We’ve not even been open a month and U·turn is already lined up with all kinds of exhibitions, related events, parties and projects that those of us that run the space have going on with our own art. At the risk of running long in our tales regaled, this e-mail will have extensive information about a lot of our news, from our upcoming Halloween party and next exhibition to an opportunity for pretty much anyone to exhibit in our December project. So please read on to the bottom about opportunities YOU HAVE to be a part of upcoming U·turn exhibitions and publications. We would be so pleased if you could meet up with us at any or all of these events. Come, chill, appreciate the view. Thank you thank you thank you for all of your support as we’ve been getting things started. We hope it was a good enough time to come back for more!
Best,
U·turn Art Space
**GENERAL INFORMATION**
U·turn Art Space is located at 2159 Central Avenue in Brighton.
Gallery is free and open to the public, with street parking in front of the space and on nearby streets.
Regular gallery hours are on Saturdays, 12-4 pm, and by appointment.
Mission Statement: U·turn Art Space is a collective-run alternative arts space that was initiated in fall 2009. The U·turn Art Space collective is comprised of five Cincinnati-based artists: Molly Donnermeyer, Matt Morris, Patricia Murphy, Zach Rawe and Eric Ruschman. Each month U·turn delivers fresh, compelling exhibitions of emerging and established artists. The gallery has a special interest in new developments in sculpture and object making, but is excited to represent the contemporary landscape of art as broadly as possible. Its goal is to bring shows into Cincinnati that are relevant; that provide an opportunity for discourse, ideas, and play to be forced together, awkwardly or elegantly, and offer itself to a viewing audience. Along with art exhibitions, U·turn hosts a range of accompanying readings, performances and events that raise probing questions and plural perspectives. U·turn’s efforts are intended for audiences in the surrounding Brighton district, Cincinnati at large and the whole of the Midwest.
Brought To You By has a couple more Saturdays left to go. The gallery hours from 12-4 on Saturdays synch up with semantics gallery down the street from us. So for one short trip over to Brighton, you can see our inaugural group exhibition as well as Paul Coors’ solo project Before I Start Singing at semantics (1107 Harrison Avenue). We’ve been genuinely please with the turn out for the past two weekends. Many pleasant conversations about the art, the neighborhood and aesthetics have ensued. Stop on by this weekend!
Eric Ruschman
If Anything Happens You Are My Constant
The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center
1028 Scott Blvd.
Covington, KY 41011
Opening Reception
Friday, October 30, 2009
6:00 - 9:00 pm
Opening Reception Admission: $8.00
Students / Seniors: $5.00
Free for Carnegie members and children under 12
His new body of work entitled If Anything Happens You Are My Constant is constructed from a regimen of exercises in painting, installation and combinations of the two. Delicate renderings in oil paint of animal characters continue to make occasional appearances in a vocabulary of color, shapes and found objects that have broadened considerably since Ruschman’s previous exhibitions. Substitutions have been made, so that stickers, stenciling or the charm of the high-gloss monochrome are interspersed with his painted narratives; the saccharine visual experience that Ruschman masters now has some resistance built in. Rather than resemble the simply summarized life lessons represented in anthropomorphic Fables, a single take around the room involves paintings (hung alone, in groups, or occasionally leaned at the bottom of the wall), objects and cluttered shelves—a game of chutes and ladders through the artist’s recollections and daydreams.
Ruschman has been occupied with issues in the maturation process throughout his young career. What may seem like a logical set of steps from childhood to adulthood to some is called into question, deconstructed and reassembled into abstractions of life plans by Ruschman and his team of black kittens, unicorns, voles and other critters. Throughout the past year, he has been a collector of visceral experiences and unassuming bits of wisdom from his everyday life. Paintings make offhand or straightforward references to a day trip to an alpaca farm, evenings immersed in Cincinnati’s local music scene, tender moments with house pets and careful appropriations from pop culture, such as the empowered “Toonces the Driving Cat” of Saturday Night Live and Youtube fame. Ruschman has gravitated to these scenes because of specific humanizing elements and has drawn connections between disparate source materials in order to populate a situation in which playful, innocent characters find themselves caught in dilemmas of aesthetics, displacement and the challenges of adulthood.
Eric Ruschman earned his Bachelors in Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 2007. He has an established exhibition record in the Cincinnati area, having shown at the Art Academy’s Pearlman and Chidlaw Galleries, ArtWorks Gallery, semantics gallery, Krafthaus, Synthetica Gallery and the Cincinnati Visual Fringe Festival. This is his second solo exhibition. His work recently graced the cover of the first volume of the online zine Sparklezilla. Ruschman is also a curator and collective member of semantics gallery and U·turn Art Space, two alternative gallery spaces in the Brighton district of Cincinnati.
-Matt Morris
colleague, artist, freelance curator + art critic
For more about Eric Ruschman’s work, please visit: www.ericruschman.com
U Turns Halloween: Whatever Costumes Go On Must Come Off
Saturday, October 31, 2009, 8—12 p
Our first exhibition will be wrapped up, and things will be coming off the walls. an empty gallery like that needs to be HAUNTED for one evening. think a balloon forest for the sleek creative set of cincinnati to hunt in.
-participate in a 'best costume' contest. the winner will be presented with a ghost trophy made by our own zach rawe.
-spook or snog to a playlist blasting from that dark corner.
-candy for trick or treating.
-potluck it. the more people who bring food and drinks along with them to share, the more there will be at the party.
Rumors on the underground are that Brighton and the surrounding area will have a number of parties going on that night. Add U·turn to your stops as your trick or treat for the evening.
Jessie Bowie
Don’t Be Scared Be Prepared
November 7—28th, 2009
Opening reception: Saturday, November 7th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm
U · turn is proud to present Don’t Be Scared Be Prepared, which features the work of Miami, Florida based artist Jessie Bowie. Bowie received her BFA from Ringling College and has recently participated in a residency in New York City. In her first solo exhibition in the Midwest, Bowie will be presenting a body of work comprised of both pen and ink drawings and site-specific wall paintings. The former are dense with detail and exude an impulsive, paranoid approach to the ideation and creative processes. Painting, in contrast, is a markedly populist activity as Bowie uses it. Her wall paintings call the training of her hand into question, instead celebrating a sloppiness that may be more conventional for hand painted signs than for traditional, high art techniques. Served together, her intricate drawings function as contained hypothetical realities in contrast to the maximalist aesthetics at work in her installations and site-specific wall works.
Bowie draws in absolute liberation. The defined, hatched mark making with which she realizes absurd or nightmarish scenarios are reminiscent of cartoon illustration or film storyboarding. Bowie is like a child who refuses to go into the ocean after seeing Jaws for the first time, and her artmaking reflects that worrisome outlook. Her drawings depict everyday folk located in the midst of critical plot twists and dénouements for narratives that Bowie has constructed only for the duration of the artwork; missing explanations for surrealistic elements in play and uncertain conclusions to these dramas confirm the works as mental flashes in a mind drunk off of pop cultural imagery and concerned about the implications of just about everything.
Jessie Bowie is a jester whose special talent is to look at our world’s past and present without actually looking at it, as if staring at a Gorgon’s reflection in a mirror, so as not to be turned to stone. Rather than confront her stimuli head on, Bowie is an experienced escapist who retreats into realms of astounding intricacy and unexpected, obscure metaphor. To call her work ‘gut wrenching’ is not to over-dramatize the point, but to identify a place of violent extremes that she frequently suggests. Sci-fi monsters, cowboys, and menageries of extinct behemoths, exotic zoo animals and frizzy house pets populate her dreamlike alternative dimensions. Beget by Surrealist Leonora Carrington’s penchant for suspense and ambiguity and Hieronymus Bosch’s fey wit and sense of action, Bowie represents a startlingly contemporary fantasy on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Tales left inchoate frame mysterious problems rather than presenting concrete solutions. When real world events, celebrities and global epidemics do make cameo appearances, they are jarring additions to the scenery. A bounty of associations and appropriations subvert singular readings, and our attempts to formulate such prove daunting. This exhibition is built from flagrant attempts and failures to cope by means both distracted and determined in a world out of control.
Opening the SAME EVENING as Bowie’s exhibition at U·turn is our own Matt Morris’ solo exhibition at Aisle Gallery.
Matt Morris
PAIRS WELL WITH
Objects and Installations
Aisle Gallery
424 Findlay Street 3rd Floor
Cincinnati, OH 45214
M-F 1-4 p or by appointment 513.241.3403
November 7 – December 20, 2009, 5-8 p
November 7: opening reception, 7-10 p
November 21: artist talk, 1-3 p
Pairs Well With is a solo exhibition by artist and writer Matt Morris, a multimedia exhibition that has been conceived and installed in direct response to the nature and idiosyncrasies of Aisle’s newly expanded gallery space.
And now for the chance for you and everyone you know to be a part of one of the earliest exhibitions to be held at U·turn. Read on!
IT’S BEEN A ROUGH YEAR FOR GINGER:
U·TURN’S OPEN CALL GINGERBREAD EXHIBITION
Deadline for intent to exhibit: November 26, 2009
One night exhibition: Saturday, December 6, 2009, 7-10 p
As part of our mission as a gallery venue, U·turn aims to engage a community around the space through structured art exhibitions and a range of social events. December provides us with an opportunity to do a little of both with a one evening engagements where we will display, discuss, appreciate and in some cases consume art or art-adjacent projects that employ gingerbread as its primary medium. We will be excited to receive traditional gingerbread houses, along with contemporary art projects that use foodstuffs in objects and installations. Also, this gingerbread project allows us to expand the terrain for the creative act and enthusiastically involve individuals that have not before considered themselves artists. Bakers, amateur cooks, students, established artists seeking a momentary outlet for a different form of artwork, ALL ARE WELCOME.
Along with the restriction of gingerbread constituting the majority of the artwork, we request that each piece be no bigger than 2 feet in any direction. With so few limitations, these projects could be playful, totally edible and whimsical, or else downright conceptual.
In order to prepare as best as possible for what could be a wildly tempting, extravagant exhibition, we ask that if you plan to participate, please contact us by e-mail or through facebook before Thanksgiving, November 26, 2009. If possible, send us a description of your planned artwork, or images and sketches as you have them. No work will be for sale that evening. The show is just for our communal enjoyment. Please pass on the word to anyone you think will be interested!
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS TO VOLUME II OF BRIGHTON APPROACH
U·turn Art Space periodically releases a printed publication in conjunction with its monthly exhibitions in the hopes of encouraging a dialogue between literary and aesthetic sensibilities. U·turn collective will be issuing its SECOND zine under the title Brighton Approach Vol. II. Although the first issue had a theme, we've left this one open ended. Entries may be submitted in many forms: poetry, drawings/collages, photographs, snapshots, short stories, thank you letters, recipes/ instructions, quotations, etc.
We are accepting submissions now until Saturday, December 26. Final copies will be printed in black and white on 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper folded once, so please format submissions no greater than 5 inches wide and 8 inches tall.
Please email to u.turn.artspace@gmail.com, pmurphy@artacademy.edu, mail to U-turn Art Space 2159 Central Avenue Cincinnati OH, or drop it off in the mail slot at 2159. Brighton Approach will be distributed on and after January 2.
Okay, if you made it this far, than not only are you a super trooper (circa Abba), you are also one of the most informed participants in Cincinnati’s burgeoning arts community. We hope to see you around sometime soon at one of these many opportunities. We look forward to getting to know you, sharing in rich discussion about art and community. We look forward to everything ahead.
Best,
U·turn Art Space
