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...

Jimmy Baker makes difficult art, and makes it extremely well. His solo show at Contemporary Arts Center, Remote Viewing, is only ten paintings but they are quite enough for the long, thin gallery that stretches along the south side of the CAC’s second floor. The works hang at a distance from one another, as they should. Any closer would invite visual chaos.

“Tony Dotson: Shock and Awe” (up through April 9, 2011 at PAC Gallery in Walnut Hills) pushes Dotson’s smart-alecky yet innocently streamlined aesthetic into newer and fiercer territories. The show comes off like Philip Guston took all of his gritty/funky oeuvre through a car-wash and arranged each piece in a parking lot for an impromptu flea market...

Entering Jun Kaneko’s solo exhibition at the Carl Solway Gallery, I was smacked in the face by his Nagoya Wall – Tile Wall, 1987, even though the ceramic work is installed on a freestanding wall at the back of the corridor gallery. It did more than draw me into the space, it compelled me to enter, passing by—or bypassing—the artist’s wall works...

When I walked into “Going Dutch: Contemporary Design from Local Collections” at the Cincinnati Art Museum, I was overwhelmed—by the volume of words covering all four walls of the diminutive gallery—and under-whelmed by the number of objects on view—19. Given that ratio, I thought the words better be good. The exhibition showcases products from the Dutch design collective...

What instincts guide us when we first meet other people? Is it our reading of gestural clues, a tilt of the head or an expression? Or, is it something more basic that leads one to know that Jymi Bolden is a warm, intelligent man ready for a hug?
Bolden presides over Art Beyond Boundaries...