Kevin Muente’s show “Forgotten Land” is currently up at Marta Hewett Gallery, located in Cincinnati’s Pendleton neighborhood. He uses figures within these landscapes to create a narrative through single or multiple images. Often the images echo classical or referenced figures from orthodox art.
Moving in a different direction from his traditional landscapes, Muente stages photos of friends and family posed with costumes or props in carefully selected locati...
Frank Herrmann, Slayer of Dragons Solo Exhibition, “New Works”, Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts
December 23rd, 2017 | Published in *, December 2017 | Cynthia M. Kukla
Buoyant-26, watercolor, 10″ x 7 ½,” 2016
Painter extraordinaire Frank Herrmann means what he says. In a 2016 interview, Herrmann stated: “Never wait for the great idea or wait for the perfect moment when the work has stalled. You have to work through those moments, that may be depressing but just keep working.”1
Depending on where you stand when you view them, Kevin Muente’s landscapes can be two different paintings. When seen from a distance, they initially appear to be works of almost photographic realism. When you get close to the paintings and notice his finely detailed brush strokes, the formal composition of the work dissolves. Forest trees and undergrowth, flowing water, fields of snow, twilight sky become abstracted lines, forms, and colors. It turns out the paintings actually exist somewhere between these two extremes. The fluctuating qua...
