September 15th, 2012 | by Stephen Slaughter | published in On View, September 2012
Last Saturday I was fortunate enough to have plans, and luckier still those plans included attending a multi media event at Third Party Gallery in Cincinnati’s West End. The performance was the zenith of the annual art exhibition Autumedia, a show held, in part, at Semantics Gallery, featuring local sound and video artists whose current [...]
September 15th, 2012 | by Shawn Daniell | published in On View, September 2012
Take a stroll down the main drag of Historical Rabbit Hash, Kentucky and you never know what you may find, whether it is motorcyclists, hippies, artists, musicians or a local relaxing on the porch of the general store. Recently, on a late summer day my fiancée and I decided to take an afternoon adventure on [...]
September 15th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in On View, September 2012
“Shape to Shape” Paintings and sculpture by Stuart Fink Brazee Street studios, 4426 Brazee Street in Oakley Reception: September 14, 6-9 p.m. Showing through September 21 I was a bit confused at first glimpse of Stuart Fink’s current show at Gallery One One at Brazee Street studios. His name is so well known in the [...]
September 15th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View, September 2012
I first encountered Katie Swartz’s work in “All the Usual Suspects” at Thompson House Shooting Gallery (see aeqai.com, July 2012). She showed three crocheted animals: “Bartholomew,” 2010, an 11” tall, cuddly bear, and two friendly octopi: “Mario,” 11” tall, and “Myron,” 9” tall, both 2011. In that review, I placed her work in the context [...]
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 *, June 2012, On View
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 Fran Watson | published in June 2012, On View
By: Fran Watson Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner This may be prejudice, but print shows are always elegant to me. It might be the stark, bravado of good line on fine paper, or the iteration of symbols, or even the sinuous curls and aggressive exclamations of straight lines reminiscent of the waning popularity of [...]
June 17th, 2012 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in June 2012, On View
By: Laura A. Partridge In its history, Cincinnati has managed to accumulate a number of hidden gems. The Lloyd Library is one of them. The Lloyd is a private library that was incorporated in the late 1800s, and is located at Plum and Court streets. The collection has lived in a few different spaces as [...]
June 17th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in June 2012, On View
By: Karen S. Chambers When you walk into Suzanne Fisher’s exhibition at The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center (one of six shows presented under the rubric “Full of Color”), you enter a world of wonder. In fact, if Fisher had given her show its own title, it would have been “Natural Wonders.” At the [...]
June 17th, 2012 | by Amanda Dalla Villa Adams | published in June 2012, On View
By: Amanda Dalla Villa Adams Photographs courtesy of Eric R Greiner Faced with the end of modernism, art historian Hal Foster attempted to define the role of the critic within post-modern art in “Re: Post” (1982). Ultimately, he suggested that postmodernism allows art to go “beyond the limits of critique,” because there is no longer [...]
June 17th, 2012 | by Marlene Steele | published in June 2012, On View
By: Marlene Steele Drawing, the tool of observation and investigation employed by artists even in this technological time of electronic gadgetry, is as diversified as the number of individuals wrestling with its control. It is a fascinating opportunity to observe how another navigates their drawing process. This is insightful particularly when the exhibited work, so tidy [...]
May 17th, 2012 | by Cole Carothers | published in May 2012, On View
The Bible tells the story of Adam and Eve (mankind) expelled from the Garden of Eden for picking fruit from the tree of knowledge. Katie St. Clairʼs, The Hierarchy of Living Things gives us little comfort in whatever knowledge we have gleaned from that singular fruit. Here, naked as the day she was born, a [...]
May 17th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in May 2012, On View
In the exhibition “Ohio to the White House,” appropriately at the Taft Museum of Art, Matthew Albritton has documented the birthplaces and boyhood homes of the seven Ohio-born presidents. Their terms account for half of presidential service between 1869 and 1923. During that time only three presidents hailed from outside the Buckeye state. Albritton’s lush [...]
May 17th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in May 2012, On View
Layered Abstractions at AEC April 13 thru May 11 Abstract they are; some more than others. Yet sculpture by Robert Pulley, palette knife paintings by Trish Weeks, and painted comments on humanity by Paige Williams, were pulled together by the common, if tenuous, thread of nature. Robert Pulley has spent decades in sculpture. With a true [...]
May 17th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in May 2012, On View
“Dance?” asks one of a pair of figures in a collaborative painting by the two artists in Thunder-Sky Gallery’s current exhibition, Reverse Psychology. “Sorry, not my type,” answers the other. The two inhabit a dreamy, fragmented setting; the pop-star-like woman wears a beehive hairdo, a polka dot dress and a prosthetic arm and the man [...]
May 17th, 2012 | by Larry Watson | published in May 2012, On View
Dichotomy and paradox often create the tension in representational artwork, taking us beyond the visual depictions in the work and tapping into our visceral connections. And so it is with the exhibit “Diaspora/Miasma” on exhibit at Marta Hewett Gallery March 30 through May 19th. Both Kevin Veara and Eoin Breadon have brought us to awareness [...]
April 14th, 2012 | by Brad McCombs | published in April 2012, On View
A vivid group of photographs by Brad Austin Smith are on display at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery through June 3, 2012. At the heart of this exhibition is a raw look at the Queen City, its suburbs and American culture. Playful and striking photographs coalesce around a common viewpoint of [...]
April 14th, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in April 2012, On View
Ah, the creative mind! It changes our vision, our perceptions, our world, using the vastness of the unnoticed, mundane material of our daily lives. Like thread, a single one of which is so ordinary, so small, so inconsequential, that it is seldom acknowledged in any but a practical way: sewing a button on, mending a [...]
April 14th, 2012 | by Amanda Dalla Villa Adams | published in April 2012, On View
Admittedly, authenticity is a word I know well. As a specialist at a local auction house, I am often asked to verify a work of art. Usually, I consult a variety of resources and other experts who help to conclusively argue for or against the veracity of an object. The most difficult items often get [...]
April 14th, 2012 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in April 2012, On View
Spring is a time to enjoy the outdoors, and for this, one of the heartland’s leading cultural institutions, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), is a destination. Even if you never enter the museum itself, it’s worth the trip. In 2010, the IMA opened their 100 Acres: Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park. 100 [...]
April 14th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in April 2012, On View
Mark Daly’s engaging paintings line every wall at Cincinnati Art Galleries, treating of pleasurable aspects of life at the seaside, in New York City, on Nantucket, and points as far away as Venice. The show’s subtitle, “The Musician’s Paintbrush,” refers to Daly’s playing a mean mandolin, sometimes on Fountain Square, but overlooks his ongoing business [...]
March 18th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in March 2012, On View
The mystery in Jennifer Purdum’s paintings and drawings is flagrantly upfront, like a joke with a disturbing punch-line that really has nothing to do with the joke outside of being connected to it. In many of the pictures in “Inside/Out: Drawings and Paintings by Jennifer Purdum” now on display at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center [...]
March 18th, 2012 | by Jane Durrell | published in March 2012, On View
A quick first take on Sara Pearce’s Expecting to Fly at 5th Street Gallery downtown shows her a words person as well as a visual artist. And no wonder; words were her trade during her Cincinnati Enquirer years, when she reported on restaurants, books, sometimes visual arts, and was a features editor. What collages require, [...]
March 18th, 2012 | by Shawn Daniell | published in March 2012, On View
George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” Food keeps us alive. It nourishes the body and keeps us growing healthy and strong. But food also serves as fuel for the artistic soul. That idea was embraced by the Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center in Covington, Kentucky [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by Karen Chambers | published in February 2012, On View
“Through the Windshield OTR: Recent Photographs by Jens Rosenkrantz, Jr.,” pretty much describes what’s on view at PAC Gallery, which is now open only by appointment. Rosenkrantz has photographed the grotty Over the Rhine neighborhood in the rain through a car windshield. But instead of being gray and depressing, these photos are bright and upbeat. [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in February 2012, On View
The Land of Tomorrow in Louisville collaborated with Country Club to curate a broad show of many different artists, many of whom are well-known in Cincinnati (such as Aaron Morse and Jimmy Baker). Only certain artists were given their own individual rooms (The Land of Tomorrow’s group), and are my focus here: Taylor Baldwin, Lisa [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by Keith Banner | published in February 2012, On View
Romantic and cinematic, the prints and collages in the retrospective “Impressions and Improvisations: The Prints of Romare Bearden,” (on display at the Taft Museum of Art through April 29, 2012) have a home-brewed flair matched with an aesthete’s precision. In each piece, Bearden seems to devote all his time and attention to grasping at the [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in February 2012, On View
Currently on view at AISLE in the West End, Fiends is a two-person show featuring works by veteran collagist Michael Scheurer and newcomer Lizzy Renschler. If you’ve been paying even a modicum of attention, it should be clear to you by now that Scheurer has become a hot property. In the past year the artist’s [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by Shawn Daniell | published in February 2012, On View
The Ghost Empire Collective, an all male artist collective from Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky, began their first gallery season with Die Cupid Die at The Famous Neons Unplugged. The core idea behind the Ghost Empire Collective, recently formed in late 2011, is to bring art to audiences in non-traditional art spaces such as restaurants and [...]
February 18th, 2012 | by Daniel O'Connor | published in February 2012, On View
“A Retelling,” the curatorial work of Katie Rentzke, at Covington’s Artisan Enterprise Center, exhibits three related bodies of work by Brian Harmon, Billy Renkl and McCrystle Wood. Through photographic installation, collage and computer generated prints, each of the artists poised in his or her respective medium, ambiguously addresses the idea of “retelling,” individually and collectively. [...]
January 23rd, 2012 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in January 2012, On View
The B. Deemer Gallery in Louisville presents a partial retrospective of the work of artist and educator Robert Knipschild (1927-2004). Paintings include works dating from the 1960s (a little over a decade after he was selected for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s renowned exhibition “American Painting Today”) through the 1990s. His style in this extensive [...]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Fran Watson | published in January 2012, On View
The Marta Hewitt Gallery always looks fresh. There’s something about the bling effect of glass and the space implied and manipulated by that medium. But Hewitt is taking this a giant step forward, lately, pulling in less famous, but equally good artists in other mediums. Currently three multi-dimensional artists, dealing in work-intensive materials are well [...]
January 23rd, 2012 | by Dustin Pike | published in January 2012, On View
The idea of “abstraction” in art has always held a definitive place in my heart ever since I began noticing my love for creative expression. Not only is the idea typically misunderstood by most audiences, it seems to be so because it denies certain concrete realities and meanings we hold dear. Ironically, abstraction seems to [...]
December 16th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in December 2011, On View
Pablo Picasso would not be the only mercurial, misogynistic, egotistic, super- salesman who chose art (or art chose him) as a means of locomotion. The type abounds in this most rarified of all careers in this equally rarified era, most notably epitomized by Duchamp and Man Ray, masters of shock art, but he is the [...]
December 15th, 2011 | by Chris Reeves | published in December 2011, On View
Phase One: Screen Test is the first exhibition/”phase” of an ambitious three part series entitled Is This Thing On? at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. According to the press release, Phase One: Screen Test “traces the history of performance video, showcasing the changing role of technology and new media trends”. The exhibition consists of [...]
December 15th, 2011 | by Emil Robinson | published in December 2011, Features, On View
As an artist ages, he or she becomes increasingly sensitive to the world and more uncertain of how to proceed. As the artist grows wiser, he or she must make the decision to continue groping for the elusive threads of memory and the constant uncertainty of personal experience. It is important for the work that [...]
December 15th, 2011 | by Dustin Pike | published in December 2011, On View
With all of the excess stuff floating around, most specifically in North America, it is hopeful to know that some artists are not letting everything go to waste. A New Reality at the Artisan’s Enterprise Center Gallery features 3 artists who are crafting superb works of art from what most people would end up throwing [...]
December 15th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in December 2011, On View
Most longtime residents of Cincinnati know that the city has a strong Jewish tradition. But did you know that it’s considered an historic center for Reform Judaism? It is, and has been for more than a century. In 1875 Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise founded the Hebrew Union College which, after merging with the Jewish Institute [...]
November 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in November 2011, On View
The wall text for Julião Sarmento’s exhibit (closing January 22, 2012) at the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art promises an exhibit built on “the concept of the book as an aesthetic and visceral object.” It goes on to report that many of Sarmento’s drawings exemplify the “sensuous gesture of holding a book.” [...]
November 15th, 2011 | by Dustin Pike | published in November 2011, On View
To quote Alan Watts, a much wiser man than I, “A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.” Walking through the hall of the new Canco Gallery space in Northside, I got the feeling I was entering someone’s intrapersonal mindscape, filled with its fair share [...]
November 15th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in November 2011, On View
George Inness, as currently featured at the Taft Museum of Art through January 8, 2012, was not yet the master of a united nature concept when these early paintings were completed. Often noted as the most influential artist in the development of American Impressionism, that title would have been angrily denied by him, had he [...]
November 15th, 2011 | by Larry Watson | published in November 2011, On View
Though hardly indicative of the full breadth of contemporary craft art, the diversity of work presented in the “The Artist’s Craft” exhibit at The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center is a window into the ability of artists to use traditional materials to create surprising compositions that challenge, and resonate with, the viewers sensibilities. Arturo [...]
October 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in *, October 2011, On View
Like doodles scribbled on the edges of homework, Peter Saul’s exquisitely moronic pictures (on display mostly in lithographic form at Carl Solway Gallery through December 22, 2011) have a rote yet somehow ominous quality, a blurry merger of the popular and profane. While seeming to be birthed from boredom and cynicism like punk rock, they [...]
October 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *, October 2011, On View
“Speed Trials” was an essay commissioned for the catalog accompanying the exhibition “Trial by Fire: New Glass Work by Darren Goodman” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (CAM). Goodman was selected by the 4th Floor, an associated group of the Museum, for its biennial 4th Floor Award, a competition to promote local artists. The organization is [...]
October 15th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in *, October 2011, On View
Currently on display at the Miller Gallery on Hyde Park Square, is an exhibition featuring 25 artists whose work offers outstanding examples of contemporary realist painting. A movement towards figurative painting among artists has accelerated in the past five to eight years. Whether artists are painting portraits, interiors or still lifes, the work is incredibly [...]
October 15th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in October 2011, On View
Once I thought of Bessie Wessel with some pity, a victim of her times, when women were permitted to study, but not to enjoy a full, satisfying career. Men, like Bessie’s husband, Herman, would pursue success in the world, while the ladies, God bless ‘em, tended the comforts that would enable the men to fight [...]
September 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in *, On View, September 2011
The paintings that mark a gradual return to across-the-board contemporary art at Marta Hewett Gallery, where glass objects have held the floor, are themselves almost glass-like. Jason Zickler’s labor-intensive works with their dense layers of clear, cured resin and paint gleam in a celebration of colorfor its own sake but hold in their depths delineations [...]
September 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, On View, September 2011
“We’re the reflections of our ancestors / we’d like to thank you for the building blocks you left us / ‘cause your spirit possessed us” – Talib Kweli, “Africa Dream” Emily Hanako Momohara’s current exhibition at PAC Gallery, “Islands,” consists of fifteen archival pigment prints on rich Somerset Velvet paper. The exhibition is a [...]
September 15th, 2011 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in *, On View, September 2011
Third Party Gallery opened its first exhibition with a group show (the curator isn’t listed, but I assume it was Wyatt Niehaus, one of the co-founders) called Reductio ad Absurdum. According to the press release, the curator claims that its artists have “composed a dialogue between their work and a preexisting ideology, convention or concept [...]
September 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *, On View, September 2011
![Still[ed] Life: Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis](http://aeqai.com/main/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/4-PARKER-Bust-Sevres-150x150.jpg)
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it can also be a sincere source of creativity. That tenet is confirmed by “Still[ed] Life: Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis” at the Taft Museum of Art. In collaboration these two area artists (Parker is an assistant professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of [...]
September 15th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in *, On View, September 2011
Manifest Gallery’s “3rd Annual NUDE” international competition showing through September 9, offers more than the vast undulating landscape of skin to be considered. The subjects have been folded, stretched, posed and exposed in every manner from hypnotic fragility, as in Bain Butcher’s “Untitled” graphite rendering of a young woman, to the Diebenkorn-ish palette knife interiors [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in *, On View, Summer 2011
“Not Just Pretty Pictures: The Carl M. Jacobs III Collection” at the Cincinnati Art Museum “I am at war with the obvious,” Photographer William Eggleston once said when asked about his work. I have a feeling Carl M. Jacobs III, the collector the exhibit [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, On View, Summer 2011
“Hard Knocks: Art without Art School” is a loosely curated collection of more than one hundred works of art by thirty-one artists from around the globe. By making use of their three curators (visual artists Antonio Adams, Ran Barnaclo, & Spencer van der Zee,) Thunder-Sky’s Face Book page, and exhibition blog to cast a wide [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in *, On View, Summer 2011
Seven Rediscovered Tiffany Windows Louis Comfort Tiffany (1848-1933) has been a crowd-pleaser for decades (except for the period following his death as a bankrupt until the 1950s). Popularly he is best known for his leaded glass or stained glass lamps, first marketed in 1899. But his stained-glass windows [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in On View, Summer 2011
Books. From the tiniest , “Musical Boxes” by Mark Palkovic measuring a mere 1” X 1 1/2”, to the largest, also qualifying as the most outrageous,”Zulu: A Book Doll” by Pamela Howard, Bookwords 12 at the Main Library through August 29, 2011, is a plethora of invention and imagination. Pop-up book artists are now known [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View, Summer 2011
Harry Reisiger at The Phyllis Weston Gallery Clement Greenberg once said that “the superior artist is one who knows how to be influenced” and the current survey of paintings by the late Harry Reisiger reveals just such an artist. Born in 1922, Reisiger studied at both the Art Academy and the University of Cincinnati, eventually [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in On View, Summer 2011
“Body of Art,” the exhibit currently at Prairie Gallery (on display through August 20, 2011), is a group show in which the weirdness and greatness of the individual works often outshine the reason they were pulled together in the first place. The show is a grab-bag of video, photography, sculpture, painting and drawing, and while [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in On View, Summer 2011
Initial Impression: Darkened rooms, interestingly arranged for multi-screened film projections. Walls and partitions simultaneously displaying black and white events. A slim man scatters a white powder over a grassy area. He is printing the universal signal for help, SOS, in large letters by drizzling a white powder on the grass. Written material nearby indicates that [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Chris Reeves | published in On View, Summer 2011
Andre Alves’ Mute Motives at Semantics In the late1950s and into the 1960s, the philosophies of composer John Cage permeated the arts. Allan Kaprow took Cage’s notion of incorporating all of life into (and as) music and invented the “happening,” where the human body took [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View, Summer 2011
It might seem flip to start a review of “Treeline,” Kent Krugh’s (American, 1955- ) rather magnificent exhibition of 22 black-and-white photographs* of the Angel Tree, the largest tree east of the Mississippi, with the old chestnut that “you can’t the see the forest for the trees.” But in this case, the Quercus virginiana, an [...]
July 25th, 2011 | by Fran Watson | published in On View, Summer 2011
In Cincinnati painting circles two names, from a recent past, keep their magic. The late Paul Chidlaw and the late Jack Meanwell, both of whom painted with a flashing style raised from the canvas in waves of impasto excitement. Both artists’ works are available at [...]
June 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in *, June 2011, On View
A Star is Born: the Douglas S. Cramer Collection at the CAM. If you go to the Cincinnati Art Museum this summer you will see artwork from the contemporary art collection of Hollywood producer Douglas S. Cramer in two separate exhibition areas: one just upon passing the entrance foyer, where the Museum often houses small-scale [...]
June 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in June 2011, On View
“All things resist being written down,” Franz Kafka writes in an October 13, 1913 diary entry. Joey Versoza’s 2011artworks survey that resistance – objects refusing to go along with meaning, and meaning finding its way out of the experience of seeing. It’s hermeneutics [...]
June 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in *, June 2011, On View
at Solway Gallery Carl Fudge is a sly fellow. Just as you think you’ve caught the drift for one of his series works, either paintings or prints – ah yes, you think, look how this cluster balances that – he changes the color scheme for another version and all relationships shift gear. New game entirely. [...]
June 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in June 2011, On View
Jeff Casto’s “Future Tense” at 1305 Gallery Jeff Casto’s shadowboxes and assemblages in “Future Tense,” his current exhibit at 1305 Gallery ending July 15, 2011, conjure Joseph Cornell’s Utopia Parkway workshop, as well as Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse, extracting wistfulness from detritus, seriousness from folly. The toys, junk and other materials used in Casto’s art [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
Majr (Self) Gazn “Maidens of the Cosmic Body Running: Majr Gazr” is a collective exhibition featuring the work of area artists Denise Burge, Lisa Siders, and Jenny Ustick at the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. The installation is an intensely immersive experience in which the group employs color, video, geometric abstraction, wall-drawings, [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
Same as the old century. (thankfully) Anytime an exhibition promises The New –whether by title or press release- I hear alarm bells. My immediate thoughts conjure up images of artworks that question, examine, provoke, or reconsider some previously ill-considered idea; and above all else, I expect to have my expectations challenged. So when I received [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in On View
WHITE PEOPLE: A RETROSPECTIVE Photographs by Melvin Grier Quite a lot is going on in the engrossing exhibition of Melvin Grier’s photographs at Kennedy Heights Arts Center.. One narrative line is this city, reflected in a daily newspaper over a period of more than thirty years. Another has to do with the photographer himself, a [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Sheldon Tapley | published in On View
Late Modernism, the last and least worthy phase of a wonderfully creative 150-year movement, petered out before the births of most of the painters in this show. In its wake, the art world, then mostly western in emphasis, embraced a new pluralism that [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
Jeff Shapiro and Don Reitz Although the exhibition at the Thomas J. Funké Gallery is named “2 Artists/2 Perspectives: Jeff Shapiro and Don Reitz,” the “perspectives” of these two ceramic artists seem more aligned than not. Visually Reitz’s and Shapiro’s work shares a roughness that borders on crude. It rudely slaps the refinement of much [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in On View
Rob Anderson’s 24 small (3.5×5″) paintings (2009-present) of mostly male faces form a file along the south wall of the Rieveschl Gallery at the Carnegie. Anderson’s skill with his medium is evident. He precisely renders diverse hues, in defiance of the small dimensions of the board. The background is graphically reduced to large swathes of [...]
May 15th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in On View
The current show at Prairie Gallery, Little Kings, features documentary-style photography by Chris Bucher, who followed a group of youth boxers as they trained for the Ringside World Championships held in Kansas City, Missouri in 2008. Bucher worked with boxers who were training at a gym in Indianapolis called Jireh Sports Ministry. The kids he [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in Features, On View
What Would Nam June (Paik) Do? The University of Cincinnati’s College of Design Art Architecture and Planning hosted the Nam June Paik and the Conservation of Video Sculpture, Symposium and Exhibition (April 15-16, 2011), a coup for the College of Art, (long the red-headed stepchild of DAAP’s other more financially-driven Colleges). Thanks to a grant [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in On View
Keith Haring 1978-1982, the exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Center representing the formative period of the artist, reveals the diversity of his early artistic engagements. It confronts the visitor with his sketches of penises, affirming the youthful Haring’s newly liberated sexuality; narcissistic video work, alluding to a preoccupation with selfhood; and his curatorial roles, divulging [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
A Collaborative Show with Carrie Iverson and Nathan Sandberg “Tally: A Collaborative Show with Carrie Iverson and Nathan Sandberg” at Gallery One One at the Brazee Street Studios in Oakley has a somewhat misleading title since the only thing vaguely collaborative is that Sandberg’s installation piece, Roundtrip (2011, bricks, dimensions variable) comprised of used bricks [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in On View
Out Of Kitsch and Into Dream: “The Amazing American Circus Poster: the Strobridge Lithographing Company” allows art to encompass life in a way that transforms both. The show, beautifully and meticulously curated and installed, has an epic quality, as if the curator were pulling together props and sentiments for a big-budget fever-dream/movie showcasing tropes from [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
Curators of exhibitions rarely receive more than a mention in exhibition signage–“curated” or “organized by.” But it is nearly impossible to talk about “For a Better World 2007” without acknowledging the organizer, Saad Ghosn (head of U.C.’s department of pathology and laboratory medicine [...]
April 18th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in On View
Their Bare Feet Gives Them Away: Gary Mitchell at Gallerie Zaum There is something about a nude body that makes us want to look. All bodies are different, unique in their own way. We all have feelings about our own bodies when we look at ourselves [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Aaron Betsky | published in On View
The Forms and Absences of Everyday Landscapes In the religion of architecture, space is the deity, or the guiding spirit. It is the mystical property by which architects want their buildings to be judged, it is that which, when it is truly great, transports them into rapture. The strange thing about space is that you [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
Selections from the International Drawing Annual 6 This year’s Selections from the International Drawing Annual 6 at Manifest Gallery boil down to a duel between two conceptions of pictorial space. On one side, representing a traditional approach to an illusionistic environment is Lance Moon’s 34” X 46” graphite on paper Untitled (Child With Bull). On [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
“House, New work by Tony Becker” at Prairie I have lived in Northside for almost seven years now, so I am embarrassed to admit that my recent visit to Prairie Gallery to see House: New Works by Tony Becker on a rainy Wednesday afternoon was my first trip to the space. A second floor walk-up [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Jane Durrell | published in On View
Remote Viewing Jimmy Baker makes difficult art, and makes it extremely well. His solo show at Contemporary Arts Center, Remote Viewing, is only ten paintings but they are quite enough for the long, thin gallery that stretches along the south side of the CAC’s second floor. The works hang at a distance from one another, [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Keith Banner | published in On View
Weebles Wobble and Boy Do They Fall Down “Tony Dotson: Shock and Awe” (up through April 9, 2011 at PAC Gallery in Walnut Hills) pushes Dotson’s smart-alecky yet innocently streamlined aesthetic into newer and fiercer territories. The show comes off like Philip Guston took all of his gritty/funky oeuvre through a car-wash and arranged each [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
An Exhibition of Sculptures, Paintings, Drawings & Prints Entering Jun Kaneko’s solo exhibition at the Carl Solway Gallery, I was smacked in the face by his Nagoya Wall – Tile Wall, 1987, even though the ceramic work is installed on a freestanding wall at the back of the corridor gallery. It did more than draw [...]
March 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
Contemporary Design from Local Collections When I walked into “Going Dutch: Contemporary Design from Local Collections” at the Cincinnati Art Museum, I was overwhelmed—by the volume of words covering all four walls of the diminutive gallery—and under-whelmed by the number of objects on view—19. Given that ratio, I thought the words better be good. The [...]
February 15th, 2011 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in On View
At the Taft Museum Another Impressionist show? Yawn. This might be the reaction of some who wander into the small gallery at the Taft Museum of Art featuring a new exhibition titled, American Impression from Cincinnati Collections. But after you get over first impressions, no pun intended, stop to consider the historical context of an [...]
February 15th, 2011 | by David Rosenthal | published in On View
The Way We Are Now at Cincinnati Art Museum The Thomas R. Schiff gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts a selection of work from the collection of the 21C Museum Hotel, the boutique hotel (soon to be chain) that has been open in a repurposed set of warehouses in downtown Louisville for the past [...]
February 15th, 2011 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
Prints and Mixed Media by Radha Chandrashekaran. Walking into Radha’s exhibition at Xavier, I was transported to India, which I first visited too many years ago—first because I hoped to return and expected I would, but haven’t—yet. What evoked India for me were not just the Hindu gods and voluptuous goddesses and the decorative motifs [...]
