Aeqai’s back with a double issue, January/February, 2016, and the new issue has just posted. We hope that you’ll find our slight increase in cultural criticism and some theoretical articles appealing, as we do, as we plan to increase posting articles like these. Jack Wood, a printmaker of increasing renown, sent us, by request, an essay he wrote on gender studies, really, called “Caroline Wells Chandler: Crocheting Utopia”. The essay examines a lot of contemporary artistic ideas via the lenses of new ideas in feminist thinking and also in gender studies. Jack’s taught me a lot about what the field of gender studies is about, and we hope that our older readers, in particular, will read his essay, as it proposes a bunch of ideas that will seem very new to many people, and I think that he explicates these ideas in the context of contemporary abstract art with real brilliance. And Annabel Osberg’s review from LA, of a show called “Capriccio”, work by Michael Dopp, also walks a fine line between art and cultural criticism, the best kind of contemporary writing on art, I think. We’ve a splendid series of reviews by Annie Dell’Aria, 3 Immersive Cinematic Exhibitions, which she recently saw in New York; her writing also blends specific criticism with ideas about the culture in which the cinemas were made. For those of you relatively new to this particular field of Media and Film Studies, we hope that you’ll find Dell’Aria’s writing and ideas as brilliant and comprehensive as we do. And Regan Brown, who’s in similar fields, returns to aeqai this month, with a positively astonishing review/essay/cultural critique based on The Weston Gallery downtown’s recent exhibition, an installation by artists Elena Harvey Collins and Liz Roberts called “Soft Regards”. Brown’s writing is truly an art form unto itself, and combines many contemporary genres and interdisciplinarities.
Jonathan Kamholtz returns with a review of a small, elegant choice show at Cincinnati Art Museum, of black-and-white landscape photographs from their permanent collection, called “Poetry of Place”, curated by associate photography curator Emily Bauman; the show looks gorgeous and Kamholtz’s review’s an excellent exegesis on that type of romantic photography. Marlene Steele gives a review of work by three women at the Downtown Women’s YWCA; she’s particularly impressed by collage work by Cincinnatian Sara Caswell Pearce. Cynthia Kukla offers great insights and analyses in the work of three other women artists at Carl Solway Gallery, too, including that of Cincinnatian Catherine Richards, an architect/artist whose career’s been soaring of late. Dan Burr does a superb review of a large group show at Wash Park Art Gallery in OTR, featuring some of this region’s strongest visual artists. Emil Robinson looks at the work of George Rush, the other artist whose work was just on display at The Weston Gallery downtown in the Aronoff Center, with his usual insights and cultural references. Aeqai fashion critic Jennifer Perusek gives a very astute analysis of work by young fashion designer Iris Van Herpen, whose work will be shown at Cincinnati Art Museum this exhibition year; fashion artists are more frequently addressing issues in the general culture, and are often on the cutting edge of contemporary cultural ideas; Van Herpen certainly is.
Laura Hobson’s Part I of II feature offers a look at the people behind the artwork, regional framers, packers/shippers, and restorers; Part II will appear in our next issue. Jane Durrell’s interview/profile of father-son team Kevin and Jack Kelly is written around these artists’ recently completed mural at The Greater Cincinnati airport. Chelsea Borgman is back with Part II of her two-part series on Performance Art; this article features mainly the dance group Pones and an interview with Drew Klein, Contemporary Arts Center’s Curator of Performance Art.
We have two more articles from New York this month. Zack Hatfield returns to aeqai with his “Letter from New York”, which is based upon recent explications of artwork concerning race, including thoughts on the new film about author James Baldwin’s writings. Karen Chambers was also recently in New York and offers an exceptional review of work by ceramicist George Voulkos at The Museum of Arts and Design. Other out of town reviews include Joelle Jamison’s look at a couple of shows in Houston’s Inner Loop; you’ll learn a lot about new work from that area in her review. And Jack Wood has another review/artist profile, of work by Ella Weber, who’s part performance artist, part visual artist, created around her day job at an area deli. That review pairs nicely with Annabel Osberg’s from LA. We also offer Kent Krugh’s monthly FotoFolio, images by regional photographer Lars Anderson, and also a visual look at artwork from Milan, which we quite like and want to share with our readers (a possible new monthly idea). Karen Chambers also saw a small but choice show of Max Beckmann’s paintings at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which she reviews with superb insights.
Our literary side features three new poems by Maxwell Redder, and my own reviews of two new novels, The Dispossessed, a bleak Hungarian novel, and Transit, brilliant English novelist Rachel Cusk’s newest book.
As always, we welcome your comments, and we’ll be back in March with a full March issue, too. If you click onto www.aeqai/main, it should take you right to the site. Please let us know if you are having any difficulties with our site (send to [email protected]) ; we’re aware of some and hope that they’re fixed.