PLASTIC HYPERBOLE: Rondle West at the Carnegie
Rondle West’s Pop-Rococo universe is something to behold. He is a maximalist working with miniatures, creating visual flourishes and earth-bound chandeliers out of thrift-store cast-offs, knick-knacks, dolls, action-figures, and whatever else lands in his aesthetic ballroom/landfill. He does not seem to know when to stop and yet each of his sculptures feel perfectly edited and […]
At War With The Obvious
“Not Just Pretty Pictures: The Carl M. Jacobs III Collection” at the Cincinnati Art Museum “I am at war with the obvious,” Photographer William Eggleston once said when asked about his work. I have a feeling Carl M. Jacobs III, the collector the exhibit […]
What’s The Big Idea? “Body of Art” at Prairie Gallery
“Body of Art,” the exhibit currently at Prairie Gallery (on display through August 20, 2011), is a group show in which the weirdness and greatness of the individual works often outshine the reason they were pulled together in the first place. The show is a grab-bag of video, photography, sculpture, painting and drawing, and while […]
Versoza’s World
“All things resist being written down,” Franz Kafka writes in an October 13, 1913 diary entry. Joey Versoza’s 2011artworks survey that resistance – objects refusing to go along with meaning, and meaning finding its way out of the experience of seeing. It’s hermeneutics […]
Insects and Astronauts:
Jeff Casto’s “Future Tense” at 1305 Gallery Jeff Casto’s shadowboxes and assemblages in “Future Tense,” his current exhibit at 1305 Gallery ending July 15, 2011, conjure Joseph Cornell’s Utopia Parkway workshop, as well as Pee Wee Herman’s Playhouse, extracting wistfulness from detritus, seriousness from folly. The toys, junk and other materials used in Casto’s art […]
“Outsiderness”
Outside of “Outsiderness” Thornton Dial, Courttney Cooper, and other “Hard Truths” In an essay in the catalog for “Hard Truths,” Thornton Dial’s brilliant retrospective at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (up until September 15, 2011), Greg Tate takes on the “hard truths” involved […]
The American Circus Poster
Out Of Kitsch and Into Dream: “The Amazing American Circus Poster: the Strobridge Lithographing Company” allows art to encompass life in a way that transforms both. The show, beautifully and meticulously curated and installed, has an epic quality, as if the curator were pulling together props and sentiments for a big-budget fever-dream/movie showcasing tropes from […]
Tony Dotson
Weebles Wobble and Boy Do They Fall Down “Tony Dotson: Shock and Awe” (up through April 9, 2011 at PAC Gallery in Walnut Hills) pushes Dotson’s smart-alecky yet innocently streamlined aesthetic into newer and fiercer territories. The show comes off like Philip Guston took all of his gritty/funky oeuvre through a car-wash and arranged each […]