Celebrating the Afterlife With Ed Moses Amid Ghanaian Fantasy Coffins
On January 6 in Los Angeles, Ernie Wolfe Gallery opened a show titled “Eddie M and the FAVs,” featuring Ed Moses’ paintings alongside elaborate Ghanaian coffins which the proprietor calls “fantastic afterlife vehicles (FAVs).” Eleven days later, Moses died of natural causes. It seems eerily opportune that this show’s opening was the last public outing […]
Marcos Novak: Transarchitecture and Traversing Augmented Reality
Truly a multifaceted artist whose new media processes and technologies wed organic forms with intermedia landscapes, artist Marcos Novak, born in 1957 in Caracas, Venezuela, eruditely explores architecture and industrial design in his installation artwork. During his career as a researcher at Austin University in Texas, Novak began focusing on the relationship between information […]
Dancing while the house burns down: “Jack &” a performance
Jack & centers around the experience of one man. Jack. His story is unique. He is a baker working the night shift at an industrial facility. He is reintegrating into society after time spent in prison — relearning how to exist in the outside world. He is smart, thoughtful and inquisitive. Jack’s story is also […]
Letter from Lebanon: “The Portrait as It Speaks”
“The face is a living presence; it is expression… The face speaks,” writes the French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas in his book Totality and Infinity. The face speaks of the “other” that it represents, to the “encounterer” who meets it, but also to the artist who depicts it in his/her portraiture artwork and to the viewer […]
FIRST JUDGMENT
Exhibition by Fukui formative abstract artist Tatsuya Tatsuta at National Art Center Tokyo. New Artist Unit, February 4-19, 2018. “You can’t go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy’s time,” preached Hazel Motes upon his rat-colored Essex, “nor your children’s if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you’ve got.” […]
'Hassard & Steele: Concrete Dreams" at the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum
“Geometry is like music,” artist Marlene Steele recently told a group of high school students, gathered around an exhibition of her work at the Richmond (Indiana) Art Museum. The students looked surprised but interested. “Drawing is a basic artist skill,” she went on, and showed them her sketch book. It is small, perhaps six by […]
National Underground Railroad Freedom Center: A Trip to the Past with Hope for the Future
On the Cincinnati banks of the Ohio River sits the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, a museum commemorating historic events of three decades prior to the Civil War. Slaves crossed the river to freedom from Kentucky. Cincinnati is where the Underground Railroad originated. Many people consider the center’s existence controversial. It also features an education […]
Playing Footsie – Hot and Cold Site Negotiations with F. C. Cincinnati
In recent months, Cincinnatians have been witnessing discussions about Futbol Club Cincinnati’s (F.C. Cincinnati) interest in building a new soccer stadium at one of three sites: the West End (near Downtown); Oakley’s Cast-Fab site near I-71; Newport, Kentucky (“Ovation” site at the confluence of the Ohio and Licking Rivers). This $200-250 million project will be […]
Review of Works at Tashiro-Kaplan Building in downtown Seattle
The Tashiro-Kaplan Building in downtown Seattle houses a variety of artist-run galleries and artist residences. 4Culture anchors a corner of the building, providing experimental gallery space and other artist services. This month, Kathryn Thibault’s installation “The Encroaching Field” leads the viewer into and through the space following the meticulously handcut vellum and other components, all […]
Heuck Retrospective at the Greenwich House Gallery
Cincinnatian Roger William Heuck descends from a family with an impressive artistic heritage. He is the great grand nephew of John Henry Twachtman on his mother’s side and on his father’s side is Edward Eisenlohr, who painted in Texas. His painting career began with his studies at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and was encouraged […]