography in our lives and public places is everywhere and everyone is a photographer—and seemingly the quality of the photograph is becoming more and more insignificant with the production of […]
March 21st, 2013 | by Christopher Hoeting | published in *, March 2013
A Monumental Collection: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center By Christopher Hoeting Only when we recognize the historical patterns of isolation and accept the responsibility of supporting those artists who express themselves in a universal language of form will black American artists be seen as major contributors to the art of this century. – […]
March 21st, 2013 | by Regan Brown | published in *, March 2013
EAT YOUR IDYLLS! “The Art of Food” at the Carnegie through March 21, 2013. by Regan Brown “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” ―William Blake from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” “Let them eat cake!” ―a quote erroneously attributed to Marie Antoinette. “The fury and cruelty of the French mob […]
February 20th, 2013 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *
Letter from Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago: MCA DNA: William Kentridge by Cynthia M. Kukla The Drawing Center in New York featured the art work of William Kentridge in 1998, a year after he premiered at Documenta X, Kassel, Germany. The MCA-Chicago first presented the work of South African Kentridge in 2001 in his first […]
February 20th, 2013 | by Sheldon Tapley | published in *, February 2013
Gaela Erwin: My Mother, My Sister, Myself Lexington Art League January 12 – March 3, 2013 by Sheldon Tapley Know Yourself: An ancient maxim. We find it hard to understand, difficult to pursue, and perhaps impossible to fulfill. Philosophers have discussed the imperative for centuries. Socrates gave primacy to self-knowledge. Seeking it properly takes courage, […]
February 20th, 2013 | by Gideon Fink Shapiro | published in *, February 2013
Design Analysis: The Redesigned Schmidlapp Gallery and the museum as frame ~ Gideon Fink Shapiro Just as modern painting did away with the picture frame, modern art museums have typically downplayed their role as spatial frames. Increasingly neutral galleries suppressed architectural qualifications—color, texture, material, form, ornament—in a quest to make artworks immediately available to the […]
February 20th, 2013 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, February 2013
Magical Realism Editor’s Note: Deborah Morrissey-McGoff’s new paintings are included in a group show at The Miller Gallery in Hyde Park titled “Local Artists”. Aeqai is thus reprinting a feature that Editor Daniel Brown wrote for The Artist’s Magazine on Morrissey-McGoff’s paintings . www.artistsmagazine.com – September 2010 Influenced by Italian Renaissance masters and naïve painters, […]
February 20th, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Greg Storer at La Poste Eatery by Jonathan Kamholtz As you walk into the space where Greg Storer’s paintings are hanging, to your left are two small pictures of cars parked at a drive-in, their screens towering above mostly empty landscapes. One painting features a scene from The Godfather (1972) (“And That Day May Never Come”), […]
January 20th, 2013 | by Brett Baker | published in *, January 2013
Letter from New York: Inheritance and Potential ~ Brett Baker After an autumn spent in the studio and with less time for gallery-going, I have recently been reflecting on several surprising shows from the past summer. The more mainstream of these included Josef Albers’ painterly studies at the Morgan Library, rarely seen works by […]
January 20th, 2013 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Rituals and Enactments: The Self-Portraits of Anne Arden McDonald October 15, 2012 through February 22, 2013 Iris BookCafe and Gallery ~ Jonathan Kamholtz In Anne Arden McDonald’s “Self-Portrait #20, Utah, 1989” (her titles are generally not helpful or revealing), the artist depicts herself on her knees with a semicircle of lit candles in front of […]
January 20th, 2013 | by Kevin Ott | published in *, January 2013
The CAM: Time For A Dedicated Print Gallery? ~ Kevin Ott The Cincinnati Art Museum is nearing completion of the former Art Academy building which will house the Mary Schiff Library, offices and other spaces, including a beautiful terrace with outstanding views. Most importantly, this will result in an increase of 15,000 square feet or […]
January 20th, 2013 | by Stephen Slaughter | published in *, January 2013
“Osmosis” Blinded me with Science ~ Stephen Slaughter Biology Osmosis: A process by which molecules of a solvent tend to pass through a semipermeable membrane from a less concentrated solution into a more concentrated one, thus equalizing the concentrations on each side of the membrane. Physics The Pauli Exclusion Principle: The quantum mechanical principle that […]
January 20th, 2013 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
New Magic & Costume Shoppe: Paintings by Yohana Junker, Masks by David Earl Johnson, & Clown Costumes by Raymond Thunder-Sky, Thunder-Sky, Inc. ~Karen Chambers “New Magic & Costume Shoppe” is the title of the show at Thunder-Sky, Inc., featuring David Earl Johnson’s masks, Yohana Junker’s paintings, and Raymond Thunder-Sky’s clown costumes and drawings. Bill Ross, […]
December 19th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, December 2012
Keith Banner Welcome to the Hotel Synesthesia: 21C, Downtown Cincinnati By Keith Banner “If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland The day after 21C Cincinnati, the lush hotel/museum right next door to the Contemporary Art Center, opened, I went for a visit. […]
December 19th, 2012 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Landscapes of the Mind: Metaphor, Archetype, and Symbol: 1971-2012 October 5, 2012 through January 10, 2013 YWCA Women’s Art Gallery By Jonathan Kamholtz In Jane Alden Stevens’s “Windbreak Netting,” a mesh curtain hangs between us and the apples growing on a tree in Aomori Prefecture, Japan. The curtain protects the apples, but also serves to […]
December 19th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
Review, Collector’s Art Group Holiday Show By Jane Durrell A cheerful holiday exhibition lines the walls at Collector’s Art Group, second floor at 225 Sixth Street, downtown, conveying all sorts of interesting ideas without a Santa Claus to be seen. That is to say, this annual holiday show is a gathering of the work of […]
December 19th, 2012 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in *, December 2012
Shinji Turner-Yamamoto on the Nature of Things By Laura P. Yoo Cincinnati is no stranger to the work of internationally recognized artist Shinji Turner-Yamamoto. He marveled viewers with his site-specific Hanging Garden installation (part of his larger Global Tree Project) at the Holy Cross Church in Mt. Adams in 2010. Developing site-specific work is Turner-Yamamoto’s […]
December 19th, 2012 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, December 2012
End of the Year Best Fiction of 2012 Although The New York Times Books Review’s editors found 2012 to be an exceptionally exciting year for new fiction, I found the opposite to be the case: 2012 was one of the weakest years , overall, for new fiction in over a decade. Of course, good and some […]
November 19th, 2012 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Cole Carothers’s Outdoor and Indoor Light By Jonathan Kamholtz If you go to “Building Sight(s),” Cole Carothers’s new exhibit at the 5Th Street Gallery, looking forward to seeing works in the artist’s traditional look, you may be disappointed. For more than three decades, Carothers has produced paintings that explore the continuities and discontinuities of space. Built […]
November 19th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, November 2012
Toy Stories: “Altered States” at Miller Gallery By Keith Banner The paintings in “Altered States: New Paintings by Rob Jefferson and Jonathan Queen” (currently up on the walls at Miller Gallery in Hyde Park through November 23, 2012) are beautifully executed works that exemplify eerie perfection. The show is one of the best I’ve seen […]
November 19th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in *, November 2012
LITHO AT ITS LIVELIEST: Toulouse-Lautrec and the Spectacles of Paris at the Cincinnati Art Museum October 13, 2012 -January 13, 2013 by Fran Watson My first visit to Montmartre was not the flamboyant, sin-drenched, total artistic emersion of which I had dreamed. It turned out to be a touristy square filled with prosaic artists producing […]
November 19th, 2012 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in *, November 2012
“Performative Self-Portraits”: BODY/OBJECTS at the Carl Solway Gallery By Laura A. Partridge BODY/OBJECTS is one of three FOTOFOCUS exhibitions currently on view at the Carl Solway Gallery. It features the work of 10 photographers, including: Cindy Sherman, Anita Douthat, Sarah Charlesworth, John Coplans, Ann Hamilton, Suzy Lake, Laurel Nakadate, Amanda Means, Cynthia Greg and Hannah […]
November 19th, 2012 | by Stephen Slaughter | published in *, November 2012
Chocolat: Drip, Drizzle, Lick By Stephen Slaughter Eileen Southern in The Music of Black American wrote; “On the way to the cemetery it was customary to play very slowly and mournfully a dirge, or an ‘old Negro spiritual’ such as ‘Nearer My God to Thee,’ but on the return from the cemetery, the band would […]
September 15th, 2012 | by Jonathan Kamholtz | published in *
Editor’s Note: Aeqai is pleased to announce to our readers that long-time critic and collector Jon Kamholtz has joined aeqai as a regular critic. Kamholtz teaches in the English Deparment at The University of Cincinnati, and begins with our September issue by selecting a painting from the permanent collection of the Cincinnati Art Museum for […]
September 15th, 2012 | by Jay Zumeta | published in *, September 2012
The ancient Greeks were the pioneers in establishing the fundamentals of many areas of human inquiry. They were the first to write history in an analytical sense. Likewise, in philosophy, mathematics, and science the Greeks believed that human intelligence could explain the unknown. Plato and Aristotle created the first and most important viewpoints on aesthetics. […]
September 15th, 2012 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, September 2012
Editor’s note: Since this is the 50th anniversary of Marilyn Monroe’s death, and since her fame continues to grow ( a new twist includes some feminist writers claiming her as one of theirs ex post facto), aeqai is reprinting an article I wrote in 2004 and was picked up by Weston (Conn.) Monthly, where the […]
September 15th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
Size matters. Seeing Jonathan Queen’s mural, “Fresh Harvest,” on Kroger’s corporate headquarters downtown in reproduction is nothing like standing in front of it. (It’s visible from Walnut and Central Parkway.) Queen, who is represented by Miller Gallery, is primarily known for his small-scale still life paintings. When asked to submit a design for the commission, […]
September 15th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
It’s probably inaccurate to call Walt Burton a gadfly, even though a run-down of his career might suggest that. He’s been a photographer, a dealer in historic photographs, a teacher, a guest lecturer, non prescription cialis from canada produced books (two of them autobiographical) and now, after two strokes and a heart attack, is making […]
July 29th, 2012 | by Regan Brown | published in *, Summer 2012
By: Regan Brown Photographs courtesy of Weston Gallery “. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and […]
July 29th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
By: Jane Durrell Imagine a cocktail party where everyone knows everyone else and the conversation never stops. That’s Carl Solway Gallery’s 50th Anniversary exhibition. More than one generation are here, but the young ones know the old ones and refine upon or react against, just like in your neighborhood. Sixty-three artists are represented. An […]
July 29th, 2012 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, Summer 2012
By: Maria Seda-Reeder “Found in Translation: Work by Cynthia Gregory, Christian Schmit and Greg Swiger” at Semantics Gallery is the kind of show at which you can get lost. The mostly miniature/sculptural works are tiny assemblages of objects that range from meticulously crafted to purposefully undone. Diminutive paintings, drawings, furniture, and found objects round out a densely […]
July 29th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, Summer 2012
By: Keith Banner “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit,” currently on view through September 9, 2012 at the Cincinnati Art Museum, invokes the hush and grandeur of a nighttime cathedral with dark-toned walls and Midnight in Paris lighting, as if to set the stage for an upscale art-history coronation. Many of the paintings themselves give […]
July 29th, 2012 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, Summer 2012
By: Daniel Brown Uniting gestural abstraction and calligraphic mark making, Frank Satogata celebrates nature’s beautiful juxtapositions. TWO APPROACHES to the globalized art market, though widely different, have evolved on parallel tracks. On the one hand, there’s an internationalized art market predicated on our consumerist culture and the consequent adoration of and obsession with American […]
June 17th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, June 2012, On View
By: Keith Banner In “Funny Mirrors,” a three-person show at AEC Gallery in Covington, Kentucky, Billy Simms drains a clown’s life of all color and joy, creating a wall-novel out of wood-block relief prints that is both astoundingly sad and gleefully sinister. The way his bit of the show is hung, along a hallway at […]
June 17th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
By: Jane Durrell Bostonians with a penchant for French painting from the glory days might be disappointed if they stop by the Wadsworth Atheneum just now, for forty-five paintings from that collection are at the Taft Museum in Cincinnati in the exhibition Old Masters to Impressionists: Three Centuries of French Painting from the Wadsworth Atheneum. […]
June 17th, 2012 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, June 2012, On View
By: Maria Seda-Reeder The Zaha Hadid designed Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, with its intermittently soaring and squatting ceilings and massive concrete pillars, has been notoriously challenging for artists and curators alike. Fortunately, the two current exhibitions on the second floor, Jannis Varelas’ “Sleep My Sheep Sleep” and Francis Upritchard’s “A Long […]
June 17th, 2012 | by Regan Brown | published in *, June 2012, On View
By: Regan Brown Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner “The Valley of Understanding: Here we all choose a different way and different rules to disobey.” ― from The Conference of the Birds (منطق الطیر) by Peter Sís (adapted from Farid ud-Din Attar) [ 1 ] My first of several consecutively less disfigurative “windows” onto […]
June 17th, 2012 | by Dustin Pike | published in *, June 2012
By: Dustin Pike “The triad is the form of the completion of all things.” -Nichomachus, Pythagorean philosopher This is my third article pertaining to the design field and again it is necessary to distinguish between art and design. Design in essence cannot be accomplished without specific degrees of control, and almost always has a definitive point […]
May 17th, 2012 | by Selena Reder | published in *, May 2012, Profiles
Althea Thompson shapes generations of young artists at the School for Creative and Performing Arts On a rainy day in Over-the-Rhine I arrive at the school. It is an odd feeling pulling over on Central Parkway alongside parents dropping off children in front of this colossal feat of modern architecture. It is not the […]
May 17th, 2012 | by Amanda Dalla Villa Adams | published in *, May 2012
French sociologist Pierre Bordieu contended that all art functions as coded meaning for his study on art museums and their visitors in The Love of Art (1990). Differentiating between lower level of meanings – “superficial [and] fragmentary” – and higher level of meanings – which “incorporate and transform” – Bordieu maintained that both responses created […]
May 17th, 2012 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in *, May 2012
In the current exhibition of Land of Tomorrow, E.V. Day’s Pollinator Series features pink-purple grid-like projections of the flowers from Giverny onto etched glass. They were constructed using digital scans of original flower pressings. So too was Serkan Ozkaya’s David (inspired by Michelangelo), a giant gold-painted, fiberglass double-sized reproduction of Michelangelo’s David, recently acquired by […]
May 17th, 2012 | by Cynthia Kukla | published in *
Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective Art Institute of Chicago May 22 to September 3, 2012 “Whaam! Bratatat! Varoom! The Art Institute of Chicago explodes this summer with the energy of Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) in the largest exhibition of the seminal Pop artist to date. More than 160 of Lichtenstein’s works, from the familiar to the completely […]
May 17th, 2012 | by Daniel Brown | published in *, May 2012
Still life is the most problematic—and most abstract—of genres, as the paintings seem to lack the grandeur associated with landscapes or with figures that can assume allegorical or mythological-religious resonance. Because the objects depicted are taken from ordinary life, however, they intimately speak to our daily existence and to our interior lives. Sheldon Tapley revitalizes, […]
April 14th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in *, April 2012
With his new bronze sculpture, “Pinocchio (Emotional),” a scary-monster/sweetie-pie welcoming people outside the Cincinnati Art Museum, Jim Dine conjures a lot of pop-culture ghosts and nightmares while also paying homage to the original 1883 children’s novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The statue is imposing, and the glazed patina of it harkens back to Rodin. High […]
April 14th, 2012 | by Brett Baker | published in *, April 2012
This is the third in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York. Paintings shouldn’t simply be seen, they should change the viewer, suspend him or her in an altered moment. Although this is the hope each time a visitor enters a gallery, it is a rarity. A […]
April 14th, 2012 | by Emil Robinson | published in *, April 2012
Joseph Winterhalter’s show “The Revolution Says:” at Clay Street Press, presents a portrait of a contemporary American society lacking political will and stifled by emotional inertia. He presents two large paintings on canvas, a series of small sculptural paintings, a wall sculpture of hand made tiles, and some lithographic prints. When listed this way, the […]
April 14th, 2012 | by Regan Brown | published in *, April 2012
“The Bambi [Airstream model of 1960] is a machine for living and traveling, the sort of industrialized, rationalized vessel that had long been the dream object of modernist architects, from Le Corbusier to Buckminster Fuller.” – Christian Larsen, curatorial assistant, MOMA. [1] The aluminum-clad Airstream travel trailer conjures up a virtual cavalcade of nostalgic American archetypes, […]
April 14th, 2012 | by Sonja Rethy | published in *, April 2012
The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, home of the Skirball Museum, was established in Cincinnati in 1875, due primarily to the efforts of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, who was responsible for the organization of the College’s founding body, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. In the mid-1850s Wise moved to Cincinnati—a city which […]
March 18th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
Pleasing the crowd was not Monet’s aim in life, but after the Impressionists’ convention-flaunting beginnings had simmered into acceptance he had a following that allowed him to live a life style of his own choosing and to paint as he pleased. He had more or less always done the latter; the former had been chancy. […]
March 18th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in *
It took a while to fall under the spell of Alice Pixley Young’s solo exhibition, “Looking Glass,” at PAC Gallery, through April 14. This was not aided by the persistent and annoying high-pitched sound that emanated from “You are looking for something that no longer exists” tableau. I’m certain it was an attempt to transport […]
March 18th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in *, March 2012
WATERCOLORS TO BOOKS Sinton Gallery, Taft Museum of Art February 10 to April 15 2012 Even compared with our contemporary view of art, J.M.W. Turner was an extraordinary talent. Accepted at the Royal Academy in London at age 14, often deliberately irascible, flaunting his cockney background at hopeful moneyed patrons, and justifiably confident of […]
March 18th, 2012 | by Emil Robinson | published in *, March 2012
David Miretsky immigrated to the United Sates in 1975 after being jailed for the satirical and naturalistic content of his paintings in Kiev. Miretsky made Cincinnati his home and Phyllis Weston presented his first solo show at The Closson Gallery downtown. Miretsky is still tackling tough subjects these days, as a biting but often humorous […]
March 18th, 2012 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, March 2012
I visited the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art for the purpose of reviewing the music video exhibition, “Spectacle: The Music Video.” Although I was overwhelmed with the exhibition’s nostalgic content involving the history of the visual components related to music, what I found myself captivated by was the work of artist Dasha […]
February 18th, 2012 | by Chris Reeves | published in *, February 2012
Carl Solway Gallery’s John Cage: A Centennial with Friends celebrates Cage’s 100th birthday by presenting a comprehensive portrait of John Cage, the 20th Century composer, writer, visual artist, and teacher. Clippings, composition scores, diary entries, notes on mycology, and seldom seen visual art stuff an entire room of the gallery showcasing not only how incredibly […]
February 18th, 2012 | by Kathy Valin | published in *, February 2012
Editor’s Note: ÆQAI has invited contemporary dance critic and still occasional dancer/teacher Kathy Valin to write for us in an interdisciplinary fashion. Look for ÆQAI to do more of this kind of crossover writing. Maria Seda-Reeder’s review of the Nick Cave installation on all three floors of the Cincinnati Art Museum is featured in this […]
February 18th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in *, February 2012
Jim WillIams “Hybrid Structures” January 2012 – March 10, 2012 Featuring one of you college professors’ art in your own successful gallery long after graduation must be one of those daydreams of the undergrad, particularly when you have succeeded as an artist in your own right. Thus, the very happy combination of Jim Williams, U.C […]
February 18th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in *
In London, on the day I went to both exhibitions, it seemed that everyone who wasn’t at the National Gallery’s stunning Leonardo da Vinci: Painter at the Court of Milan had come to the Royal Academy for David Hockney’s knock-your-eye-out responses to the English landscape. Each show was at controlled maximum attendance but the crowds […]
