September 2018

Artistic Detritus, the Circulation of Power, and Intervening in the Historic Record at The 8th Floor

October 8th, 2018  |  by  |  published in *, September 2018

Artistic Detritus, the Circulation of Power, and Intervening in the  Historic Record at The 8th Floor

“…[power is] a multiple and mobile field of force relations where far-reaching, but never completely stable effects of domination are produced.”[1] –Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality Sedimentations: Assemblage as Social Repair is the most recent exhibition at The 8th Floor, an alternative art space affiliated with the Rubin Foundation and dedicated to expanding artistic […]

Clothes Encounter Behringer-Crawford Museum FotoFocus Biennial 2018 Exhibit

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Clothes Encounter Behringer-Crawford Museum FotoFocus Biennial 2018 Exhibit

“Style is where you find it …”, these words stood out when starting a journey through the past, looking at the storied history of photographer Melvin Grier in his own words and pictures. Style I suppose is where you find it, out in the world not just in the glossy pages of magazines and newspapers. […]

Jeff Keen's Idiosyncratic Worlds of Collaged Films and Cinematic Drawings

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Jeff Keen's Idiosyncratic Worlds of Collaged Films and Cinematic Drawings

“We are all collage artists today, switching from one channel to another, re-editing as we go,” the late British artist Jeff Keen (1923-2012) once declared. In this age of ubiquitous smartphones, where we devour and re-synthesize words and images in staggering quantities at lightning speeds, Keen’s idea has accreted new resonance; and so has his […]

Raquel André Collection Of Lovers Performance and Photography

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

The performance of Collection Of Lovers begins with the audience filing in as André recites names over a droning and ominous soundtrack.  The recitation of this list itself drones on as André stands next to a projector and laptop.  She then begins to provide a statistical breakdown of the activities she has engaged in with […]

“Remembrances by PJ Sturdevant,” Xavier University Art Gallery, through October 27, 2018.

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

“Remembrances by PJ Sturdevant,” Xavier University Art Gallery, through October 27, 2018.

When I walked into native Cincinnatian PJ Sturdevant’s 1exhibition, “Remembrances,” at Xavier University, my head exploded with a jumble of images of the work of other photographers. The title of the show, thus, was an apt one for my reaction. But being able to reel off the names of other photographers (in no particular order, Jean-Eugène-Auguste […]

Phillip Levine shows “Stories” at Prographica/Koplin Del Rio in Seattle’s Pioneer Square

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Phillip Levine shows “Stories”  at  Prographica/Koplin Del Rio in Seattle’s Pioneer Square

Phillip Levine’s sculptures are a sculptor’s dream. These are sculptures to learn from, more eloquent than any text and more accessible. To see the work in person is to step into an intimate space, graced with a lightness of spirit. We are invited to wander through that space, allowing our sense of gravity to lead […]

Best of America NOAPS Exhibit @ Eisele Gallery

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Best of America NOAPS Exhibit @ Eisele Gallery

Subjectwise, still lifes, interiors, portraits, landscapes and plein air scenes, there is a little something for everyone in this year’s curated exhibition at Eisele Gallery. Thematic trends are also a popular consideration, elements that are ‘trending’ or relevant to current news or polarized politics are found . Of much more importance to the potency of […]

Reflejos by Karla Batres Gilvin Thomas More College Eva G. Farris Art Gallery August 20- September 6, 2018

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Reflejos by Karla Batres Gilvin Thomas More College Eva G. Farris Art Gallery August 20- September 6, 2018

Set amidst the hustle and bustle of the back-to-school atmosphere at Thomas More College in suburban Northern Kentucky is a vibrant show of recent work created by Karla Batres Gilvin, a self-described Chicana artist. Batres Gilvin works in the traditional Mexican art form of hojalata, featuring tin, lacquer and mirrors formed into colorful, festive sculptural […]

Fotofolio: Enrique Leal

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Fotofolio: Enrique Leal

“A selection of photogravures” Enrique’s statement: My work focuses on apparent and sub-visible phenomena made possible through experiments with materials, media, and technologies of production, and the chance occurrences that result from their shared sympathies. This allows for new understandings of the extended creative forces of nature and the reciprocal flows between matter, process, and […]

Margaret Rhein’s Papermaking Career

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Margaret Rhein’s Papermaking Career

Hidden away in Westwood, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, is an eclectic house and bright studio of artist Margaret Rhein and her now-retired jeweler husband Stuart Golder.  Her son Aaron, a graphic designer, lives on the same street; it’s a quiet, modest neighborhood. At the back of the house, amidst overhanging trees, one meets Rhein as […]

Kevin T. Kelly at Alan Avery Art Company

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Kevin T. Kelly at Alan Avery Art Company

Kevin T. Kelly has created a new body of paintings for this exhibition at Alan Avery Art Company in Atlanta, and they are his most complex, his most biting, his most urgent in his long career as one of this country’s foremost painters.  Long associated with a neo-Pop style, which he probably learned in his […]

Michael Mergen: Epilogue to Mars

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Michael Mergen: Epilogue to Mars

Michael Mergen lives, works, and raises his family in Farmville, Virginia, though his catalog of photographs evokes the ethos of a wanderer, moving freely across the American landscape and calling it all home. That catalog features a determined layering of past and present, along with examination of the spaces where relationships happen and identities form. […]

donottellmewhereibelong: drawing and sculpture by Joan Tanner Curated by Julien Robson Cressman Center for Visual Arts / Hite Art Institute / Department of Fine Arts / University of Louisville

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

donottellmewhereibelong: drawing and sculpture by Joan Tanner Curated by Julien Robson Cressman Center for Visual Arts / Hite Art Institute / Department of Fine Arts / University of Louisville

“A curiosity to engage contradiction…might be kindled from memories of listening to my father talk about the perils and challenges in practicing medicine…Disease. Malady. Disfigurement. Imperfection. Structural weakness. I probably did not realize then, but I was already hooked.”  —Joan Tanner, Interview with In the Make: Interviews with West Coasts Artists, June 2014. Joan Tanner’s […]

“Replace With Fine Art” at the Art Academy of Cincinnati

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

“Replace With Fine Art” at the Art Academy of Cincinnati

What is God? A Westernized ideal, for one, in the monotheistic sense. But, God can also be interpreted as an energy or a sustaining force. God is universal truth, the unpredictability and breadth of the natural world, the ability of the cosmos to function — the cycles of life and death, themselves. China, like many […]

Ottessa Moshfegh’s “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Ottessa Moshfegh has burst upon the literary scene mostly in the past 18 months, with, first, a book of short stories, and, now, her novel “My Year of Rest and Relaxation”, although she’s written two other novels of which I was unaware.  Brought to my attention by my reading friend Kevin Ott, who also recommended […]

Pat Barker’s “The Silence of The Girls”

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Pat Barker, the English woman writer, is, at her best, one of the world’s greatest living novelists.  She may be the finest novelist writing about men at war; her “Regeneration Trilogy”, one novel of which won the prestigious Booker Prize for Literature, is written about soldiers suffering from what was then first called “shell-shock” in […]

Gary Shteyngart’s “Lake Success”

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

Gary Shteyngart is usually one of the finest, most biting satirists in America.  The Russian-born, US raised Shteyngart has both satirized the Russian Mafia in America, the life of the new immigrant here; he has a keen, fine eye for the absurd and for the hypocritical. His new novel, “Lake Success”, however, is big disappointment.  […]

Leo Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”

October 7th, 2018  |  by  |  published in September 2018

August is usually a slow month for me, and I’ve often read 19th century novels during the summers over the years, novels I didn’t read along the way or in school decades ago. This year’s big novel was “War and Peace”, by Leo Tolstoy (which, in Russian slang, means “fat lion”).  I was amazed at […]