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 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 […]
January 15th, 2011 | by Daniel Brown | published in On View
Ted Borman at The Miller Gallery Ted Borman’s astonishing new paintings, Ghost Clouds, are his most evolved work to date. They manage to combine rich references to art history and to contemporary popular culture wittily, intelligently, and seamlessly. Selecting a deliberately faux-naif painting style, Borman’s work is reminiscent of other artists prone to radical reductionism and […]
December 15th, 2010 | by Daniel Brown | published in Digest, On View
At The Weston Gallery Todd Reynolds’ oils’ and watercolors’ most salient contemporary features depict an America in which chronic violence is implied, hope is in abeyance. His quasi-narrative, usually large scale paintings rip the niceties and pieties off of middle class life, portraying, instead, a near-Surreal world of low-life characters, drug-induced or -inspired people in […]
December 15th, 2010 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in On View
The Greenwich House Gallery’s current show, DUO, features new work by two prominent Cincinnati artists—Tom Towhey and Greg Storer. Tom Towhey’s paintings have been described as surreal fantasies—fairy tales conjuring thoughts of Alice in Wonderland. Towhey often fills his canvases edge to edge with […]
December 15th, 2010 | by David Rosenthal | published in On View
Movement, Light, and Chance Diana Duncan Holmes presents a body of photo-based work in her solo exhibition Movement, Chance, Light at the Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery opening on December 17 and continuing through February 27th, 2011. Holmes’ work falls squarely within the contemporary mode of art-making in which traditional media are […]
December 15th, 2010 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
The Artist is Present Place is the ostensible subject of Rosson Crow’s painted dreamscapes, and out of the seven canvases in her exhibition, Myth of the American Motorcycle, at the Contemporary Arts Center, only two are outdoor scenes. In all, the artist’s depiction of space is loose and layered, barely hinting at architectural detail or expansive […]
December 15th, 2010 | by Jane Durrell | published in On View
Los Caprichos at the Taft Museum of Art Francisco José de Goya was 53 years old, seriously deaf but acutely visual, when he published the extraordinary series of eighty images called Los Caprichos now on view at the Taft Museum of Art. Caprichos—the word means “whims” or “fancies”—in this artist’s hands become the thoughtless, often […]
December 15th, 2010 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
Looking Upward at Manifest Gallery Ivan Fortushniak returns to Manifest Gallery this month with a solo exhibition of 15 modest sized works that range from the prosaic to the superb. A god in his own way, Fortushniak fashions painted worlds that resonate with ambiguity and unease. In his universe figures from the past stare […]
October 15th, 2010 | by A.C. Frabetti | published in On View
Bukang Kim and Emil Robinson Standing before Morning Calm (see image, right), the eye moves from the image of the window, to the feeling of the home from which one views it, to a subtle leap in perspective: one in which the window, house, etc. disappear into the balanced dissidence of boldly placed color and […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Laura P. Yoo | published in On View
Her Universe Like a Dream Yvonne van Eijden is a painter, but as a poet she marvels at language as a social construct—recognizing its power and its limitations. In her paintings she creates a visual language centered around space, moments in time, and memory. In her poem, “Open Spaces are There,” she writes: the universe […]
October 15th, 2010 | by David Rosenthal | published in On View
Photography at CAM Tough Pictures is a collection of photographs exhibited in the small section devoted to new acquisitions just behind the main lobby of the Cincinnati Art Museum. This interesting concept for a photography show which is neither explained nor demonstrated by the images and accompanying wall text adjacent to the installation. Although failing […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Karen Chambers | published in On View
Kim Krause at PAC Gallery Unlike many artists in academia who spend more time teaching than making art, Kim Krause, chair of the Fine Arts department at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, found enough studio time in 2010 to create the seven large (up to 80″ x 72″) paintings and six mixed media on multimedia […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
Feminine Tropes & Fairytale Myths To equate photography, still or moving, with the objects which are portrayed by the artificial eye of the lens is as silly as believing that everyone sees (e.g., comprehends what he sees) just alike. Vision is a psychological as well as a mechanical process. Even the most “objectively” made documentary […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
The Process of Reading Becomes an Act of Creation It is a big deal when an internationally-recognized artist comes to town—particularly one who has local roots like Ann Hamilton. Her current exhibition,reading at Carl Solway is not the kind of large-scale, multi-sensory, immersive installation that one might expect from the artist. buy levitra canada Instead, […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Jane Durrell | published in On View
Gainsborough’s Touch Exhibitions can be flat-out beautiful and they can bristle with ideas. When they are both you might want to send up a rocket in celebration, but perhaps the best thing is simply to go back and look at the show again. The Cincinnati Art Museum’s extraordinary gathering of paintings in Thomas Gainsborough and […]
October 15th, 2010 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
A Vanguard of Six at Phyllis Weston Gallery Despite the suggestion to the contrary, A Vanguard of Six is a conventional exhibition of six contemporary artists whose divergent interests make for a cerebral show that at times feels remote and disembodied. Considering the charged subject matter that many […]
September 1st, 2010 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
Traditional Approaches to Radical Art Mark Harris is an artist, critic, curator, and the current Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning. His diverse range of works include mixed media, sound installation, cut paper, artist books, and paintings. For his recent exhibition at Country Club Gallery, […]
September 1st, 2010 | by Maria Seda-Reeder | published in On View
Kristine Donnelly’s Paperwork at the Taft Museum How might a contemporary artist respond to an art space that is rich in historical allusions such as the Taft Museum? Only the second “Emerging Artist” invited to exhibit her work, Kristine Donnelly found that an appealing question when she visited the museum’s inaugural Keystone Contemporary Series show last […]
August 1st, 2010 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
Carmel Buckley and Joel Fisher at Aisle “Set yourself to practice drawing, drawing only a little each day, so that you may not come to lose your taste for it, or get tired of it…Do not fail, as you go on, to draw something every day, for no matter how little it is, it will […]
July 1st, 2010 | by Alan D Pocaro | published in On View
Paul Coors at Clay Street Press Paul Coors’ new solo exhibition at Clay Street Press is something of two different worlds. Beneath the surface of a quintessential contemporary exhibition, Tell Me What Else You Need From Me reveals a multiplicity of approaches to conceiving of and executing visual art. Coors, a 2004 graduate of The […]
