The Contemporary Arts Center to Feature Two Major International Exhibitions in Cincinnati

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) will feature two major international contemporary exhibitions in 2016, and a new work by Tomás Saraceno commissioned for the Lobby in CAC's Zaha Hadid-designed building in downtown Cincinnati.

CAC Director and Chief Curator Raphaela Platow said, "The CAC consistently mounts exhibitions of national and international importance showcasing work by both established and emerging artists from the region and from around the globe. The range of works on view this year provides our visitors with a window onto the extraordinary variety of processes, materials, and objects being produced today. Now that we are able to offer free admission to the galleries as of February 13, thanks to a generous gift from The Johnson Foundation and CAC's The 50, we look forward to welcoming even more members of the community and visitors to Cincinnati."

Do Ho Suh Passage

Major survey on view February 12 - September 11, 2016

Celebrated Korean-American artist Do Ho Suh moved to the U.S. in 1993, and every house he has lived in throughout his life serves as inspiration for remarkable meditations on the legacy of home, place, and migration. Each abode becomes manifest in an ongoing series of life-size fabric sculptural forms that appear to float in space. The CAC will present a number of Suh's hallucinatory structures that include fabric renderings of domestic objects. Suh's work is intensely responsive to site, and, in Passage, he will propose a groundbreaking dialogue with the CAC's architecture, spoken through the movement of the audience through space.

Suh was named WSJ Magazine's 2013 Innovator of the Year in Art. His work has been exhibited at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, U.K. (2015); The Contemporary Austin, Texas (2014-15); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea (2013); and the 21st Century Museum of Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2012-13).

Cut, Fold, Recreate

Exhibition informed by textile craft techniques on view April 22 - August 14, 2016

Several international artists, including Mexican-American artist Adrian Esparza and Hong Kong native Ying Kit Chan, will be featured in this intriguing exhibition curated by Kate Bonansinga, Director of the School of Art at the University of Cincinnati. The exhibition explores the work of artists who take apart material-magazines, clothing, rugs, bed sheets, blankets, and even popular phrases-and rebuild them into something entirely new. The reconstruction thereby entails processes associated with textiles such as cutting and sewing; folding and stacking; unraveling and reforming; or printing on, embroidering, or weaving fabric. The exhibition also features the work by Noel Anderson, Lisa Anne Auerbach, Hildur Bjarnadottir, Margarita Cabrera, Mark Richard Smith, Kari Steihaug, and Marie Watt.

Tomás Saraceno

Temporary installation on view June 2016 - June 2017

In 2015, the CAC renovated the street level presence of the Museum to incorporate a Café, Store, and Lobby. It has since become one of Cincinnati's favorite public spaces. The CAC developed a temporary public art program for the Lobby which currently features dramatic, vibrant and colorful floor-to-ceiling mural wrapped walls and staircases by Assume Vivid Astro Focus. Cincinnati's own Matt Kotlarczyk created two enormous chandeliers that resemble clouds. Erwin Redl, based in Bowling Green, developed an impressive installation of hundreds of LED lamps activated by miniature fans that cast light across the vast expanse of the Lobby wall.

"The intention of these temporary commissions is to allow artists to interpret the cavernous main floor space and provide a level of animation that can be visible from the street and contemplated more fully once inside," said CAC Curator Steven Matijcio.

This year, the CAC commissioned Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno to create another temporary art installation in the Lobby. The kite-like mobile structures will be unveiled in June 2016, and remain on view for a year.

An artist trained as an architect, Saraceno deploys insights from engineering, physics, chemistry, aeronautics, and materials science in his work. His floating sculptures and interactive installations propose and explore new, sustainable ways of inhabiting and sensing the environment. Saraceno's work has been shown in international solo and group exhibitions at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2015), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2012), Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2011-12), and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2011-12).

About the Contemporary Arts Center

Founded in November 1939, as the Modern Art Society by three visionary women in Cincinnati, the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) was one of the first institutions in the U.S. dedicated to exhibiting the art of our time.

CAC focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art, and new media, presenting on average ten exhibitions and thirty performances annually in its Zaha Hadid-designed facility.

The CAC is supported by the individuals and business that give annually to the ArtsWave; Ohio Arts Council; City of Cincinnati; and the generous contributions and grants of individuals and corporations and foundations. www.contemporaryartscenter.org

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