“Everything But the Meaning”: A Review of Joel Meyerowitz, Seeing Things: A Kid’s Guide to Looking at Photographs (New York: Aperture, 2016)
In the past 35 or so years, Joel Meyerowitz has seen more than a dozen monographs of his photographs published, and has contributed pictures and text to others. He has become known by now, more or less successively, as a street photographer (one of the earliest to have worked extensively in color), a landscape photographer, […]
Twin Utopias at the CAC Lobby: On Tomás Saraceno and Zaha Hadid
Last year, when the Contemporary Art Center refurbished its lobby, it seemed to also be changing its identity. Vanished was the vision the center’s architect, the late Zaha Hadid, had realized: minimalist abstraction was traded for comfy chaos. Now, members of the city’s creative class could bond over the mana of overpriced cortados and the […]
Little Bang Theory: Christian Schmit’s Universe
“In the middle of the night, peering intensely at some small thing, I do become lost, consumed by the intensity of this condensed universe” – Christian Schmit (from Artist Statement for Lost in the Making) There is something foreboding about diving solo into a nocturnal inner world, especially of the diminutive sort. From The Adventures […]
TODT’s Hopeful Monster at Hudson Jones Gallery
TODT’s Hopeful Monster opened at Hudson Jones Gallery at 1110 Alfred St. in Cincinnati’s industrial pocket, Camp Washington, on the 21st of May, beginning what is sure to be an exciting extension of the curatorial oeuvre of gallery director Angela Jones. TODT is an artist collective that originally consisted of four members: Brother, Brother, Sister, […]
“Drawing on Second Sight,” Lindner Gallery, Kennedy Heights Art Center through July 30, 2016
“Drawing has always been a way to interact with what I see and feel – that could be the material world or the world of dreams and memory or some combination of all of these,” explains Cincinnati artist Kate Kern who studied at the University of Dayton (BFA) and the University of Cincinnati (MFA in […]
Aaron Skolnick’s Running Where We Stand
Aaron Skolnick’s Running Where We Stand opened Friday June 3rd at Glacier Gallery at 1107 Harrison Gallery in Cincinnati’s Brighton district. To put it lightly Skolnick is an intensely intelligent human being, both intellectually and visually, his work operating as he put it, like “a potato with many different tubers, variously intertwined.” He references, expounds, […]
“UNRAVELED: Textiles Reconsidered,” Contemporary Arts Center, through August 14, 2016
When you walk into “UNRAVELED: Textiles Reconsidered” at the Contemporary Arts Center, the first piece you encounter is Legacies, 2006, by Kari Steihaug (b. 1962, Norway; resides Oslo). With an unfinished sweater hanging high overhead, it dominates the gallery and is the perfect way to start the show visually and intellectually. It succinctly illustrates curator […]
Tom Marioni’s Dry Fresco, Drawings and Bronze at Carl Solway Gallery
How are we to understand the intentions of a conceptual artist like Tom Marioni when he mounts an exhibition of objects using traditional mediums like fresco, drawing and bronze sculpture? It’s true that with conceptual art the medium is dictated by the idea (as Marioni has said with typical humor, a conceptual artist is “free […]
Domestic Departures
Kennedy Heights Arts Center (KHAC) is host to artist in residence Susan Byrnes and her nostalgic narrative: Domestic Departures. Conjuring the ever personal yet universal experience of home, her body of work engages the topic through a myriad of mediums, including sculpture, sound, performance, and more. From the historic 19th century architecture to the doorbell […]
Formal Function: Strategies of Abstraction Through June 11, 2016 at The Carnegie
Don’t let the title frighten you. This is quite simply one of the best abstract shows I’ve seen in years. A wide variety of what passes for abstraction today may open up a world of techniques and formats. Abstraction has run the gamut of possible definitions in the past century, and seems far from running […]