November 9 - December 21, 2019

Blue tarps have been employed around the globe as a temporary aid to communities suffering.  Whether from environmental or financial disasters, blue tarps can cover a roof, act as a floor, and otherwise serve as an ostensible Band-Aid to the architecture of larger symptoms of systems collapse. These ubiquitous blue covers are made to conceal, yet they often signal damage without fixing the affecting predicament itself. This group show demonstrates how artists (often the first responders to these kinds of crises of humanity,) investigate this proverbial hidden landscape.  Participating artists include Lorena Molina, Migiwa Orimo, Edward Victor Sanchez, Stephen Smith, Cristina Victor, and Loraine Wible.

Wave Pool Gallery was proud to present ‘Start Over Tomorrow While There’s Still Time,’ an exhibition showcasing artists who embrace wit and absurdity through ink on paper as a way to better cope with everyday life. This group exhibition featured quirky line work and unpredictable texts that inspire us, give us positive energy, and make us smile.

Artists included Karen Boyhen, Macartney Greer, Kyle Knobel, Nathaniel Russel, and Evan Verrilli.

Several of the artists also put on public interactive events as a way to extend their work out into the community. Kyle Knobel, a visiting artist from San Francisco, hosted a record club listening party at the gallery on March 3rd, encouraging attendees to bring a few songs they are excited about to share. At Urban Artifact on March 16th, Karen Boyhen similarly engaged with the public, drawing pictures of anyone interested in having a portrait done and listed their ‘likes and dislikes’ next to their image.

The exhibition opened with an reception with the artists on March 2nd from 6-9pm and ran until April 6th, 2019.

Everyone is welcome. Strictly good vibes.

November 17, 2018 -January 12, 2019

Wave Pool Gallery was proud to present ‘Invisible Labor,’ an exhibition that investigated and celebrated the work of local art preparatory crews, curated by Maria Seda-Reeder.

Art made by artists and placed within the hallowed halls of museums and galleries are often bolstered both physically and metaphorically by the work of those whose job requires them to go unseen and unacknowledged. When done well exhibition installation is invisible and seemingly effortless, yet those who do this kind of preparatory work are often artists themselves.

For this show, Wave Pool proposed the chance for local art handlers and preparatory crews from six area arts institutions to put on an exhibition that aims to make visible the labor and practice of building, installing, and creating art exhibitions. Crews from The Carnegie Performing Arts Center, The Cincinnati Art Museum, The Contemporary Arts Center, Taft Museum, 21c Museum/Hotel and The Weston Art Gallery showcased the efforts of their installation crews and fabricators, whose own artistically driven processes allow the work of more well-known artists to live inside the white cube. By highlighting the invisible labor of those working the back of the house in our area arts organizations, we seek to underscore the efforts of those whose work is often left out of the artistic canon.

With every exhibition at Wave Pool, we aim to look beyond the ephemeral fluctuations of the art market and use our space on behalf of those who are doing the ongoing, daily work of bringing art to the masses. This exhibition showcased the effort and care happening behind the scenes at the biggest and best arts organizations that our region has to offer. These professionals rarely, if ever, get their names on gallery walls or other visible signs of recognition for their work. Yet without their own artistic practices, expertise, and skill sets, the inner-workings of Cincinnati’s visual art scene would cease to exist.

As part of the exhibition Wave Pool hosted Pro tips of Art Installation Round Table with Calendar Signing with local art preparators January 5, 1-2pm.

Funding for this exhibition was provided through an ArtSTART award from the Ohio Arts Council

March 31 – April 28, 2018

Wave Pool was proud to present, 1,954 Miles, a group show curated by our third and final Curatorial Resident, Harry Sanchez Jr.

With his exhibition, Harry Sanchez Jr. aimed to give a voice to a few artists from La Frontera, to use the space as a megaphone to represent the complex thoughts and feelings that come from people living in the contested border between Mexico and the United States. 

La Frontera as it known in Spanish, or The Border as it is known in English, is a transitional place with a rich history of movement where two cultures constantly clash and bond at the same time—a space that epitomizes the dichotomies of fear and hope, unity and disunity. 

The border itself is a wavering line that stretches 1,954 miles over deserts and rivers, and is home to almost 12 million people—many of whom are of Mexican descent.

Yet in many cases, the public debates featured in news programs, by governmental authorities, online pundits or even in art galleries do not incorporate the voices of those who are the most affected: people living on the border themselves. 

These artists use their voice in ways that conflate historical references with contemporary methods and concepts. Through drawing, painting, sculpture and video, they confront stereotypes and subvert common expectations about what “Chicano/a” art can look like and are about. 

Contributing artists for 1,954 Miles include:

Cande Aguilar (Brownsville, Texas); Haydee Alonso (Ciudad Juarez, Mexico); Blastr (El Paso, Texas);
Angel Cabrales (El Paso, Texas); Francisco Delgado (El Paso, Texas); Adrian Esparza (El Paso, Texas); Manuel Guerra (El Paso, Texas); Alex Macias (Brownsville, Texas); Mauricio Sáenz (Brownsville, Texas); and Marco Sanchez (El Paso, Texas)

Being from a border city Harry Sanchez Jr. is keenly aware of boundaries everywhere. In response, he has developed a practice of reacting against rules and limits. A recent graduate of the University of Cincinnati’s School of Art MFA program at DAAP, Sanchez strives to be a counter-balance in a world of conformity.

Febraury 24 - March 24, 2018

Wave Pool was proud to present, Midwest Markdowns, a group show curated by our second of three Curatorial Residents, design duo SUBSTUDIO. Featuring the work of eight emerging artists and design collectives whose practices have been shaped by the unique opportunities afforded by working in the Midwest, their work has been influenced by a geographic region that has been both marginalized and romanticized. SUBSTUDIO posits that the Midwest has instead provided these artists with a platform for alternative methodologies, which are not easily accessible in larger coastal cities. Referencing scale, culture, collaboration, side hustles, and materials that have evolved from place, Midwest Markdowns brings together the work of these artists in order to spark a conversation regarding newer structures of practice, resulting from the pursuit of creative autonomy.

The factors that govern creative work in small Midwestern cities breed specific strategies, alliances, and opportunities. Kara Gut, a multidisciplinary artist whose primary focus is image-based digital media, creates work that investigates the new shape of human intimacy formed by niche online communities, dissolving many of the typical barriers that face non-coastal artists. Scott Vincent Campbell, a life-long New Yorker and Detroit transplant, has experienced an extreme scale shift and enlivened material possibility since relocating to Detroit. Team B, an architecture and design firm based in Cincinnati, has developed a body of work responding equally to both ordinary and bizarre aspects of Midwestern culture. 

The artists selected were asked to present work that might act as a launching point for a conversation about how they structure their practice, and in what ways their presence in the Midwest has aided and/or altered their work. This exhibition is part of a larger investigation by the design duo into the realities and myths the art world perpetuates about creative endeavors based in place. 

Visitors of the show are encouraged to contribute a physical artifact or anecdote descriptive of their own creative practice. Objects, ephemera, and text will be collected, catalogued, and published, generating a more expansive portrait of a Midwestern practice beyond the pragmatic limitations of a curated exhibition.

Contributing artist include: William Marcellus Armstrong, Scott Campbell, Clare Gatto, Kara Gut, Scott Holzman, L.D. Nehls, Chrissy Scolaro, and Team B (David Corns, Anna Kerr, Quinn Kummer, and John Stoughton).

The opening reception for Midwest Markdowns at Wave Pool will take place on Saturday, February 24th from 6-9pm. On Saturday March 24th at 6pm as a part of show’s closing event, Wave Pool will host an interactive panel discussion moderated by Bowling Green State University Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Critical Theory, Phil Dickinson. Featured artists will be encouraged to discuss the nature and structure of their creative practice. The conversation will take place in the upstairs gallery, inviting a dialogue with the partner show.

About our Curatorial Residents:
SUBSTUDIO co-founders Hannah Dewhirst and Ingrid Alexandra Schmidt are spatial artists and educators who found common ground with their research during their graduate studies in architecture at Cranbrook Academy of Art. They founded SUBSTUDIO Architecture in 2016 in pursuit of a method of autonomous practice that would enable them to pursue tool driven research and full scale built experimentation that challenges social and perceptual associations. Their past projects blur the boundary between architecture, performance, art and curation. Having spent their careers between the midwest and east coast, they currently manage their dual-city practice in conjunction with teaching at DAAP and Bowling Green State University.

The Curatorial Residency Program is supported by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign as well as through an ArtSTART award from the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Resident Curator: Abby Friend
Dates: 1/20/2018–2/17/2018

WITH NO MEMORIES NO TIES NO PHANTOMS TO TEND FOR, an exhibition that interrogated the historical and contemporary tradition of cultural theft through the lenses of memory and power.

Curated by Wave Pool’s first Curatorial Resident, Abby Friend. The show included work from local and national artists through various means of cultural production such as video, sculpture, installation, writing and poster art.  

The title of this exhibition is an excerpt from Eunsong Kim’s essay “Found, Found, Found: Lived, Lived, Lived,” a brilliant piece of cultural criticism regarding Carrie Mae Weem’s series From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried. A beautiful and vulnerable indictment of the American tradition of cultural theft, historical and contemporary genocide, and the ways that different cultures carry that tradition of violence through their memory and their loss, Kim’s essay goes far deeper than any simple investigation or argument against cultural appropriation.

The exhibition, titled after Kim’s words, was a look at American history, our political and personal relationships with colonialism, and the ways that settler colonialism has affected our personal and collective ability to recall and reconcile, identity, memory, ownership, and power.

Aiming to create a point of access where the audience can interact with the complex intersections of cultural theft and settler colonialism, Friend curated a show in which artists use their voices and bodies to create art that is unafraid of confrontation and offers space for contemplation and dialogue.

Contributing artist included: M’Shinda Imani Abdullah-Broaddus, Aalap Bommaraju, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Arthur Brum, Liz Cambron, Demian DinéYazhi’, Zachary Hutchinson, Merritt Johnson, Eunsong Kim, Oliverio Rodriguez, Isabel Solá and Caleb Yono.

The Curatorial Residency Program is supported by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign as well as through an ArtSTART award from the Ohio Arts Council, which receives support from the State of Ohio and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In late 2017 Wave Pool hosted two complimentary exhibitions: “Tracing the Ground,” a group show featuring the work of artists who utilize the visual language of maps and the unique iconography of cartography, and “One Line Over the Other,” an exhibition that demonstrates the various manifestations of the grid as a formal tool.

“Tracing the Ground” featured works by artists and collaborators that encompass a wide range of media and approaches:  Environmental scientists using the graphic language of art to map sites of community resources; artists charting the trajectory of their lives using cartographic iconography; and various artistic approaches to planting one’s proverbial flag in the sand—claiming the ground upon which they stand as a basic starting point:  YOU ARE HERE writ large.

As a compliment to the downstairs exhibition, the work of nine current DAAP MFA students, curated by fellow second year MFA candidate Hannah Hersko explored the pervasive phenomena of the grid in our upstairs Locker Room Gallery.  In her 1979 seminal essay, Grids, Rosalind Krauss describes the grid as “an introjection of the boundaries of the world into the interior of an artwork, it is a mapping of the space inside the frame onto itself.”  These boundaries appear as mirrors for our sociopolitical structure as well as the parallels and intersections of human experience; information is plotted and chronologized in an effort to reveal perspective while the very construction of the grid simultaneously gives way to voids and static space.  Though each artist investigates the grid’s manifestation differently, each piece can be understood as a cropped fragment of a much larger, gridded context.

A group exhibition that turned an art gallery into a temporary bookstore, tea shop, and “living room” for Cincinnati opened August 26th, 2017 at Wave Pool.

How can a white box become an organic, warm, and inviting space for community? This group exhibition transformed the gallery into an open living room for Camp Washington. San Francisco’s Adobe Books founder and proprietor for 25 years, Andrew McKinley, joined us in transforming the gallery into a bookstore, photography studio, and gathering place. Local artists and partners programed and ‘un-programed’ the space with group reading, working, play and hanging out. This exhibition created a murmuration of the community, building experiences and connections that aim to outlast the temporality of the gallery installation.

In addition to Andrew McKinley, the exhibition included tea and pastries from refugees and immigrants who work with Heartfelt Tidbits, a giant beanbag sculptures created by PLOP!, and a create-station art making installation by Indigo-Hippo. Events and interactions were produced by and in collaboration with Mary Clare Reitz, Lara Allen, Joshua Kruer and Chase Public. Please read below for more detailed information about each event.

The exhibition was available for interaction from August 26th – September 30th. There was a closing event on September 28th in conjunction with a pop-up exhibition by the Art Academy of Cincinnati’s Curatorial Studies class in the upstairs gallery.

IF YOU GO

What: The Opening Reception with Listening Loop interactive performance
Attendees were welcomed to the gallery for the opening reception of the exhibition. In addition to experiencing the installation, visitors were invited to try tea and Armenian pastries, as well as participate in Mary Clare Rietz’s interactive listening performance entitled Listening Loop. Part game, part therapy, part sharing economy, part cultural and political resistance, Listening Loop is a social practice art work in which listening is the medium, listening is a transformative act, and cultivating a network of listeners is the goal. Artist Lara Allen also performed in a costume co-created by Allen and artist Johanna Jackson

What: Poetry and Pie
There was poetry. There will be pie. Wash it down with some utterances, exclamations, and reflections from a few local sculptors of the word. You could call it something like, “intersectional guerrilla food shares”, but, hey, let’s just eat some pie. Organized by Joshua Kruer.

What: The Sleep Show
Wave Pool and Chase Public presented “The Sleep Show” a concert focused on comfort, meditation, and sleep. Ambient loops and calming melodies create a relaxing atmosphere where the audience is encouraged to get comfortable and lounge. Prepared with pillows, sleeping bags, pajamas. Let the music shape your dreamscapes, as you experience a concert in a unique environment. Musicians will play from 11pm to 9am night to dawn focused on impacting the subconscious, a layer below direct attention. Music in a continuous performance from provided by David Corns and friends.

What: Creative Dive with Indigo Hippo
We joined Indigo Hippo for a dive into the world of creative exploration! At Indigo Hippo, we believe that creativity keeps us afloat, brings joy, and can be relieving when the challenges of life pile up. In this workshop, we brought a variety of creative reuse materials for participants to play with as we enjoy reflective moments. We explored the following: "What challenges have you experienced lately and how might creativity be applied?" while creating beautiful pieces of visual art.

Prayer Flags for Cincinnati was a collaborative project led by Detroit-based artist Whitney Lea Sage which featured the perspectives and input of local Cincinnati residents which inspired both the themes and images of the flag as well as their locations of installation. A continuation of a project first started in Detroit, the series was modeled after Buddhist prayer flags which are traditionally hung around homes, villages, and sacred sites and are believed to ward off evil spirits and bring luck to those touched by the winds that pass through them. Instead of using traditional materials, these flags are made out of the scraps of ordinary life and people, including clothing, doilies, handkerchiefs, napkins, tablecloths, pillowcases and curtains. The goal of the Prayer Flags project was to reinsert people within the storyline of the city by soliciting the residents of Cincinnati to donate found fabrics to be incorporated into the project or write letters or fill out gallery questionnaires about their relationship with the city they reside in. Throughout the duration of the exhibit at Wave Pool Gallery, visitors were invited to view Sage’s previous iteration of the Prayer Flags project, view the Cincinnati project from production to completion as well as are invited to utilize our maker space to produce their own prayer flags or to contribute letters or their input for the project. 

There were boxes for donated fabric items to be utilized in the project located in the gallery and were greatly appreciated, especially items featuring any of the traditional colors of red, yellow, green, blue and white.

On July 15 Sage conducted a public workshop which focused on the traditions of Buddhist prayer flags, highlighting how the flags are traditionally produced, where they are displayed and their visual symbolism. Attendees had the opportunity to produce prayer flags inspired by their own relationship to where they live, utilizing traditional and non-traditional methods including block printing, embroidery and hand-painting. At the end of the workshop, guests left with a strand of flags to install around their homes, their neighborhoods, or their schools, bringing good fortune to all touched by their presence.

This reception was in conjunction with an opening in the upstairs gallery of work by local artists Nathan Meyer and Zach Evans, who were showing recent works were reflections on meaning, featuring mounted Polaroids, paintings, and other photographic works.

Art Space is Your Space was funded in 2017 by a grant from The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation. 

Still They Persist: Protest Art of the 2017 Women's Marches

With the aim of keeping the words and images made and deployed by human rights advocates who took to the streets of cities around the country during January 2017 circulating within the public sphere, FemFour, a group of Cincinnati-based artists and arts advocates, put together a traveling archive of posters and placards, sculptures, textiles, and photo documentation from the day collected by the arts philanthropist and collector Sara M. Vance Waddell. Each exhibition was curated to center the issues in the hands and on the minds of artists and activists at each location.

Catalogue
Amplifying the voices in this exhibition is a 190+ page color catalogue with detailed images of these objects of resistance, which includes critical essays by Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi, Michol Hebron, Betti-Sue Hertz, Noel Anderson, and Jenny Ustick; as well as photographic documentation from the day as seen as seen through the eyes of the artists and activists who were on the ground, around the country on January 21st, 2017. Book design by Calcagno Cullen; all proceeds from sales of the book go to Heartfelt Tidbits, a Cincinnati-based non-profit refugee service organization. You may purchase the book at Wave Pool in person or via our website shop.

About the FemFour
Initially intended to populate a large wall space in her personal home gallery, art collector, philanthropist, perennial board member, and museum docent volunteer Sara M. Vance Waddell began soliciting signs from artists as soon as she knew there would be a Women’s march on Washington. Enlisting the help of independent curator and art critic Maria Seda-Reeder as well as Wave Pool Gallery’s Executive Director and social practice artist Calcagno Cullen, the group then brought on board the Contemporary Arts Center’s Curator of Education, Jaime Thompson to round out their mission: keeping the words and images of progressive activists and allies in the minds and hearts of the public.

For more information and images of all included works, please visit www.stilltheypersist.com 

Wave Pool presented a two-person show between local artist Amber Stucke and New York based artist Edina Tokodi. Emergence linked these two artist’s practices through an exploration of human-plant relationships and dissolving the barriers between nature and art. 

Both artists use non-traditional materials to create works that investigate scientific notions of the natural world while connecting environmental studies to human issues. 

Edina Tokodi ponders the pedestrian and the value of public art as she creates installation works that integrate ideas of sustainable living by connecting natural materials with an urban environment. In her words, “My work advocates sustainable living and draws attention to the deficiency of nature in daily life. I work with live plants, moss, and other natural/ephemeral materials to accentuate urban dynamics and possible states of renewal.” 

Amber Stucke is also an interdisciplinary artist, creating sound installations as well as prints, artist books, and drawings. Her most recent body of work explores human interactions with rhizomes. She states, “Rhizome State is a state of mind of becoming rhizomatic relationships to explore the idea, ontology, and uses of rhizomes through an interdisciplinary process interconnecting the study of ethnobotany, local knowledge systems, plant-human relationships, and the imagination.” 

Emergence was organized by Calcagno Cullen, and was on view at Wave Pool’s gallery from March 18th – May 6th, 2017.
 

The Personal Is Political: Feminist Art from the Sara M. and Michelle Vance Waddell Collection is a two-site exhibition which featured works from the private collection of Sara Vance Waddell, a Cincinnati-based arts philanthropist and advertising media executive who has been consciously collecting feminist-leaning art over much of the past decade.  

Wave Pool Gallery in Camp Washington and The Dorothy W. and C. Lawson Reed, Jr. Gallery at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning both hosted shows of artwork by iconic artists in the Vance Waddell’s collection, including Louise Bourgeois, Tania Bruguera, Deborah Kass, Barbara Kruger, Kara Walker, Catherine Opie, Lorna Simpson, Carolee Schneeman, Kiki Smith, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems.

More than half a dozen 2-D and 3-D works by the aforementioned well-established artists as well as some exciting up-and-coming contemporary artists, were on display at Wave Pool. 

Using a framework of the rallying slogan of the various student movements during the Civil Rights era of the late 1960s—and opening at Wave Pool exactly one week after the 2017 Women’s March on Washington—The Personal Is Political aimed to demonstrate the ways in which feminist artists make connections between the intimate details of our daily lives and our ever-expanding understanding of the body politic. 

Pieces were paired throughout both exhibitions in the effort to reveal ways in which femme-identifying artists have and are working to resist oppression, subvert public scrutiny, and suggest alternative visual paradigms within the personal and political spheres.

The Personal is Political was organized by independent curator Maria Seda-Reeder, and is on view at Wave Pool’s gallery until March 11th, 2017.

An installation by local artist Sharareh Khosravani opened on the same evening in Wave Pool’s upstairs community gallery. Khrosravani’s exhibition remained up until February 12th. 

Investigating minimal artwork can ironically reveal our own individual value and humanity that we project onto inanimate objects. “Everything is nothing with a twist,” is a quote from Kurt Vonnegut which was chosen to summarize this fertile ground of self-interpretation through different constructions and approaches to minimal objects. As Michael Fried famously discussed in “Art and Objecthood,” minimalist objects can simply be everyday objects outside of “art.” An argument also commonly made is that the same picture plane can be interpreted as a detail of something larger or a world contained within itself. For instance, Christian Davies works with repeating geometric patterns to suggest an infinity of space while Connie Goldman’s work seems to fold in on itself creating internal shifts. This exhibition sought to confront these issues with contemporary artists who are finding fertile ground within these predefined parameters. An immersion in these varying approaches aims to reveal the way we personally construct meaning from the world. 

Included artists Sharon Brant , Christian Davies, Connie Goldman, Matt Lynch, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, and Rick Wolhoy. Curated by Geoffrey ‘Skip’ Cullen.

Everything Is Nothing With A Twist was on view from December 3rd, 2016 - January 14th, 2017.

“Openness and participation are antidotes to surveillance and control.”  - Howard Rheingold

An exhibition about being watched. The Peeled Eye opened September 17th at Wave Pool with a special extension opening at FotoFocus’s ArtHub on October 5th.

In our contemporary culture, the internet, the logic of algorithmic processing, social media and surveillance are conditions of our everyday existence. The Peeled Eye investigated the idea of constant supervision and the immense amount of data and images that emerge from it. The artists in this exhibition sought to discover and understand how we are being watched and what this surveillance produces. The artists selected chose to appropriate images and content created by these outside sources, whether it be Google, social media, or surveillance cameras, and make artwork that reflects humanity in this unique place in time under the surveillance machine.

The artists in this exhibit were taking massive amounts of content and slicing small sections of it to their aesthetic and conceptual taste. The FotoFocus 2016 theme of the “Undocument” is being used in two senses in this exhibition. In one sense, the art displayed is featuring what up until now would have gone ”undocumented”, scenes and images from our daily life that exist unbeknownst to even the subjects. In another sense, the artists were utilizing this media to take images and content out of context, tailoring them to fit with their own aesthetic vision and conceptual ideology. When taken apart from GoogleMaps, when displayed as art in the gallery, carefully cropped away from their origin, the images became art, crafted as aesthetically interesting images in the artist’s eyes.

Included artists Bill Brown, Paolo Cirio, Mishka Henner, Will Knipscher, Andy Marko, and Doug Rickard at Wave Pool's Gallery. Also a special extension of this exhibition with installations by Pierre Derks, Marc Governanti, and Potter-Belmar Labs at the FotoFocus ArtHub from October 5th-9th. 

Paulo Cirio takes photo documentation provided publically through google maps and removes the figures only to literally place them back on the street. His life-sized printed figures attempt to challenge our idea of what is real and how limiting it is that we take these digital images as permanent truths. Cirio is printing and installing a new set of 6 Street Ghost images that are being installed around Camp Washington. These figures are found on Google street view, printed life-size, and installed in real life at their Google Street View location. In the gallery he is providing a map of where to find these images as well as documentation of the work.

William Knipscher has been hacking into surveillance camera feeds and finding interesting, sometimes humorous, and thoughtful compositions. His work highlights the non-private nature of these surveillance cameras, and also the beauty in the mundane.

In 2005 and 2008, Bill Brown of the Surveillance Camera Players made a map of the surveillance cameras in public places in downtown Cincinnati. Brown is creating a new 2016 version of this map for this exhibition.

Doug Rickard’s series A New American Picture shows us forgotten, often bleak and disparaged places from the American landscape through appropriated Google street view photos. He finds people, communities, and homes that are economically devastated, and uses a deliberate eye to craft photographic prints from these online images of America.

Andy Marko is utilizing online databases of Hamilton County mug shots to create his work for the exhibit. There are some 500 images sequenced from the earliest arrest to the most recent arrest for those who were taken into custody on multiple occasions. Marko’s current practice confronts the illusion of viewer choice on Internet sites, a linchpin of the design in web-based presentations.

Mishka Henner’s series ‘Eighteen Pumpjacks’ explores the mark left by the oil industry on the American landscape through a series of photographs taken from imaging satellites orbiting Earth.

In the ArtHub (an inflatable dome placed outside of the Freedom Center from October 5th – 9th), Wave Pool has curated an extension of this exhibition including an installation by Netherlands artist Pierre Derks during the day (11am-7pm), an evening projection piece by Detroit-based artist team Potter-Bellmar Labs, and closing with a performance by Marc Governanti on October 9th at 11am.

The installation Re-streaming Reality #1 by Pierre Derks embodies a total of four television screens on the floor that broadcast pre-recorded footage of streams from unsecured IP-cameras. The attentively selected and edited footage reveals an eerie glimpse of the unprotected surveillance streams that are accessible over the internet. The television screens are bordered by seats resembling the ones featured in the videos. This process of mirroring gets strengthened when viewers are seated, thereby watching the footage in the same angle as recorded by the camera. Each looped video has its own discreet rhythmic sound score (of sound effects matching the footage) that connects the four units.

Potter-Belmar Labs has created new video work viewable in the evening on the outside of the ArtHub dome, rear­screen­projected from within. The work is self-­generating over the duration of the exhibition, via a custom software engine designed by the artists. Though figures and elements appear and reappear and develop relationships with each other, never does the image repeat.

Marc Governanti will present a multi­media performance told through a series of video vignettes, live narrative, and sound art in the ArtHub on Sunday, October 9th at 11am. The vignettes offered through this performance aim to alter commercial media tropes embedded deeply into culture, moving from realms of complete calm to disorientation, while giving the audience an opportunity to exist in a hyper­real, sometimes absurd, sometimes frightening, multi­sensory cloud outside of their own individualized online experiences. 

The goal is for the exhibit to prompt us to think critically about how and why we are being recorded as well as question if, in an age where online content is ubiquitous, artists need to continue to create new images. By finding ways to use what is being already produced through the “peeled eye”, these artists are acknowledging both the beauty and the disturbing nature of this new, omnipresent documentation.

The Peeled Eye is on view at Wave Pool’s gallery from September 17th – November 21st, 2016 with a special extension of the exhibit at the ArtHub from October 5th - 9th, 2016. Wave Pool is located at 2940 Colerain Avenue and is open to the public Thursday – Saturday 12-5pm. 

a purposeless play, a two-person exhibition with Guillermo Galindo and Mark Harris curated by Amber Stucke opened Friday, April 1st at Wave Pool. 

Wave Pool was pleased to present a two-person show with San Francisco based artist Guillermo Galindo and local artist Mark Harris. a purposeless play coupled these two artists’ disparate practices by considering and highlighting both of their works as contemporary avant-garde performance art. Even with their different approaches, both created a new alternative in how to listen, experience, and visualize music to engender a new meaning of counter culture in the twenty-first century. 

Inspired by John Cage’s words stated in his 1957 Experimental Music lecture, he described music as "a purposeless play" which is "an affirmation of life – not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply a way of waking up to the very life we're living". Galindo and Harris’ work embody the ideas of Cage’s interaction with the alternative, experimental, unconventional and avant-garde. Each artist had a separate performance on the opening night of the exhibition. The objects used and left behind after each performance acted as the exhibition in the gallery space to reiterate the experience of the performance as the true art. 

7PM Performance by Mark Harris | Messthetics

Inspired out of his youth experiences in London, Harris intertwines painting and music as a dialogue and reflection for the experience of intense creativity and pleasure displayed by alienated and disenfranchised young people who protest against a means-end economy. Similar in format to his Bad Music Seminar series, Messthetics (a word used to categorize the procedures and sound of the post-punk DIY) brings the UK and US late-70’s punk rock milieus together to represent a new kind of utopian expression through vinyl and rumination. (Acknowledgements include: Shake it Records and the Ohio Arts Council) 

8PM Performance by Guillermo Galindo | The Primal Acoustics Healing Method (PAHM) 

Known as an experimental composer, sonic architect, performance artist and Jungian Tarotist, Galindo redefines the conventional boundaries of music and the practice of music composition. In his participant interactive performance PAHM, Galindo will conduct an interactive medical trial of an innovative sonic therapy with the sole purpose of relieving patients from psychotic disorders and anxieties caused by fear of alien agents threatening to weaken the sense of self. The performance will integrate methods of active imagination, digital recording, sample processing and primal genetic genofragmentation - using the human voice as a vehicle of resonance. 

The opening reception and performances were on Friday, April 1st at Wave Pool between 6:30- 9:30pm.

An artist talk took place at the Contemporary Arts Center on Saturday, April 2nd at 2pm.

Other events connected to this exhibition included:

-Thursday, March 31st, Start Anywhere, a selection of John Cage inspired films at the Mini Experimental Film Theater, Carnegie Art Center

-Saturday, April 2nd, Water Temples - Light Temples at the Mockbee building in Brighton.

A Purposeless Play will remain on view until May 7th. Wave Pool is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 12-5pm. 

Cincinnati 5: Artists Impacting the Community was a new publication aimed at documenting 5 visual artists who promote and build the Cincinnati art community. With the release of the book, each artist participated in an exhibition at Wave Pool, that openined on February 20th, 7-10pm. The book and exhibition were initiated and organized by artist Emily Moores.

The selected artists include Future Retrieval (Katie Parker and Guy Michael Davis), Terence Hammonds, Pam Kravetz, Mark Patsfall, and Michael Stillion. The book includes a bio and interview with the each artist, exploring their practice and highlighting their connection to Cincinnati. Emily Moores states, "I would like to use the book and the exhibition to inform the Greater Cincinnati community of a sample of the amazing people living here." 

The artists were selected and nominated by a panel of art professionals that included Steven Matijcio, Contemporary Art Center Curator, Calcagno Cullen, Wave Pool Executive Director, and Maria Seda-Reeder, CityBeat writer, Nearby curator, and UC adjunct professor. Nominated artists were required to be active participants and contributors to the Cincinnati art scene and also maintain a professional art career. 
The exhibition at Wave Pool exhibited fresh work from all of the selected artists, teaming them next to each other for a joyful, albeit brief look into the studios of Cincinnati artists today. The exhibition and the book were a celebration of the vibrant visual arts community in Cincinnati. 

The book also includes an introduction by panelist Maria Seda-Reeder. The exhibition was co-curated by Emily Moores and Calcagno Cullen.

The exhibition ran from February 20th – March 26th.

January 9th - February 13th, 2016

Wave Pool was pleased to present a two-person show between local artist Emil Robinson and Minnesota artist Matthew Yaeger. The Other Window linked these two artist’s practices through an exploration of physical space, spaces between the past and the present, and the emotionally charged yet ambiguous space between dream and reality. 

Both painters, Robinson and Yaeger are acutely aware of the limits of a rectangular canvas. Robinson uses this spatial conformity to direct his work. In regards to his new series Portraits of Scientists, he states, “The heads in these paintings are pressed and stretched into the rectangle unsure of their own space and always at risk of dematerializing into symbol or decoration. Is the head overwhelming the space of the field or is the field consuming and overwhelming the head?”

Yeager, also interested in the confines of painting, has stretched his practice to include sculptural paintings and freestanding floor works. In his own words, Yeager is “making paintings that not only have a strong relationship to surface, but also have been thoughtfully considered as a three-dimensional form, giving them a strong sense of presence. Hitting a balance between shape, volume, posture, energetic contrast, and intense, vibrant color, the paintings have their own sense of energy and personality. Working in multiple scales and modes of display the works have a range of references including figurative sculpture, busts, portraiture, and ritualistic objects.”

An artist talk took place on January 9th and the opening reception was directly following the talk, on January 9th from 7-9pm. The exhibition was on view until February 13th.

November 28th, 2015 - January 3rd, 2016

Focusing on the association between art and capital, this exhibition investigated ways to talk about money through artistic practice. The exhibit included works by Nina Caporale, Lauren diCioccio, JEFF&GORDON, Sal Randolph, Jeremiah Jenkins, and Kevin White.

Local artist Nina Caporale presented a series of new work in which she has painstakenly hand beaded a series of plush IKEA objects. She has recorded the number of labor hours it took her to create these items and then asks viewers to decide for themselves how much the pieces are worth. The series calls into question the value of labor. Are the pieces worth the same small wage per hour of artistic labor that the IKEA factory workers are paid to create them?  Or are they worth the minimum wage in Ohio? Or perhaps some other artistic value is placed on them because they live as art pieces?

Lauren diCioccio and Jeremiah Jenkins, both San Francisco Bay Area artists, both use ubiquitous items of day-to-day life to draw attention to and further derive meaning from these objects.  DiCioccio’s pieces in this show focus on the monotonous quality of currency, heightening these objects through hand embroidery in a way that is both playful and intimate. Jenkins has several works in the show that use actual modes of currency (credit cards and check books) to create altogether different items to create surprising connections and messages regarding the financial system.

New York based artist Sal Randolph is more interested in the social interactions that come when money is involved. Her work, Free Money, which will be featured in the exhibition, calls into question the etiquette surrounding “free” money and uses a social practice format to explore this issue.

JEFF&GORDON and Kevin White both have works in the show that examine artistic labor as work. JEFF&GORDON, an artist duo from Los Angeles, created an 8 hour film which condenses their full workday as artists into a typical 8 hour work day. Their “workday”, which includes art making, administrative duties, teaching, and other jobs overtakes their entire day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed. This film reflects on what it means to be an artist and how the standard 8 hour work day that labor unions fought for does not apply to the life of a working artist.

Kevin White, a local Cincinnati artist, typically works a standard work day at his studio at Visionaries and Voices. He work evolves and changes daily as his creations take over and alter the immediate environment that surrounds him in a riot of color and pattern. During the course of the exhibition, White will be using a portion of the Wave Pool gallery as his studio space. The space will evolve and change throughout the course of the exhibition and his laborious artistic practice will become part of the exhibition, epitomizing the avowal that art is work.

The exhibition opened on November 28th at Wave Pool from 7-10pm and remained on view until January 3rd, 2016.

October 17th - November 21st, 2015

What does it mean to stay in one place?  To stay true to your original home and customs? What does it mean to be left, to be the few remaining, to be the last one?

Holding Ground explores themes of resilience, desertion, and buoyancy of spirit.  As the world becomes more and more global, people are flocking to large cities, places where things are happening, places where they can “be a part of it all”.  As all encompassing as these cities become, it inevitably leaves the smaller towns, the “no-where places”, looking all the more grim and empty.  As an emigrant to a bigger city, there are arguably many more things to do, places to work, and opportunities for advancement.  However, what are we all losing by becoming homogenized, standardized, and globalized?  By having everything all the time and all at once, what are we consigning to oblivion?

The artists in Holding Ground are concerned with the people who are being left behind, the people who are being run over by globalization in the name of progress, and the value that they alone carry with them.

There is a sentimentality to acknowledging cultures and traditions that are falling by the wayside. As Mr. Iam, a rice farmer in Thailand recently stated in a NYTimes article regarding the shift of Thailand from a primarily farm-based culture to an urban one, ‘This has alarmed me for a long time…we are losing what we call Thai-ness, the values of being kind, helping each other, having mercy and gratefulness.” His statement encapsulates what this exhibition is attempting to honor and commend, the things that we must work to preserve, the things that are undervalued in our new more commercialized and global society, the things that are made slowly and rarely in small pockets of knowledge that are disappearing quickly and without acknowledgement all over the world.

Perhaps it is not our place to try to “save” cultures from disappearing. But to acknowledge them, to honor and preserve them through art seems a natural empathetic and human reaction.

The exhibit includes an exploration of traditional Shaker choreography through works by New York artist Pablo Helguera, performances in food and storytelling by San Francisco artists Chris Treggiari and Justin Hoover, photographic interviews of local OTR residents by Cincinnati artist Natalie Jenkins, and video documentation of 4 different European communities, presented through residents’ monologues regarding their experiences, by Parisian artist Esther Shalev-Gerz.

The exhibition opens on October 17th at Wave Pool from 7-10pm and will remain on view until November 21st. Wave Pool is open Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays 12-5pm. There are also several public programs throughout the run of the exhibition.

Chris Treggiari and Justin Hoover will be visiting Cincinnati to conduct a performance at in Gano Alley, 11-1pmon November 6th. They will also be giving an artist lecture about their work at 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati at 4pm on November 8th.

Wave Pool will also be hosting a panel discussion on November 19th at 7pm with artists and activists regarding community development in Cincinnati.

August 29 - October 10, 2015

As an artist, what is necessary for survival in Cincinnati? What is unique to the situation of being an artist in the mid-west, and specifically Cincinnati, that demands a uniqueness of thought, creative solutions, and a preemptive survivalist’s approach?Cincinnati Artist Survival, a group show at Wave Pool Gallery, will attempt to answer these questions, exploring ways (both real and fictional) that artists survive (and sometimes thrive) in the Queen City. This juried exhibition includes work and performances by CS13, Marc Governanti, Suzy Irwin, Chase Melendez, Reid Radcliffe, Christian Schmit, Nick Swartsell, Forest Thomer, Aaron Walker, Loraine Wible.

The exhibition opens August 29th, 7-10pm and will feature several performances. Suzy Irwin will be slinging coffee drinks as part of her “Barista Artist” performance, Chase Melendez will be performing as a mixed media live sculpture entitled Fountain of Necessity, and CS13 is hosting a micro-grant-gambling-table gaming session. Forest Thomer’s The Art Of Being A MotherFucker car will also be on view for one night only outside of the gallery during the opening.

Cincinnati Artist Survival will also be coupled with a Survival Guide publication, including works by most of the exhibiting artists, which will be released and sold at the exhibition opening.

EXHIBITION DATES: March 20 – April 25, 2015

Curated by Geoffrey ‘Skip’ Cullen, the show includes works by Scotty Bellissemo, Greg Clem, Randy Colosky, Mark DeJong, Dana Hemenway, Jake Isenhour, Matt Jones, Chris Vorhees, and Benjamin White. The opening reception is March 20th, 2015 from 6-9pm.

As a culture, we are accustomed to how materials are prefabricated for consumer consumption and the consistency of their application. The exhibition, Post Fabricationinvestigates contemporary approaches to subverting the meaning of prefabricated and functional building material. Artists participating in Post Fabrication share common references to capitalism, labor practices, spirituality, and the history of minimal art through the language of construction and building materials. Prefabricated materials invoke discussions and at times arguments as to how we interact with the world. Perhaps, as Michael Fried postulated in “Art and Objecthood”, minimal artwork is theatrical and indistinguishable from the other objects of the room. Building materials are abstracted one step further away from the ordinary than an every day ready made. Building materials also reference manual labor and create connections to physical places. Perhaps due to the rise in industrialization and mechanization of the world, these objects have gained popularity as romanticized symbols of our collective will.

It seems necessary to revisit the concept of the readymade in the context of today’s artists working with construction materials. Perhaps through this exhibition of abstracted ordinary, we can better understand the place of construction materials and our relationship to them in contemporary culture. Post Fabrication attempts to be an earnest look at the theatricality artists from across the country are bringing to these forms today.

Wave Pool supports emerging and established artists from the Midwest and beyond; discovering the new and contributing to the surrounding community through experimental art exhibitions, interpretation, and programming. Wave Pool is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.

EXHIBITION DATES: February 6 – March 15, 2015

Achieve something. Do well. Be somebody. For the first show at Wave Pool, we’re exhibiting work that straddles the line between self-empowerment and humor. Most Likely To Succeed embraces overwhelming positivity, giving us all a well-needed boost during the coldest and shortest month of the year. Curated by Calcagno Cullen, the show includes works by Alicia Escott, Kristin Farr, Chase Melendez, Susan O’Malley, Jessica Smith, and Christine Wong Yap.

After the long journey of assembling Wave Pool and seeing the first show to fruition, it seems only appropriate to celebrate this achievement with some tongue in cheek positivity. The works in this show remind us all of our human desire to be better and to achieve more while acknowledging the improbability of such endeavors.

Come to receive a hug from one of Kristin Farr’s Hug Chairs, hear words of endearment from Alicia Escott intended for extinct species, or receive practical advice for advancing your art career through Jessica Smith’s Make Great Art video installation. All of the works will brighten your mood and make you feel better about having to deal with 6 more weeks of winter.

In tandem with Most Likely To Succeed, Wave Pool will host a Wave Pool Pep Talks event for February 21 from 4-6pm. The performance event will include local artists, public speakers, and all around positive personalities to give short motivational speeches. Come get pumped up and leave a more inspired person!