Archives
September 2023
Editor Comments: August Aeqai
The hot and hazy days of August signal the end of summer, the busy bustle of back to school and hint at the autumnal changes
Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds
On view through October 15, 2023, the Cincinnati Art Museum is presenting the serene, summer blockbuster “Picasso Landscapes: Out of Bounds,” as part of the global presentation of 50 exhibitions, organized by the Picasso Museum, marking the fiftieth anniversary of Picasso’s death.
Double Delight at DAI: Two Exhibits of Contemporary Japanese Artists
Breaking barriers while building on the aesthetic and technical traditions of Japanese achievements, Washi Transformed and Born of Fire stimulates the imagination in ceramic arts and the astonishing possibilities of” something as simple and ephemeral as paper.”
Refreshing “Black Lives Matter!” on the street and in the public consciousness.
The recent restoration of Cincinnati’s “Black Lives Matter!” prominent political street art preserves and refreshes its resonant message. One of the more visible manifestations of the nationwide
Color Breathing: The Work of Lyric Morris-Latchaw and Casey Dresell
June 10 – August 12, 2023, Kennedy Gallery Opening June 10, 6-8pm While entering the Kennedy Gallery to view the exhibit Color Breathing: The Work
July 2023
Editor’s Comments
It is our pleasure to bring to your attention three exciting reviews in the June post. “Modern Women/Modern Vision,” features 101 photographs by 53 women
Modern Women/Modern Vision: Photography from the Bank of America Collection Taft Museum of Art, June 3–September 10, 2023
“Knowing the 101 photographs in this exhibition are all by women further enriches what is a treasure trove of riches from throughout the 20th and 21st century’s history of the photographic medium.”
Conquering Greece In Cynthia Kukla’s Watercolored Realm
Kukla’s 37 experimental works in watercolor pull us into the unforgettable history and mythological mystic of Ancient Greece.
Maria Bartuszová
Tate Modern just closed a survey of Maria Bartuszová, yet another innovative female sculptor, whose oeuvre has fallen through the cracks. Her work fills in the gap between Lynda Benglis’s cast biomorphic blobs and Lygia Clark’s relational objects of the 1980s.
June 2023
Editor’s comments
May 2023 The art scene is certainly busy this summer. Our roster will tempt your interest. We have an interview with Christina Vassallo, the new
“Gego: Measuring Infinity” at the Guggenheim
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum highlights Gego’s oeuvre, continuing to champion female artists whose oeuvre has largely been overlooked. “Gego: Measuring Infinity” remains on view there until September 10, 2023.
Arbus • Sherman • Woodman: American Photography from the 1960s and 1970s. The Columbus Museum of Art.
The Columbus Museum of Arts mines its photography collection to produce a previously hidden treat of an exhibition highlighting three exceptional American women photographers of the late 20th century, all working in New York City, each of whom significantly changed the medium as an art form.
Christina Vassallo, New Energy at the CAC
Career trajectories are diverse, random highways leading to intersections, and in the professional life of Christina Vassallo, Director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center for only two months, it is a treasure trove of unusual experiences.
Deborah Morrissey-McGoff: Sanctuary: A Lifelong Journey through Landscape
Deborah Morrissey-McGoff’s enigmatic paintings capture the beauty and power of landscape as an emotional and dramatic messenger. The exhibition “Sanctuary” examines her journey as a painter, surveying several decades of her prolific output.
David Kaye’s Child Soldiers
David Kaye is a veteran artist—not in the sense that he is an artist who has been toiling with the canvas for many decades but
Weaving Worlds: The Vivid Imagination of Elaine Stocki
Elaine Stocki opens the rabbit hole. Mixing vivid color and raised canvasses, an artist imagines another world.
May 2023
Editor’s comments. April 2023
Dear Readers: Aeqai offers several exciting exhibitions and columns for your interest.Especially important are two career retrospectives This month, Sue Spaid takes us to the
Simone Forti- Multi-Media Visionary
If ever there was a “missing link” between happenings, contemporary dance, experimental theater, and even “art and technology,” it is Simone Forti. No doubt, her recent career survey, organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, secured her spot in art history.
“Stewart Goldman: Cross Currents” at the Art Academy of Cincinnati
Over the decades, Goldman has explored the painted element, as a means to converse with Rubens and Poussin, to carry forward the dance with Matisse and in many ways, broaden our contemporary experience with paint. Cross Currents is the triumph of a painter’s vision.
Robert JM Morris’ Stations are Sublime
From colorfields rooted in his landscapes of Australia, refined through the lens of Abstract Expressionism, Robert JM Morris has reached into the Sublime to capture the raw emotions of the stages of grief through the Stations of the Cross, at the the Oratory Gallery in Loveland through May 7.
How Words and Dates become a Portraiture: Understanding Felix Gonzales-Torres
What Still Life and a Portrait have in common through looking at Claesz, Picasso, Peale and Felix Torres-Gonzales.
The Universal Search, Seeking Human Kindness – Tracy Casagrande Clancy
Tracy Casagrande Clancy strives to spark awareness of the inescapable interconnectedness of all that is.
April 2023
Editor’s comments. March Post 2023
While the Cincinnati Spring rollercoaster ride continuesl, Aeqai covers several exciting exhibitions for your avid interest. Two features in the NCECA spotlight: Jorge Rodriguez reviews
Unlikely Assemblages: Clay as a Different Brush
A selection of works in ceramics from the Fine Arts Ceramic Center (FACC), belonging to the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas at Kendall,
It’s All About Love
Roberto Lugo : Hi Def Archives March 17–September 24, 2023 Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio While the motto in real estate is “location, location, location,”
Another World: The Transcendental Painting Group: 1938-1945
… on view until June 19, 2023 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art explores a uniquely American art movement. Taking inspiration from their New Mexico habitat, eleven avant-garde painters explored abstract imagery and motifs that still invoke spirituality, mysticism, and transcendence.
The Prints of Saitō Kiyoshi: Bold Expressions
Saito Kiyoshi was a self-taught woodblock print artist who developed a distinctive semi-abstract style. Follow his career as he rose to international fame in the mid-twentieth century.
American Sign Museum is Expanding
The museum will extend exhibition space into the annex for a total of 40,000-square feet. Director Cynthia Kearns said, “By expanding into an undeveloped adjacent
March 2023
Ecologies of Elsewhere
Whether “plant chic,” a repository for ancestral knowledge, or “floraporn,” “Ecologies of Elsewhere” at the Contemporary Arts Center highlights human beings’ selfish motives. If this show is any indication, plant appreciators appear more interested in human wellbeing than plant wellbeing.
Editor’s comments. February Post 2023
While the Cincinnati Spring is even more of a rollercoaster ride than usual, Aeqai covers several exciting exhibitions for your avid interest.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Photographer?
The first major exhibition of 2023 to open at the Cincinnati Art Museum presents a comprehensive selection of nearly 100 photographs made by the celebrated
Ceramicus Sculptus ‘Krohn’
Don’t miss an opportunity to see “Ceramicus Sculptus ‘Krohn’,” an exhibition of ceramic sculptures gleaming like “hothouse flowers” in the Krohn Conservatory in Eden Park, Cincinnati, on view through June 18, 2023. Visitors to this exhibition truly wonder, “How did they do that?”
Japanese Netsuke: Hidden Wit and Whimsy
Fashion accessories can be great fun, but what if you must hide them? This wasn’t a rhetorical question for trendy Japanese gentlemen in the Edo Period (1603-1868).
Platow’s Vision: The JB Speed Museum
The duties of a museum director are vast, complex and persistent. Just ask Raphaela Platow, new director at the Speed Museum, Louisville.
A Garden in Time: Hayley Barker Paints an Echo Park Life
Hayler Barker takes viewers into the home of longtime activist Angeleno Isa-Kae Meksin. By reflecting on Meksin’s garden, apartment and neighborhood, Barker provides an intimate glimpse into the power of everyday interactions with the nonhuman world that bustles around us.
Aeqai 15th Annual Fundraiser Success Recap
The Aeqai 15th Annual Fundraiser was held at the Annex Gallery, Pendleton Art Center, Cincinnati Ohio on February 2nd, 2023 with a silent auction entitled ”EIGHT BUY EIGHT.”
February 2023
Editor’s comments. January Post 2023
Greetings in the New Year 2023 We have an exciting post for your avid interest. The Cincinnati Art Museum presents 4 generations of Japanese Printmakers.
Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris: Monet-Mitchell Exhibition
Although Joan Mitchell’s home and garden was just a 9-mile hike from Monet’s Giverny paradise, their dialogues on canvas are an intimate interchange, still intriguing today.
Cincinnati Art Museum: Three Generations of Japanese Printmakers: The Yoshida Family Legacy
The Yoshida Family Legacy features seven artists with seven unique artistic visions. The prints of these three men and four women illustrate the evolution of 20th and 21st century printmaking in Japan.
Detroit Institute of Art, Van Gogh in America
Leave it to the Detroit Institute of Art to bring Van Gogh to America!
Fika Leon: the Collector’s Most Coveted Contemporary Artist
Is Fika Leon, self-taught artist from Indonesia whose mystical works were recently shown at Miami Art Week, carving a unique path unbeholden to recent art market trends? Read Ekin Erkan’s projection.
On the Individuals and Collectives of Henry Taylor
Through April 30th, 2023, MOCA presents “Henry Taylor: B Side.” It is the most extensive view of Henry Taylor’s multi-layered oeuvre yet. Taylor, a Los
January 2023
Editor’s comments: Dec. post 2022
Dear readers It has been a most exciting year in the Cincinnati Art World: The FotoFocus Biennial engaged viewers around the region, Christina Vassallo has
Barbara Chase-Riboud Monumentale: The Bronzes, At the Pulitzer Arts Foundation
What a delight it is to come across an exhibition by such a prominent artist as Barbara Chase-Riboud (b. 1939), whose elaborate charcoal drawings and
Cezanne Still Life Reveals a Dramatic Portrait
Who is the gentleman who was hidden for 158 years beneath a still life of eggs and bread?
Lest We Forget: VL Cox and Stephen Mangum’s Art Uses History to Forge a Better Future
“Bending the Arc,” the current exhibit at the Annex Gallery is a must see for anyone who is genuinely interested in the social history of our country and who has at heart a just, equal and compassionate America.
Beyond Bollywood: 2000 Years of Dance in Art. Cincinnati Art Museum from November 11, 2022–February 5, 2023.
Dancing into 2023! How exciting is it that in the same period as the acclaimed artistic director of the Cincinnati Ballet, Victoria Morgan, has retired
Making it New: “The Land and That Which Lives on It: Contemporary Photography and the Curious Nature of Our Planet” and “Unusual Characters: Portraits and the Modern Eye”
I am a stalwart but cranky fan of FotoFocus. Since its beginnings in 2012, I have seen a fair number of the exhibitions connected to
Clifton Cultural Arts Center Plans $10.5 Million New Building
Clifton Cultural Arts Center is constructing a $10.5 million new building which will serve Uptown neighborhoods with a wide variety of exhibitions and classes. Leslie
December 2022
Editor’s comments
The busy holiday season is upon us and there are many exciting seasonal events and exhibits to take in. We are highlighting a few that
Green Earth Review
Green Earth, the new exhibition by LA based painter Andy Woll, is on view at the Night Gallery through January 21, 2023. His title is
Rebekah Beaulieu Assumes Presidency of The Taft Museum of Art
A new face appears at the helm of The Taft Museum of Art. Rebekah Beaulieu became the next Louise Taft Semple president and CEO of
PhotOH: Photographers in the Heartland
by Marlene Steele
No one’s quite sure how to pronounce it (is it ‘Fot-Oh’ or Fote-Oh’) but PhotOH: Photographers in the Heartland is a stimulating camera and non-camera image exhibit of new work by Ohio photographers.
“Golden Ticket” at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center
This multi-artist survey addresses everything from Breast Cancer, to George Floyd to a whimsical family of teapots!
November 2022
Scale Models: “Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Collection” at the Cincinnati Art Museum
What does Pop Art have in common with Surrealism? The works in the Weston donation to the C.A.M. help us rethink some things we thought we knew about American art in the final third of the 20th century.
Review: Galloping Through Dynasties Exhibit
Did you know that in ancient China horses danced for emperors? Or that painters used horses as symbols for both prosperity and protest? Galloping Through Dynasties at the Cincinnati Art Museum uses new research and important loaned works from around the world to tell a fascinating story of the evolution of horse images in China over the course of 3,000 years.
Charley Harper Sculpture Unveiled in Springfield Township
World-renowned artist Charley Harper’s memory lives on. Executive Director Kim Flamm, ArtsConnect in Springfield Township, called Charley Harper’s son Brett and talked to him about
Raúl Cañibano: Inside the Cuban Experience
“You have a fraction of a second to express the essence of what is happening, to tell a story using the camera, light and shapes as tools.” Raul Canibano
All Falls Down: Architectural Heritage Effaced, The Universal Tale of two Cities, two Countries
In the Annex Gallery’s second room is a double exhibit of images entitled “All Falls Down. This show consists of photographs by Lebanese photographer Gregory
October 2022
October 2022 – Editor’s comments
In this posting, we present the Return to Rencontres Part II, as Mr. Messer journals his experiences, observations and conclusions. Laura Hobson writes up the
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company Brings Black Life to the Dance Arts
Dayton Contemporary Dance Company is the modern Black dance organization in the area. Known in Dayton, it also draws dancers from across the country and
Return to Rencontres: Part Two
The morning of July 15th I woke to the familiar smell of smoke from burnt wood (familiar because my own, wooden house had burned less
Stars Don’t Stand Still in the Sky 
On view from September 17 – October 22, 2022 This month Regen Projects celebrates the legacy of Lawrence Weiner, who died just last year, with
September 2022
Future Manifest Center for the Visual Arts Will Have Large Footprint in New Location
“This will not only allow us to serve the participants…. much more fully, but it will make Manifest more meaningful as an experience for the wider community.“
Jason Franz
Return to Rencontres (d’Arles): Part One
The opening conference of the 53rd Rencontres de la Photographie d’Arles (Photography Meetings in Arles, France) took place in the tree-shaded courtyard of the festival offices and was attended by Arles’ Mayor, the Rencontres’ director, several governmental ministers and an international audience of various hotshots and press.
FotoFocus: a regional Tsunami of photo and lens work
The new arts season is always highly anticipated by culture lovers. This is the year for Fotofocus, an extravaganza that is the largest photography and lens-based art biennial in America, founded in 2010 here in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Maintraum: In the Wake
“I met the Maintraum boys when we were all young and filled with fire and audacious intensity. Now we’re senior citizens…nagged by the gnawing question, ‘Is my work still relevant?‘ ” Kevin T. Kelly has an answer.
Mark Ulriksen at Studio Kroner
Scrappy and zany, Ulriksen’s popular illustrations make the dailies a bit more palatable from the everyman point of view. See what he has to say at Studio Kroner this month.
NICK CAVE’S FIRST RETROSPECTIVE, FOROTHERMORE, MCA CHICAGO, MAY 14 –OCT. 2,
Be bedazzled. Be inspired to make the world a better place with Nick Cave to guide you there.
Human Rights/Derechos Humanos, Prints by Oaxacan and Cincinnati Artists
Art has the universal power to speak to people across borders of culture, race and language.
SOS ART Cincinnati, an organization promoting peace and justice through art, uses this
ability of art to create bridges between people.
Staged at Manifest Gallery
A small thematic exhibition entitled Staged was a call for artwork made under direction, with meticulous planning “and a significant degree of control” with no dictates on the final mediums.
August 2022
Sense and Sensibility by Jennifer Perusek
There is always something so special about seeing a fashion exhibit at the Taft Museum of Art.
Over the years, it has carved out its own voice within the fashion museum landscape – especially within the fashion in film genre.
Red Studio by Ekin Erkan
This exhibition prods viewers into the role of a sleuthing detective. The works exhibited are, of course, masterful: Matisse’s vermillion fauvism needs no introduction!
Zory Inside and Out: The Pandemic Portraits
For Zory, the pandemic was the occasion for a deep dive into oneself, a time without our customary distractions of work, play, or other people. If we strip away our jobs and our households, cut out Netflix and Uber Eats, what did we find ourselves left with?
ARTclectic by Marlene Steele
ARTlectic Gallery owners, Starr and Tarry Shebesta, are boundlessly enthusiastic about the variety of talent found in the Cincinnati area…Their opening exhibition features the internationally recognized watercolors of Chris Krupinski.
Cincinnati Opera: trends and programs by Laura Hobson
A world premiere opera “Castor and Patience”, produced by Cincinnati Opera July 21 – 30 in Corbett Theater of the School for Creative and Performing Arts, drew rave reviews from critics and attendees alike.
July 2022
Aeqai: July 2022 – Editor’s comments
Editor’s Comments. June 2022. The summer season is visiting upon us both the glories of nature and its furies. In these turbulent times of war, rumors of war, disasters and upheaval, one might enjoy a reasonable respite in the columns posted here that invoke the timelessness of nature’s seasonal cycles.
Michael Scott: Preternatural
What’s in a number? We learn to count. But beyond counting begins an associative relationship with this abstract process. There is 1, 2 sides, trinity, 4 corners, five fingers (counting the thumb), 6 swans-a-swimming, seven days to the week, figure eight’s, “number 9… number 9” and then, we add a zero – 10.
Contemporary Arts Center Opens Creativity Center
Contemporary Arts Center Opens Creativity Center. By Laura A. Hobson. A new horizon opens at the Contemporary Arts Center, 44 E. Sixth Street, on Oct. 8 after seven years of planning. Begun in 2021, construction for a new Creativity Center will be finished in late August. During September, staff will install nine works of art.
Visualizing the world of Octavia Butler
By Josh Beckelhimer. Shaper of God is on display through October 4, 2022. CalArts’ REDCAT gallery displays a small but notable exhibition called Shaper of God by American Artist. Artist, who legally changed their name in 2013, aptly de-centers what might be their own artistic style.
Van Gogh and European Landscape
Van Gogh and European Landscapes is what the museum calls a “Focus Exhibition”: a small, intimate affair designed to encourage us to look more carefully. It’s a nice strategy and allows curators to use just a few borrowed works as the basis for a program.
Tokushi Japanese Woodblock Prints
Hiroshige. Kuniyoshi. Hokusai. These are a few of the revered masters of Japan’s most celebrated era of woodblock printmaking. Active in the 19th century, these artists’ works –featuring landscape views and the “pleasures of the floating world”–were collected avidly not only in their home country, but abroad.
Saad Ghosn: Scream and Beyond
A Call for Change.
Can art be a form of activism or is its power limited to the purely aesthetic realm? While artists and aestheticians continue to debate this, artist Saad Ghosn firmly believes that art has the ability to create a better world.
June 2022
Art in the Garden Highlights Many Media in Augusta, Kentucky
“Art enables us to find ourselves and love ourselves at the same time,” said Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, poet and scholar (1915 – 1968). His words ring true with many art events and institutions in the Tri-State.
Laura Hill Chapman: a Memorial
Laura Hill Chapman: a Memorial
By Marlene Steele, gently edited by Mark Schlachter
Born April 24, 1935, in Miami, Florida, a resident of Cincinnati since 1970, passed away at her residence on August 17, 2021
Art in Bloom
Spring and flowers go hand-in-hand, but flowers in art are nearly as closely linked. Today of course, the subject tends to make art lovers think first of the Impressionists: everyone knows about Monet’s marvelous gardens in Giverny and his seductively beautiful waterlily paintings. But flowers have enchanted painters since at least Roman times. We have Vesuvius to thank for preserving some very early murals featuring the gardens of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Vital Cotton: Kevin Beasley’s On Site
As I walked the sidewalk toward the Regen Projects gallery building off busy SantaMonica Boulevard, I heard a piercing scream. The brief, cryptic moment startled
Cherished: Visionaries & Voices
Pictures hung (centered) at 57 inches
Audience kept at a distance
Important art in glass cases
Keep everything quiet
Lights must be blinding
This is the manifesto I imagine persisting through museums across forever. It creates the very felt culture that leaves gallery goers wondering how to engage with art when such measures have been taken to protect it from them.
Space Considered: A Review of Remembrancer at Indian Hill Gallery
Described as one who both reminds of something and is also a reminder itself, Remembrancer is the title of the current exhibition at the Indian Hill Gallery. It places the work of Lisa Merida-Paytes, Robert Pulley, and Patrice Trauth in a manner that allows consideration of scale, space, light, materiality, and the self.
Breaking Water: Exploring approaches to the subject of water, liquidity, and feminism
Breaking Water: Exploring approaches to the subject of water, liquidity, and feminism
Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
On view through August 14th 2022
“Todd Hido: The Poetry of Darkness” & “Francisco de Goya: Los Disparates”
The University of Kentucky’s Art Museum is a two story jewelbox of a home for art. It is small, well-lit, and was—when I visited—unusually concerned with encouraging visitors to see behind the curtains of what an art museum, of whatever size, did and why. There was a small exhibit about the sorts of questions a museum asked about the objects it collected and a larger show about how the museum contextualized its new acquisitions in terms of the objects it already owned.
Aeqai: April/ May 2022 – Editor’s comments
We have several exciting reviews for you to enjoy in our Spring double posting!
Jon Kamholtz brings us two exhibits from the University of Kentucky Art Museum: Goya’s enigmatic series of etchings Los Disparates from the museum’s permanent collection and the titillating allure of Tom Hido: The Poetry of Darkness.
March 2022
Kennedy Heights Arts Center: New Exhibits and New Programs
Kennedy Heights Arts Center offers new exhibits and programs continuing its outreach and diversity mission, according to Executive Director Ellen Muse-Lindeman. For example, Juneteenth Cincinnati
Against the Received View of Art History: Curatorship as Genealogical Meaning-Making
Shin Gallery’s newest exhibition, Amalgamation: Celebrating 10 Years of Shin Gallery, on view until April 23, 2022, is perhaps one of the most unique gallery shows I have seen. This is due to both the exhibition’s a-chronological curatorship and the opportunity to view old masters and so-called “blue chip” art historical bastions alongside “outsider artists,” enterprising young artists, and rediscovered artists alike. A
A Thought Is a River at the Carnegie
The group exhibition, A Thought Is a River at the Carnegie (Covington, KY) gathers and places both sculpture and painting in collective relationships to one another. Some works appear to be excavated from deep within the earth, while others are industrial and integrate artificial structuring. Collectively, the work undulates the passage of time; their materials reference an array of seemingly found or discarded objects, against smooth, gleaming forms that peer into the future. The exhibition’s play between these works contrasts one another through the possibilities of utopia and dystopia, diverging paths through their approach to material and its construction.
The Transforming Touch: “MARK: About the Artist’s Hand” at Manifest Gallery, March 4-April 1, 2022
The Cincinnati Art Museum is featuring a traveling exhibition of the work of a Black photography collective formed in New York City in the early 60’s.
March Issue of Aeqai Online
The Cincinnati Art Museum features two wonderful groundbreaking exhibitions.
Icons of Nature and History, a legacy exhibition of David Driskell, Cincinnati Art Museum, Feb. 25–May 15, 2022.
The Cincinnati Art Museum is featuring a traveling exhibition of the work of a Black photography collective formed in New York City in the early 60’s.
Working Together: The Photographers of the Kamoinge Workshop
The Cincinnati Art Museum is featuring a traveling exhibition of the work of a Black photography collective formed in New York City in the early 60’s.