If the name Mark Patsfall isn’t familiar, it’s because the man is more interested in promoting other artists than his own work. But make no mistake, he is one of Cincinnati’s most influential art world multi-hyphenates.
Mounting exhibitions by local creators in his Over-the-Rhine gallery and teaching them the trade in his cavernous print shop, Patsfall helped launch dozens of careers over the past four decades.

Exhibitions can be flat-out beautiful and they can bristle with ideas. When they are both you might want to send up a rocket in celebration, but perhaps the best thing is simply to go back and look at the show again.
The Cincinnati Art Museum’s extraordinary gathering of paintings in Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman invites second visits.

Despite the suggestion to the contrary, A Vanguard of Six is a conventional exhibition of six contemporary artists whose divergent interests make for a cerebral show that at times feels remote and disembodied. Considering the charged subject matter that many of these artists are dealing with, the inaccessibility and perceptual tedium of many of the works is perplexing...

It is a big deal when an internationally-recognized artist comes to town—particularly one who has local roots like Ann Hamilton. Her current exhibition, reading at Carl Solway is not the kind of large-scale, multi-sensory, immersive installation that one might expect from the artist.
Instead, the curated exhibition consists mainly of text-heavy prints that have informed and supported past projects.

If you hadn’t been paying close attention you might have missed it. There is a moment in Christopher Backs’ new solo exhibition Firmament (with Sass) where, underneath one of the hard, heavy folds of his stuffed “clouds” the surface erupts into the pure malerisch. Just beyond this exuberant mass of pigment and binder, on a separate piece within eye shot of the viewer...

“A young Californian has come out of the west. . .to take over the curator’s post in the Print Department of the Cincinnati Art Museum” reported the art columnist for the Cincinnati Post, September 24, 1971. The new curator was Kristin Spangenberg, this month marking her thirty-ninth year at the Museum, and I was the art columnist.

How might a contemporary artist respond to an art space that is rich in historical allusions such as the Taft Museum? Only the second “Emerging Artist” invited to exhibit her work, Kristine Donnelly found that an appealing question when she visited the museum’s inaugural Keystone Contemporary Series show last year for Emil Robinson’s exhibition, Axis Mundi. Compared to Robinson’s Contemporary Realist studio paintings however, Donnelly’s post-studio sculptures are more inconspicuous in their connection...

As part of their new series highlighting emerging local artists, this month the Malton Gallery is featuring work by musician Spencer Van der Zee. A collection of pen and ink drawings, Van der Zee has assembled an interesting exhibition that affirms its status as, and admiration for, outsider art.

Former fashion illustrator turned fine artist Donna Talerico’s new paintings at the Greenwich House Gallery unabashedly trumpet their influences. Inspired by post impressionist attitudes, Talerico’s work is direct; filled with light, color, and a painterly approach to the canvas. Her choice of subject matter: landscapes, street scenes, solitary figures, and cafés filled with anonymous patrons hearken back to the days when France was the epicenter of innovative western art.