Ryan McGinness' exhibition of new paintings creates an optical second reality in the Vance-Waddell Gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum. He uses florescent paint to create a three-dimensional effect. The illusion is so believable that it's hard to imagine anyone not itching to touch the panels.  

Ryan McGinness' exhibition of new paintings creates an optical second reality in the Vance-Waddell Gallery at the Cincinnati Art Museum. Lights are turned off; heavy, dark curtains hang in the doorway; black lights shine onto the wood panels and bring everything painted there to life. It's a little disconcerting, looking into a painting and feeling as though you might trip into some "Alice in Wonderland" alternative universe. Tuesday-Sunday through Feb. 15, 2009.  

What this means is not at all simple. The papers are painted beautifully in the loose but contained way of a lot of art right now. It's also politically charged. But bringing the two together makes something consuming. We, as viewers, stand face-to-face, surrounded by the criminal acts of our generation.  

At first glance Brooklyn-based artist Kambui Olujimi’s solo show at Meyers Gallery at the University of Cincinnati, The Clouds Are After Me, seems sparse. Loose-leaf pages hang from the white walls in likely formations. They become both more interesting and more disappointing when you look a little closer. The “clouds” that follow the artist are the unlucky, the illegal and the politically incorrect.  

Walking into Matt Morris’ solo exhibition at Semantics, I Will Never Recover from this Macaroon, is like walking into a house the morning after a decadent, frenetic party. Candles, just snuffed out, drip wax onto satin sleeves and wood floors. Vanity mirrors made of tin foil and encaustic have whited-out faces, as if someone’s having trouble looking at himself. Tissues, damp with tears and lipstick, tossed away. A mirror belies the decadence of cocaine — a lot of it, spilled irreverently onto the floor. The gallery is open noon-4 p.m. on Saturday, and starting at 7 p.m. on Saturday it will host “Sonic in the Parlor,” featuring several local musicians and sound-friendly artists responding to the exhibition.  

It hasn’t yet been a year since Publico, the non-commercial, artist-run exhibition space on Clay Street, closed its doors. Nonetheless, the Weston Art Gallery has already pulled together the collaborators again for its current show, Since You’ve Been Gone. The exhibition sweeps Publico’s Over-the- Rhine vibe into the mainstream — the Weston is part of downtown’s Aronoff Center for the Arts — and infects it with an impulsive nostalgia. Tuesday-Sunday. Through Nov. 8.  

Posters announcing fund-raisers were designed with an eye to the vintage: coin cans, retro typefaces, "Everything must go!" jargon. Publico's street sign, a light box with black san serif letters, taken from its original spot and replaced in the Weston, becomes an ironic flashback.   

Fifteen graffiti artists from around the country. … But mostly (we show) local artists and outsider artists. Those are my two specialties as I’m learning this busi ness. … The gallery opened April 2. I’m a newbie.   

James Crump just arrived in Cincinnati to serve as the Cincinnati Art Museum’s new curator of pho tography.   

It's easy to get lost in the Uffizi. Florence's most prestigious art museum is large and full of some of the best known paintings in the entire world. These works often eclipse other paintings