Unemployed Title

U·turn Art Space is very pleased to announce Unemployed Title, a solo exhibition by sculptor Keith Benjamin, to be accompanied by a print-to-order monograph with essay by critic and artist Matt Morris. Keith Benjamin reconfigures recycled materials from his everyday family life into intricate meditations on living optimistically and without pretense. Benjamin’s use of cardboard packaging salvaged from cereal boxes, packaging for soda and beer and other snack foods is uniquely sensitive. Benjamin’s sculptures are a nexus between the formal elements he has cut out of salvaged cardboard (colors, textures, patterns, shapes) and a bank of reference points drawn from his everyday life. Pickup trucks, numerous approaches to breakfast as a pastime, and housework such as chopping wood and taking out the trash are realized alongside meditations on leisure and desire, presented in the form of lawn chairs, headboards, and other metaphors for rest. In a recent series of work, the simplest but most exciting examination of the pieces contrasted small hunks of walnut wood against even smaller structures constructed from cardboard printed to look like wood grain. As part of his U·turn exhibition, Benjamin will be presenting a series of sculptures called #2 made from cardboard elements built onto small pieces of walnut carved into little mounds that resemble droppings and excrement. The unseemliness of the ideas at work is diffused by the artist’s craftsmanship and obvious sense of humor. If his work has dealt with topics from home life, only an adult who has changed diapers and potty trained now teenage children could start to look at the everyday practices of family life as viable and engaging departure points for work. While Benjamin has made reference to many tasks and images from everyday home life, this new scatology seems the most honest and revealing topic to date. And yet, the scale and manufacture of these works are not obvious representations of shit; they are more like prank dog droppings, plastic toys used to poke fun.





Keith Benjamin lives and works in Cincinnati. He holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has worked as a sculpture professor at the Art Academy of Cincinnati for over ten years. His career has been filled with numerous solo exhibitions at such venues as Chicago’s MWMWM Gallery and Cincinnati’s Linda Schwartz Gallery, Publico, the Weston Art Gallery and the Warsaw Project Space, an alternative gallery venture that Benjamin ran from 1998 to 2005. He has also participated in exhibitions in Chicago’s Arena Gallery and White Walls, as well as Cincinnati’s Country Club, semantics gallery, SS Nova, Artworks Gallery, and University of Cincinnati’s Reed Gallery, to name just a few. In 2001, Benjamin was one of five Ohio artists to participate in the exhibition Working Space at Rathaus Gallerie in Munich, Germany. 2010 is a busy year for Keith Benjamin. Already he has been included in the group exhibition Urban Interventions at University of Cincinnati, a faculty exhibition at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the group exhibition Shapeshifters, currently on display at Country Club in Oakley. Later this year, Benjamin’s work will also be included in The House in My Head, a group exhibition at the Weston Art Gallery in downtown. Regular gallery hours Saturdays 12:00-4:00 PM.

For more information, or to make an appointment, please contact the gallery by e-mail: u.turn.artspace@gmail.com