March 2019

Review: The Armory Show 2019

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, March 2019

Review: The Armory Show 2019

This year’s iteration of The Armory Show marked its 25th anniversary, placing a considerable amount of pressure on Director Nicole Berry to execute the event at the level stakeholders in the art world have come to expect. First launched in 1994 at the Gramercy Park Hotel, The Gramercy International Art Fair has morphed into New […]

The Womanist Movement: Bridging the Gap

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, March 2019

The Womanist Movement: Bridging the Gap

March is nationally celebrated as Women’s History Month. In keeping with its stated mission of eliminating racism and empowering women, the Greater Cincinnati YWCA has mounted an exhibition encompassing the expressive works of nine local women who examine their own attitudes of identity, entitlement and personal experiences of victimization. The exhibiting artists are: Yvonne van […]

From the “California Ideology” to Tiqqun’s “Total War:” Tracing net.art’s Archival Poetics

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, March 2019

From the “California Ideology” to Tiqqun’s “Total War:” Tracing net.art's Archival Poetics

As a researcher, theorist, and something of a contemporary continental philosophy-bent author in, my interests in new media theory, film studies, and comparative media are necessarily political, often siding with a turn towards “speculative realism,” Quentin Meillassoux’s “correlationism,” or François Laruelle’s “non-standard philosophy” at the expense of affect theory or those “poetics” that salvage media […]

“/just to be alive/ An Exhibition of the Contemporary Female Artist,” 1628 Ltd., through May 31, 2019

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

“/just to be alive/ An Exhibition of the Contemporary Female Artist,” 1628 Ltd., through May 31, 2019

I confess. I’m prejudiced against exhibitions of artists lumped together because of traits they can’t change (or only change with much effort), not aesthetics. That puts the focus on the maker not the art. You know what I’m talking about. We’ve just had back-to-back months of such presentations: Black History Month in February and Women’s […]

Artists Break Bans and Bridge Barriers in "Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video"

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Artists Break Bans and Bridge Barriers in "Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video"

Forty-two photographs and videos present a panoptic view of Persian youth culture in “Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video,” the third Iranian photography biennial at Craft Contemporary in Los Angeles. Sponsored primarily by Farhang Foundation, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Iranian art, this sweeping juried exhibition suggests that despite our respective governments’ […]

Letter from Oaxaca: The 18th Biennial of Painting Rufino Tamayo

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Letter from Oaxaca: The 18th Biennial of Painting Rufino Tamayo

I recently visited the city of Oaxaca, the capital of the State of Oaxaca, in Mexico and had the chance to view the 18th Biennial of Painting Rufino Tamayo at the Museum of Contemporary Arts of Oaxaca (MACO, Museo of Artes Contemporaneos de Oaxaca). Founded in 1982 by the internationally known Oaxacan artist, one of […]

Conspiratorial Aesthetics at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts: Why does so much new art look conspiratorial?

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Conspiratorial Aesthetics at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts: Why does so much new art look conspiratorial?

“Why does so much new art look conspiratorial?” In preparation for attending Conspiratorial Aesthetics at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts I read the curatorial statement. In it the curator, Christopher Reitz, asks the question above. And it’s all I can remember of the statement. Why does so much new art look conspiratorial? Why does […]

Inverting Vulgarity: Harmony Korine’s Florida Films, “Young Twitchy,” and Hauntology

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Inverting Vulgarity: Harmony Korine’s Florida Films, “Young Twitchy,” and Hauntology

Harmony Korine’s second show at Gagosian Madison in the last six months, closely following “Blockbuster” (which ran from September – October, 2018), “Young Twitchy” (showing from March 14 – April 20, 2019) is a step in both a more formal painterly order and, arguably, in a direction that runs parallel to Korine’s recent filmic interest […]

“Appreciating Our Past and Present Surroundings”

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

“Appreciating Our Past and Present Surroundings”

As a city that is 231 years old, Cincinnati has enjoyed numerous buildings of various styles, some of which fortunately still have survived. An exhibition at the Downtown Cincinnati Public Library entitled “Cincinnati Historic Architecture: An Overview of 150 Years of Architectural Styles” will be on-view until April 28 and is worth visiting to appreciate […]

Fotofolio: Sunjoo Lee

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Fotofolio: Sunjoo Lee

“Memorabilia 3” Sunjoo’s statement: I started collecting wrapping papers during my travels around the world. I visited gift shops, and I was taken away by the wrapping papers’ vivid and playful statements. At first, I purchased them on a whim and in fleeting moments, but over time, I became more mindful of each unique sheet […]

Ron Isaacs at Manifest Gallery

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Ron Isaacs at Manifest Gallery

The impact of Ron Isaacs’ paintings is greater than their subdued colors and modest dimensions. At first impression, the viewer is taken by an effortless technique which does not reveal its construction, which is straightforward nonetheless. Over the past four decades Ron Isaacs has developed his means and methods to arrive at a workflow uniquely […]

Clint Woods – PRACTICE March 4- April 25, Park National Bank Gallery, UC Clermont College

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Clint Woods - PRACTICE  March 4- April 25, Park National Bank Gallery, UC Clermont College

There is a strong sense of the sacred in the work of Clint Woods.  His own words offer the work as “employing a triggering device – a call to seek and reflect; that makes conscious what has been buried in the unconscious, drawing the viewer into awareness.”   Through images and form he shares with others […]

Bill Davis No Dark in Sight: Light and the Night It Transforms

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Bill Davis No Dark in Sight: Light and the Night It Transforms

  “Featuring a new body of work by Bill Davis, Associate Professor and Area Co-Coordinator of Photography and Intermedia, the exhibition No Dark in Sight examines light pollution in such locations as Kalamazoo, MI, Las Vegas, NV, and Machu Picchu in Peru. Pointedly questioning our social and physiological relationship to artificial light, Davis’ work considers how synthetic lighting affects […]

Art Design Consultants, Inc.

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

Art Design Consultants, Inc.

Fine art abounds at Art Design Consultants, Inc., owned and managed by Litsa Spanos for over twenty-five years. It is now located at 310 Culvert Street, originally an old warehouse, in downtown Cincinnati, where she has many clients.  Her art for sale includes paintings, sculpture, mixed media, glass and photography. She originally had just two […]

Khaled Khalifa’s “Death is Hard Work”

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

A new voice in fiction, at least for Americans, is that of Syrian writer Khaled Khalifa, whose new novel, “Death is Hard Work”, is both grimly humorous and deadly serious concurrently. Khalifa, who is still living in Damascus, sets this new novel right in the middle of the Syrian civil war.  Three siblings, all grown […]

Elizabeth McCracken’s “Bowlaway”

March 31st, 2019  |  by  |  published in March 2019

“Bowlaway”, by the hugely gifted novelist Elizabeth McCracken, is currently my Number l best novel of 2019 to date. Part fairy tale, part realism, “Bowlaway” exists in a world so finely delineated and created, and walks such a fine line between various genres, that you’ll be astonished at how quickly it seduces you and moves […]