“The Amazing American Circus Poster: the Strobridge Lithographing Company” allows art to encompass life in a way that transforms both. The show, beautifully and meticulously curated and installed, has an epic quality, as if the curator were pulling together props and sentiments for a big-budget fever-dream/movie showcasing tropes from a collective childhood. The imagery is antique and somehow unsettling in its...

Curators of exhibitions rarely receive more than a mention in exhibition signage–“curated” or “organized by.” But it is nearly impossible to talk about “For a Better World 2007” without acknowledging the organizer, Saad Ghosn (head of U.C.’s department of pathology and laboratory medicine and an artist), and the show’s genesis. It grew out of another of the apparently indefatigable...

Editor’s Note: Because Daniel Brown is both Editor of Aeqai and the guest curator for the exhibition “Narrative Figuration” at The Weston Gallery in the Aronoff Center, it is Aeqai’s policy that our reviewers not review his shows. Therefore, we have asked the five artists in the show to write a brief artist’s statement about his or her work in the exhibition, and...

There is something about a nude body that makes us want to look. All bodies are different, unique in their own way. We all have feelings about our own bodies when we look at ourselves naked in the mirror—whether we love the way we look, feel dissatisfaction or just avoid it all together. It’s interesting to look at a nude painting or a photograph—to see the expression on the...

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This: New Paintings – Eric Ruschman at Aisle Gallery
While the rest of us, by framing our identities on social networking websites, playlists, Netflix queues, and avatars, fulfill the prophecies of dead postmodern writers who saw daily life being taken over by the effects of technology; Cincinnati artist Eric Ruschman takes the task...

The environmental context is often an afterthought when we view art, although the surroundings set the stage for the work. Everything from the size of the room and the lighting, to the formality or casualness of the venue affects our perceptions. The default installation setting of white gallery walls, especially when dealing with two-dimensional art works such as painting and drawing...

In the religion of architecture, space is the deity, or the guiding spirit. It is the mystical property by which architects want their buildings to be judged, it is that which, when it is truly great, transports them into rapture. The strange thing about space is that you cannot see it. Nor can you feel it, smell it, hear it, or taste it. It emerges out of proportions,...

This year’s Selections from the International Drawing Annual 6 at Manifest Gallery boil down to a duel between two conceptions of pictorial space. On one side, representing a traditional approach to an illusionistic environment is Lance Moon’s 34” X 46” graphite on paper Untitled (Child With Bull). On the other, California artist Alexis Manheim’s True Love...

I have lived in Northside for almost seven years now, so I am embarrassed to admit that my recent visit to Prairie Gallery to see House: New Works by Tony Becker on a rainy Wednesday afternoon was my first trip to the space. A second floor walk-up with a mission of “Engaging communities through art,” Becker’s installation of hand-folded and hand-decorated paper houses is a perfect...