Aladdin Sane: “A Whole New World” at Third Party Gallery
Edward Said’s “Orientalism” as a concept and a way of seeing is one of those Western-World-shattering moments in academics (and beyond) in which European literature, philosophy, politics, culture, and art are re-imagined and re-positioned all at the same time as a vast and beautiful conspiracy of dunces: imperialism in the guise of books and paintings […]
Observed: a review by Cole Carothers
In Manifest Gallery’s current exhibition, Observed, 18 artists explore the act of seeing and working from direct observation in graphite, pastel, oil paint, digital media and video. Their subjects are seen as close as arms’ length to a distance of miles with one artist delving into animate forms drawn from the nebulous space of wavelengths […]
Born Again
Tawara Yusaku at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I received a copy of Benjamin Hoff’s The Tao of Pooh when I was in the seventh grade. The book, an introduction to Eastern thought in general and Taoism in particular, came as a revelation to my young mind. For the first time I encountered a belief […]
Renovation of the Schmidlapp Gallery, Cincinnati Art Museum
At the Cincinnati Art Museum, I always breezed through the Schmidlapp Gallery with its antiquities on my way somewhere else. Well, that will never happen again since the gallery has been renovated to present “18 of the Art Museum’s most iconic works of art,” according to the wall text.* That declaration is unnecessary since the […]
A Local Culture: tradition and risk in Cincinnati
daydreaming of success of enhancing culture, of collaboration bringing this city up with all of our brilliance bringing this city to life with all of our passion filling this city up with our art, with our sounds with our faces and ideas … Excerpted from “Rubble of The Mind” by Jim Swill, Caustic Nostalgia: selected […]
Decadent Decades of Dress
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s current show, “Art Deco: Fashion and Design in the Jazz Age” is an exhibition contextualizing evening dresses from the Betty Colker Collection with textiles, prints, jewelry, furniture, and sundry other art objects related to the Art Deco aesthetic. The exhibition is decidedly female centric, focusing on the material trappings and images […]
Man About Art – Matt Distel
Matt Distel, a lively compact young man, is a curator, gallery director and general man about art. Anything written about him only scratches the surface of his penetrating involvement in the art life of Cincinnati, from the DeLeia to the CAC, from Country Club to Publico to The Weston, Distel has had his hand in […]
Transformative Career: Tom Bacher Still Fresh After 36 Years of Luminosity
Under the cover of darkness the city twinkles with the light from countless windows, streetlamps and signs, wrapping us in a blanket of familiarity. The city nightscape is as assuring and magical as a Christmas tree glowing in a dark living room, and as primal as fire. It is the light of our hometown, reflected […]
Letter from New York: Maps and Legends
This is the first in a series of a quarterly letters, which will cover painting shows in greater New York If you want to experience the New York art scene from afar, watch James Kalm’s videos. Kalm tirelessly travels the city documenting art openings and exhibitions from Manhattan to Brooklyn. His videos are a selective, […]
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 […]