Curated by Joey Yates

Spin: Turning Records Into Art is a show of artist made records and record covers, alongside recent projects by contemporary artists who make use of the record in their sculptures and installations, including Rutherford Chang, Ajit Chauhan, Jamal Cyrus, David Ellis, Terrence Hammonds, Jennie C. Jones and Cynthia Norton. A substantial portion of the show features records from the collection of Michael Lowe, a Cincinnati based art collector with over 2000 records that is international in scope and reflects the myriad historical relationships between the artist and the record, a range that extends from conceptual works by artists like Joseph Beuys, Lawrence Weiner, and Christian Marclay to albums with iconic images by Jean Michel-Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Barbara Kruger and Yoko Ono. Artists from Kentucky are included, featuring album covers by Lexington based artist Robert Beatty, and Louisville artists Kathleen Lolley, Joanne Oldham, Letitia Quesenberry, Jason Noble, Jeff Mueller, and Michael O’Bannon.

Over the last century the record has become an effective tool for artists seeking new creative possibilities. Artists of the avant-garde in the early 1900’s, most notably the Dadaists and the Italian Futurists, used the record to document their radical ideas, and to disseminate their political and social experiments in sound, language, and music. Spin explores the current intersection of records and visual art, demonstrating the album’s remarkable position as art object and cultural artifact in contemporary artistic practice.