The April issue of Aeqai has just posted.
We bring a variety of reviews, one profile and one feature this month. Cincinnati-born, Brooklyn-based performance artist Rachel Rampelman’s work about gender, in particular, is reviewed this month by Annie Dell’Aria; the show’s at The Weston in downtown Cincinnati in The Aronoff Center. Dell’Aria examines three different bodies of work (the installation consists mainly of videos) and finds Rampelman’s work first rate. Chris Carter reviews a two-person show at Clay Street Press, work by husband-and-wife Diana Duncan Holmes (photography) and the late Timothy Riordan (poet), seeing how their work collaborates in fascinating ways. Susan Byrnes reviews a three-woman show at The Contemporary Arts Center in the show “Archive in Action”, performances of a sort by Calcagno Cullen (who runs Wave Pool Gallery here), Amanda Curreri, and Lindsey Whittle.
Jonathan Kamholtz drove to Dayton to review their show of paintings from The National Academy of Design; the painters, all America, all members of the National Academy, give us insights into figuration and landscape in particular, in this large show; it’s particularly fascinating to read this review in light of widely different types of art now manifest in contemporary art elsewhere (painters as seemingly disparate as Thomas Eakins and Peter Saal are included). Karen Chambers takes a look at “Because I Said So”, a cleverly curated show examining how the artists included look at their childhoods and parents through the lens of art. And Will Newman reviews a recent performance by Joseph Kekler at 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Cincinnati, which was part of the recent performance weekend put together by CAC Curator Drew Klein.
Out of town reviews this month include two from New York critic Ekin Erkan, one of a work by Shusaku Arakawa at 980 Madison and the other a retrospective of work by Nari Ward, “We The People”, at The New Museum. Tony Huffman examines a new outdoor/public sculpture in the newly developed Hudson Yards part of New York, called “Vessels”, and raises the question of the purposes of public art in today’s world of real estate developers and speculators. Russell Hausfeld was in Chicago, and gives us a review of work by Danish artist Christien Mienderisma, in “Everything Connects”, at The Art Institute of Chicago; her work is environmental as well as aesthetic. And Annabel Osberg offers us a look at America-run-amok in paintings by Rob Thom , “The Beast”, at M & B in Los Angeles, with her usual apolomb.
Kent Krugh’s FotoFolio this month offers photographs by Columbus artist Jim Friedman (whose photographs of Auschwitz and other concentration camps were the opening show at The Skirball Museum at Hebrew Union College a couple of years back). Jane Durrell offers a profile of Cincinnati photographer Jens Rosenkrantz, who’s also just opened a brand new art gallery in Cincinnati “Pendleton Street Photography”, which will specialize in photography made by area photographers and some artists’ prints. Laura Hobson’s feature this month is on CATS, Cincinnati Arts and Technology Studio, a school for at-risk high schoolers learning art through technology.
Laura A . Hobson, Aeqai feature writer, won an award in digital media from The Press Club of Cleveland for her article about The Art Club of Cincinnati published in August 2018. The contest recognizes outstanding journalists in the state of Ohio. The award ceremony will be on June 7 in Cleveland.
Hobson also won an award from The Ohio Society of Professional Journalists for her feature in the August Aeqai, “Civic Garden Center: An Oasis in The City”, as best freelance feature.
Aeqai congratulates Ms. Hobson on this prestigious award.
We are deeply saddened to learn of the recent death of Anise Mouette Stevens, who wrote for Aeqai for many years from Los Angeles. Highly talented both as a writer and a painter—she was painting just weeks before her passing from breast cancer–Anise was witty and intelligent and a great storyteller. We’d taken to emailing between issues of Aeqai, as she fought endless bouts of cancer and the often horrid treatments of same; she sought and found beauty up to the bitter end. Her reviews for Aeqai were beautifully, often poetically, written, her understanding of art both intellectual and intuitive. We’ll miss her intelligence and wit and astute observations.
I offer three book reviews this month, two of short fiction, by Amy Hempel and Leila Aboulela, and of a new novel by Nathan Englander.
We hope that you find this issue of Aeqai stimulating, and we welcome your comments (send to [email protected]), as always, and we’ll be back in Maywith another issue of Aeqai. To go directly to the site for the new issue, click www.Aeqai.com/main.
Daniel Brown, Editor