Mapplethorpe Then and Now: 25 Years and a Conversation with FotoFocus’ Kevin Moore
Many different memories, ideas, conclusions, and issues are beginning to surface as FotoFocus Curator Kevin Moore and the Contemporary Arts Center each look toward Fall of 2015, the 25th anniversary of the original Robert Mapplethorpe photography show, “The Perfect Moment”, and its tumultuous aftermath. Sheriff Simon Leis and the Vice Squad closed down the exhibition, […]
Profile of Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis
Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis live a life that’s an intriguing combination of postmodern and ancient. Even as they work daily to innovate with ceramics and multi-media decorative arts, they also revel in the timeworn techniques of firing clay in kilns and conjuring new glazes to suit their vision. Parker and Davis together are […]
Switch Hitter: “Up at Bat” at the Cincinnati Art Museum
Andy Warhol didn’t know who Pete Rose was, and Rose didn’t know who Warhol was. They never met. Warhol chose the photo on which he based his now Cincinnati-famous screen-print from a selection of newspaper shots sent to him, because Rose couldn’t (or maybe wouldn’t) make it to New York City to pose for a […]
Post Fabrication at Wave Pool Gallery
Entering a new space is always an interesting experience. Whether it is a friend’s home or public building, you are faced with the task of conjuring up conclusions about that person or place based off of the physical elements around you – the interior structure, the smell, the reverberation in the wood as you walk […]
On Human-Altered Beauty: New and Newer Topographics at the Cincinnati Art Museum
The art of photography changed forever in 1975, the year that William Jenkins curated “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” at the International Museum of Photography in New York. The exhibit brought together eight artists who challenged the meaning of landscape photography priorly defined by the architects of photography as an art form—lensmen like […]
Encompass: encircle: embrace: A Fusing of the Imaginary with the Real
One feels the unlocking of something amidst Barbara Ahlbrand’s paintings. Energy, chaos, tranquility. The atmosphere in the gallery at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center, where a new retrospective of her work titled Encompass: encircle: embrace is being displayed, is simultaneously serene and chaotic. The textures Ahlbrand achieves fuse childish pandemonium with a mature grasp of […]
The Idler and the Crowd: “Wild West to Gilded Age: American Treasures from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art” at the Taft Museum of Art, February 6, 2015-May 24, 2015
If you had wanted an education in the transition from the 19th to the 20th centuries in American culture, the Taft Museum has been the place to be. In the past year and a half, the Taft has hosted the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s collection of American daguerreotypes, “Telling Tales” from the New-York Historical Society, […]
In Theory: Navigating reimagined territories in Now Here: Theoretical Landscapes at The Carnegie
What is a landscape? What exactly constitutes its borders and ambiguities? “Now Here: Theoretical Landscapes,” a new exhibit at The Carnegie in Covington, explores this complicated question, displaying a cornucopia of artworks by twenty-one regional artists who, through varied media, attempt to redefine the landscape genre. It becomes immediately evident upon entering the gallery that […]
“The Total Look: Rudi Gernreich, Peggy Moffitt, and William Claxton,” Cincinnati Art Museum, through May 24, 2015
The title of the Cincinnati Art Museum exhibition featuring the apparel designs of Rudi Gernreich – notorious for his topless swimsuit — is inspired. “The Total Look” defines the Austrian-born designer’s aesthetic concept that every element of an ensemble should complement every other. He designed everything from head to toe – hats to shoes – […]
Women in Abstraction: Phyllis Weston Gallery
Abstract Art lovers’ Alert! The current exhibit featured at the Phyllis Weston Gallery in O’Bryonville will thrill you. The benign art of collage is taken in several engaging directions in Kathy Salchow’s multi-element collages. Natural and textural elements assembled in fanciful combinations engage the viewer’s imaginative interpretations and enjoyment. “Early Bird Tobacco Bag” is comprised […]