March 2018

An Interrogation of Abstract Markings: Hans Hartung’s Recent Survey at Perrotin, New York

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in *, March 2018

An Interrogation of Abstract Markings:  Hans Hartung’s Recent Survey at Perrotin, New York

Perrotin’s opening exhibition in New York for 2018, Hans Hartung: A Constant Storm. Works from 1922 to 1989, featured a retrospective assessment of one of the pioneers of Lyrical Abstraction in Europe, including over 60 major works. This exhibition—which was on view from January 12 until February 18—marked the most extensive presentation of the artist’s […]

Stephen Towns Quilts at The Baltimore Museum of Ar

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in *, March 2018

Stephen Towns Quilts at The Baltimore Museum of Ar

Two of the Stephen Towns’ gorgeous quilt pieces hang in an abbreviated hallway of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Rumination and Reckoning, the Baltimore artist’s debut solo museum show, is an intimate collection of his quilts from a recent, breakthrough body of fabric works, including a few new, unseen pieces. Two of these new works […]

Historical Materialism and Survey: Malcolm Cochran’s History Lessons

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in *, March 2018

Historical Materialism and Survey: Malcolm Cochran’s History Lessons

The Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center features three works by American installation artist Malcolm Cochran: History Lessons (2011), Requiem (2018), and Washing Feet (1996-97).  History Lessons features a looming fixture – a colossal poplar, steel, and polished whitewash stainless steel mirror. The base of the mirrors’ bracket is reminiscent of a sleek vessel, […]

Our Internets, Our Selves: Looking Beyond Branding in Boston’s “Art + Tech”

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Our Internets, Our Selves: Looking Beyond Branding in Boston’s “Art + Tech”

If I’m being cyncial, Boston’s inferiority complex as a“top U.S. innovation city” is why we have a city-wide partnership between 14 museums and galleries called “Art + Tech. ” Why not, when the theme is so wide-ranging and marketable, a chic outlet for the bursting brain trust we want to show the world? We’re the […]

The Pull of Exquisite Genius:  Michelangelo at the Met

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

The Pull of Exquisite Genius:  Michelangelo at the Met

“Five hundred years seem to melt away in looking at his art.”1 Over and over again, critics in the United States and elsewhere referred to this magnificent exhibition as a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity and they were absolutely correct. The exhibition opened in November to great fanfare and concluded with continuous packed gallery attendance as the exhibit drew […]

Critical Mass II // Critical Discourse and Engagement in Kentucky

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Critical Mass II was the second in a series of panel discussions around various urban centers within Kentucky. This particular installment was arranged by the Kentucky Museum of Art & Craft, in collaboration with UnderMain, Inc. and arranged in partnership with the The Great Meadows Foundation. This panel discussion focused on critical thinking in the […]

Matthew Metzger: Traversing the Meditative and Experiential

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Matthew Metzger: Traversing the Meditative and Experiential

  Matthew Metzger’s contemporary interpretations of Chinese painting and its intentions allocate space and dimensionality through shifting and changing perspectives, which qualitatively empower the young painter’s  “seeing” entirely. Metzger’s paintings, on view from March 15th – April 28th, 2018 at The Miller Gallery in Cincinnati deliberately question the point of view re: shifting perspectives. They […]

Karen Hochman Brown Shows Us the Beauty of Math in “Botanic Geometry”

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Karen Hochman Brown Shows Us the Beauty of Math in “Botanic Geometry”

  “Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Karen Hochman Brown’s series, “Botanic Geometry,” is a vivid collection of digitally manipulated […]

As in the Mirror: Self-Portraits by Ellina Chetverikova at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

As in the Mirror: Self-Portraits by Ellina Chetverikova at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center

In her thought-provoking show at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center Ellina Chetverikova, who immigrated to the United States from Ukraine to continue her study of art, offers sixteen self-portraits.  The largest is 10X12; many are much smaller.  The considerable power of the show derives from the cumulative effect of a woman looking at herself repeatedly, […]

Conversation on Another Ground

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Conversation on Another Ground

Not Gallery  is an artist-run space in East Austin presided over by Alex Diamond. since 2014. The gallery is located in a warehouse industrial garage, part of a row of segmented spaces all outfitted with large garage bay doors. The complex is home to several other galleries and artist studios including ATM Gallery and February […]

Celebrating the Afterlife With Ed Moses Amid Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Celebrating the Afterlife With Ed Moses Amid Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins

On January 6 in Los Angeles, Ernie Wolfe Gallery opened a show titled “Eddie M and the FAVs,” featuring Ed Moses’ paintings alongside elaborate Ghanaian coffins which the proprietor calls “fantastic afterlife vehicles (FAVs).” Eleven days later, Moses died of natural causes. It seems eerily opportune that this show’s opening was the last public outing […]

Marcos Novak: Transarchitecture and Traversing Augmented Reality

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Marcos Novak: Transarchitecture and Traversing Augmented Reality

  Truly a multifaceted artist whose new media processes and technologies wed organic forms with intermedia landscapes, artist Marcos Novak, born in 1957 in Caracas, Venezuela, eruditely explores architecture and industrial design in his installation artwork. During his career as a researcher at Austin University in Texas, Novak began focusing on the relationship between information […]

Dancing while the house burns down: “Jack &” a performance

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Dancing while the house burns down: "Jack &" a performance

Jack & centers around the experience of one man. Jack. His story is unique. He is a baker working the night shift at an industrial facility. He is reintegrating into society after time spent in prison — relearning how to exist in the outside world. He is smart, thoughtful and inquisitive. Jack’s story is also […]

Letter from Lebanon: “The Portrait as It Speaks”

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Letter from Lebanon: "The Portrait as It Speaks"

“The face is a living presence; it is expression… The face speaks,” writes the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in his book Totality and Infinity. The face speaks of the “other” that it represents, to the “encounterer” who meets it, but also to the artist who depicts it in his/her portraiture artwork and to the viewer […]

FIRST JUDGMENT

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

FIRST JUDGMENT

Exhibition by Fukui formative abstract artist Tatsuya Tatsuta at National Art Center Tokyo. New Artist Unit, February 4-19, 2018.   “You can’t go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy’s time,” preached Hazel Motes upon his rat-colored Essex, “nor your children’s if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.” […]

'Hassard & Steele: Concrete Dreams" at the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

'Hassard & Steele: Concrete Dreams" at the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum

“Geometry is like music,” artist Marlene Steele recently told a group of high school students, gathered around an exhibition of her work at the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum. The students looked surprised but interested. “Drawing is a basic artist skill,” she went on, and showed them her sketch book.  It is small, perhaps six by […]

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: A Trip to the Past with Hope for the Future

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

National Underground Railroad Freedom Center:  A Trip to the Past with Hope for the Future

On the Cincinnati banks of the Ohio River sits the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a museum commemorating historic events of three decades prior to the Civil War.  Slaves crossed the river to freedom from Kentucky.  Cincinnati is where the Underground Railroad originated.  Many people consider the center’s existence controversial. It also features an education […]

Playing Footsie – Hot and Cold Site Negotiations with F. C. Cincinnati

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

In recent months, Cincinnatians have been witnessing discussions about Futbol Club Cincinnati’s (F.C. Cincinnati) interest in building a new soccer stadium at one of three sites: the West End (near Downtown); Oakley’s Cast-Fab site near I-71; Newport, Kentucky (“Ovation” site at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers).  This $200-250 million project will be […]

Review of Works at Tashiro-Kaplan Building in downtown Seattle

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Review of Works at Tashiro-Kaplan Building in downtown Seattle

The Tashiro-Kaplan Building in downtown Seattle houses a variety of artist-run galleries and artist residences. 4Culture anchors a corner of the building, providing experimental gallery space and other artist services. This month, Kathryn Thibault’s installation “The Encroaching Field” leads the viewer into and through the space following the meticulously handcut vellum and other components, all […]

Heuck Retrospective at the Greenwich House Gallery

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Heuck Retrospective at the Greenwich House Gallery

Cincinnatian Roger William Heuck descends from a family with an impressive artistic heritage.  He is the great grand nephew of John Henry Twachtman on his mother’s side and on his father’s side is Edward Eisenlohr, who painted in Texas.  His painting career began with his studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and was encouraged […]

Rachel Hellerich’s Present Phase at New Haven Artspace April 6-28

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Rachel Hellerich’s Present Phase at New Haven Artspace April 6-28

When I saw Rachel Hellerich’s paintings for the first time online I was mesmerized by the combination of styles. To find so many of my personal tastes intersecting neatly felt uncanny. I could see the tropes heavily laid in the landscapes of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts. I could identify the plastic oscillation of Victor Vasarely. Each […]

Sweet Dreams // Sheherazade // Louisville KY

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Sweet Dreams // Sheherazade // Louisville KY

“I’m always looking for relationships between my existence and total existence, connections between here and elsewhere”. -Mariko Mori Yoko Molotov is recognized locally as a rather prolific artist whose confessional, dystopian, and gender-fluid drawings are a recognizable feature of Louisville’s online landscape. Typically pulling from irony, humor, horror, and kawaii, Molotov typically creates cartoonish narratives […]

Ruby Namdar’s “The Ruined House”

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Ruby Namdar is an Iranian-born Jew now living in Israel, and his new novel “The Ruined House” is one of the most fascinating and intelligent novels around, brilliantly researched and with fascinating spiritual-psychological implications that seem unusually relevant for today’s postmodern, postreligious, materialist culture. Ones hears a great deal around town these days about the […]

Jamie Quatro’s “Fire Sermon”

March 31st, 2018  |  by  |  published in March 2018

Jamie Quatro (who is a woman) is fast becoming one of America’s most impressive and accomplished younger writers, nearly in a league with such already greats as Jennifer Egan, Rachel Kushner, Nicole Krauss. Quatro’s  short stories, “I Want to Show You More”, were some of the most impressive when published about two years ago, and […]