U-turn Art Space

U·turn Art Space

2159 Central Avenue

Cincinnati, OH 45214

People Who Make Us Smile

March 5th—26th, 2011

Opening reception: Saturday, January 5th, 7:00 – 10:00 pm

Cincinnati, OH—U·turn Art Space is pleased to announce People Who Make Us Smile, a group exhibition featuring Meg Duguid, Charley Friedman, Russell Ihrig, Jonathan Juravich, Cary Leibowitz and a collaborative project by Loraine Wible and Chris Reeves. Through sound pieces, sculpture, photography, video, installation, screen printing and a collaborative project designed especially for and executed by U·turn, these artists present works that are quirky, upbeat and dryly self-deprecating. Certainly contemporary uses of humor in Art have its origins in the history of Pop Art, but these artists use punch lines and visual comedic timing in a direct way that critically asks, What is funny? Is that funny? and much more broadly, How can humor be used effectively in an art gallery to touch upon subjects without frivolity? Often, the answers these artists come up with relate to the iconography of celebrities, shared pop cultural knowledge and eager (or else effacing) means of addressing the viewer directly. People Who Make Us Smile is an exercise in admiration, a blame game that reveals why we see the world the way we do. As a gallery, these are the artists who make us smile. But the artists themselves defer to another cast of characters: family relatives, Liza Minnelli, Bart Simpson and Gandhi are but a few of the depicted, with whom we share our glee.