Double Meaning: “African American Art since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center” at the Taft Museum of Art
Double Meaning: “African American Art since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center” at the Taft Museum of Art by Keith Banner The Taft Museum of Art’s “African American Art since 1950: Perspectives from the David C. Driskell Center,” running from February 15 through April 28, 2013, tries very hard to live up to […]
Welcome to the Hotel Synesthesia: 21C, Downtown Cincinnati
Keith Banner Welcome to the Hotel Synesthesia: 21C, Downtown Cincinnati By Keith Banner “If you don’t know where you are going any road can take you there.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland The day after 21C Cincinnati, the lush hotel/museum right next door to the Contemporary Art Center, opened, I went for a visit. […]
Toy Stories: “Altered States” at Miller Gallery
Toy Stories: “Altered States” at Miller Gallery By Keith Banner The paintings in “Altered States: New Paintings by Rob Jefferson and Jonathan Queen” (currently up on the walls at Miller Gallery in Hyde Park through November 23, 2012) are beautifully executed works that exemplify eerie perfection. The show is one of the best I’ve seen […]
Glamorama: Herb Ritts at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and Edward Steichen at the Taft Museum of Art
Glamorama: Herb Ritts at the Cincinnati Art Museum, and Edward Steichen at the Taft Museum of Art by Keith Banner Herb Ritts’ show “L. A. Style” at the Cincinnati Art Museum (up through December 30, 2012) has an etched-in-stone, funereal quality fused with a kinky soullessness. Ritts is one of those seminal photographers of an […]
We Don’t Need Another Hero: “You Are My Superhero” at the Dayton Art Institute
Superheroes get on my nerves. Enough already. In our fan-boy, Big-Baby-Man culture, where Batman and Spiderman are given as much significance and gravitas as King Lear and Hamlet, action figures have become prized status symbols, cialis online pharmacy and Comic-Con has become the main place to measure pop-culture significance, it’s easy to see why. But […]
Child's Play: "Funny Mirrors" at AEC Gallery, "Inventories & Diagrams" at PAC Gallery and "SOS Art" at Cincinnati Art Academy
By: Keith Banner In “Funny Mirrors,” a three-person show at AEC Gallery in Covington, Kentucky, Billy Simms drains a clown’s life of all color and joy, creating a wall-novel out of wood-block relief prints that is both astoundingly sad and gleefully sinister. The way his bit of the show is hung, along a hallway at […]
A Godfather of Pop Becomes the Pop-father of a God: Jim Dine’s “Pinocchio (Emotional)” outside the Cincinnati Art Museum
With his new bronze sculpture, “Pinocchio (Emotional),” a scary-monster/sweetie-pie welcoming people outside the Cincinnati Art Museum, Jim Dine conjures a lot of pop-culture ghosts and nightmares while also paying homage to the original 1883 children’s novel, The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. The statue is imposing, and the glazed patina of it harkens back to Rodin. High […]
Pop-Secret: Keith Benjamin’s “The Weight” at PAC Gallery
A stratified structure of litter (constructed of packaging that once housed Cheez-Its, cans of Bud Light and Diet Coke, and Pop-Secret microwavable bags of popcorn) rests precariously atop an old-school reel-to-reel tape recorder in Keith Benjamin’s “the weight,” a sculpture that teeters toward absurdity while evoking the loneliness and exactitude of a hoarder’s consciousness. Nothing […]
WHERE IS THE LOVE? Julião Sarmento at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center
The wall text for Julião Sarmento’s exhibit (closing January 22, 2012) at the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art promises an exhibit built on “the concept of the book as an aesthetic and visceral object.” It goes on to report that many of Sarmento’s drawings exemplify the “sensuous gesture of holding a book.” […]
Stupid on Purpose: “Peter Saul: Print Retrospective, 1966-2011”
Like doodles scribbled on the edges of homework, Peter Saul’s exquisitely moronic pictures (on display mostly in lithographic form at Carl Solway Gallery through December 22, 2011) have a rote yet somehow ominous quality, a blurry merger of the popular and profane. While seeming to be birthed from boredom and cynicism like punk rock, they […]