Another Impressionist show? Yawn. This might be the reaction of some who wander into the small gallery at the Taft Museum of Art featuring a new exhibition titled, American Impression from Cincinnati Collections. But after you get over first impressions, no pun intended, stop to consider the historical context of an exhibition like this one. It isn’t just any other...
The Thomas R. Schiff gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum hosts a selection of work from the collection of the 21C Museum Hotel, the boutique hotel (soon to be chain) that has been open in a repurposed set of warehouses in downtown Louisville for the past several years and which will soon occupy the former Metropole Apartment Building in downtown Cincinnati next to the Contemporary Arts Center. This exhibit...
Walking into Radha’s exhibition at Xavier, I was transported to India, which I first visited too many years ago—first because I hoped to return and expected I would, but haven’t—yet. What evoked India for me were not just the Hindu gods and voluptuous goddesses and the decorative motifs the India-born artist uses, but, perhaps oddly, the use of canvas as the ground for some of her artworks and her dense layering of color.
To interview Mary Baskett, known for individualistic dress as well as for expertise in Western and Japanese prints, I wear the single spectacular piece of clothing in my own closet, a winter coat of many colors. “Jane! Your coat!” says Baskett, on opening the door of the Mt. Adams house where she and her husband live and where she has her gallery.
On a Wednesday evening, in a room above the raucous crowd assembled for Mayday Bar in Northside’s Bingo night, five artists of various ilk (visual artists Britni Bicknaver & Paul Coors, photographer-designer-street artist Floyd Johnson, designer-entrepreneur Rosie Kovacs, and poet Dana Ward) gathered to discuss an issue that has effected them each, directly or indirectly: the issue of “creative drain” in Cincinnati.
Creative, Multi-tasking “It’s been one of those days when everything went opposite to what I expected,” says David Knight, Director of Exhibitions and Collections at Northern Kentucky University, as he sits down at his desk in the office adjacent to the gallery. He has been presiding over NKU art, in its differing incarnations, for about twenty years.
Artist, Writer, Curator. At 26 years of age, artist, writer, & curator Matt Morris is quite accomplished. With several years worth of published writings in regional and international publications (including this journal,) participation in five group shows and two curatorial projects this past year alone, as well as being a founding member of the U-turn Art Space collective since 2009...
A Theory of Context and the Failure of the Ready-made. The ready-made is so entrenched in contemporary practice that its status is canonical. So much of today’s -and yesterday’s- conceptually driven work would be unimaginable without it, and yet by redefining art making for the past half-century or more, the ready-made has become emblematic of society’s disconnect with art and art’s disconnect with itself.
Ted Borman's astonishing new paintings, Ghost Clouds, are his most evolved work to date. They manage to combine rich references to art history and to contemporary popular culture wittily, intelligently, and seamlessly. Selecting a deliberately faux-naif painting style, Borman's work is reminiscent of other artists prone to radical reductionism and simplification, from Piero della Franscesca to John Marin and...
