Winter 2019

On a Certain Tendency of Contemporary Installation Art

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in *, Winter 2019

On a Certain Tendency of Contemporary Installation Art

British installation artist Alex Hibbitt’s Rhizome: Falling (2018) has traversed numerous gallery locales throughout the States in the last few years and hangs, suspended and static, in the Weston Gallery’s atrium ceiling. The work – a horizontal web of variegated materiality and form – while weighty, sputters a certain recherché of the ethereal, culling to […]

What Rich Mix Is This?

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

What Rich Mix Is This?

Judy Pfaff New Prints Isaac Abrams Paintings + Drawings Kirk Mangus Drawings + Ceramic Works This handsome show of a trio of artists opened in late January and continues through to April 6, 2019 at the Solway Gallery in the west end.  Judy Pfaff is the giant in the room with exciting new prints in the largest gallery rooms at […]

Deb Brod at The Carnegie

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Deb Brod at The Carnegie

In The Carnegie’s Open Source series of exhibitions, Trajectory engages the gallery space with swooping arcs of fabric and fiber that weave and stretch across one corner of the large open room. Deb Brod, the artist, has mined collections of fabric handed down from her mother and grandmother as well as from her daughter and […]

SIMILITUDE: A survey of contemporary portraiture

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

SIMILITUDE:  A survey of contemporary portraiture

Dreams, dragons and confrontation with contemporary overtones– “Similitude” is an exhibit of current portraiture work by contemporary, largely regional, artists at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati. Paul Loehle’s large oil on panel is entitled “Self Portrait with Purple Dragon”.  A split segment of Loehle’s head with single wide open eye forms the foundation of a […]

On the Question of How to Approach a New Visual Language?

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

On the Question of How to Approach a New Visual Language?

Synthetica, which showed at the Weston Art Gallery from November 30, 2018 – January 27, 2019, professed a keen logic of material innovation accompanied by a significant theoretical undertaking –these nine local artists sought not only to transfigure two-dimensional surfaces with an array of diverse materials but, also, how to consequently render new linguistic applications […]

The Terrace Plaza Hotel: Recognizing Greatness

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

The Terrace Plaza Hotel: Recognizing Greatness

Cincinnati is fortunate to have a number of noteworthy examples of architecture and history, recognized with numerous listings on the National Register of Historic Places. Placement of buildings on this list is important in order to bring recognition, but offers little protection from insensitive remodeling and destruction, except where federal dollars are involved. Designation of […]

ZVIZDAL [Chernobyl- so far so close] Berlin

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

ZVIZDAL [Chernobyl- so far so close] Berlin

ZVIZDAL is the latest documentary-installation by the Dutch company Berlin.  It comprises a large double-sided projection screen over three diorama tables depicting a primitive Ukranian farmhouse.  The documentary film is interspersed with magnified footage from remote controlled cameras which move to display images of these farm dioramas on the projection screen.  The documentary itself uses […]

STATE Ingri Fiksdal

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

STATE Ingri Fiksdal

Ingri  Fiksdal’s STATE explores the role of dance as ritual in society and was performed in the Contemporary Arts Center’s black box theatre.  Accompanied by live performance of Lasse Marhaug’s noise music soundtrack, STATE uses a combination of modern dance choreography and improvised movement to bring Fiksdal’s commentary on dance and ritual to life.  The […]

Fotofolio – Susan Patrice

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Fotofolio - Susan Patrice

“The Enveloping Landscape” Susan’s statement: The Enveloping Landscape project began as a way to heal. Much like the Appalachian landscape itself, my body holds a map of multi-generational trauma. Too often expressed as violence against women, mirrored in our exploitation of the land, our history carries with it a shame so deep that it looms […]

Emma Webster's Complicated Vistas of Human Nature in Dioramic Landscapes

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Emma Webster's Complicated Vistas of Human Nature in Dioramic Landscapes

Nothing seems right in Emma Webster’s No Man’s Land (all works 2018): toadstools are weirdly spotlighted; wispy arboreal cutouts contain more than mere foliage; and a nearby cervine, possibly an antelope, is impossibly dwarfed by a distant moose. Such incongruities lead one to wonder: what sort of location does this painting depict? Webster painted No […]

"Art School"

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

"Art School"

I’ll never forget my first day of art school.  It was my freshman year at UC’s DAAP and I had been instructed by my professors to bring with me a laundry list of art supplies to my various studios.  What resulted was a portfolio full of the usual inventory: pads of drawing paper, a T-Square, […]

Saying Goodbye to an Icon

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Saying Goodbye to an Icon

While fashion is an ever-evolving industry spurred by constant winds of change, some things are just predictable. We know that four cities will present runway shows all unique and interesting in their own ways. We know new designers will emerge from the pack seemingly out of nowhere. We know that we what we see on […]

Stewart Goldman

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Stewart Goldman

Stewart Goldman has been making art longer than many viewers – although not this writer – have been alive, a circumstance that does not seem to hamper either his relevance or appeal. By his mid- 20s, when the 20th century itself was in its sixties and seventies, Goldman’s work began appearing publicly with considerable regularity. […]

Movies Filmed in Cincinnati Have a Visual Arts Influence

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Movies Filmed in Cincinnati Have a Visual Arts Influence

Visual arts play a part in many movies, according to Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Film Commission Executive Director Kristen Schlotman.  Hollywood producers have shot movies, such as Carol, Old Man and the Gun, Marauders, Reprisal and Gotti, here.  Most recently is Dry Run, filmed here in early 2019. Dry Run is based on a […]

Visionary Artist Reilly Stasienko: Chronicling Consciousness Through Oil Paintings

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Visionary Artist Reilly Stasienko: Chronicling Consciousness Through Oil Paintings

Some art seeks to capture, in stark detail, the beauty of the natural world around us. Other art turns inward and seeks to transcend the natural world, illustrating the colors and symbols of the worlds within and the worlds beyond. The artwork of Reilly Stasienko — a 17-year-old visionary artist living in Miamisburg, Ohio — […]

Robert W. Fieseler’s “Tinderbox”

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Gay Liberation in America is generally thought to have begun with the Stonewall Inn protests in New York City’s Greenwich Village in 1969.  Homosexuality was, at that time, still considered a psychiatric disease by the so-called helping professions in America, and gay and lesbian people marginalized to a kind of status of non-people, a hidden […]

Guy Gunaratne’s “In Our Mad and Furious City”

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

Guy Gunaratne has written a powerful and important novel, “In Our Mad and Furious City”, which takes place in contemporary London, or those parts of it where new immigrants, almost all people of color, have been marginalized into wretched tower block housing.  Gunaratne focuses his novel around the lives of a number of young men, […]

Tessa Hadley’s “Late in the Day”

March 3rd, 2019  |  by  |  published in Winter 2019

The English writer Tessa Hadley is rapidly becoming one of that country’s foremost fiction writers; her work in the past couple of years has expanded to include a wide American audience.  At times, Hadley’s writing, which is completely magnificent, reminds me of the late, great Anita Brookner’s, who wrote perfect, flawless prose in an increasingly […]