SPACELab provides a flexible, short-term installation space that encourages experimentation. It is especially useful for established artists to create a small, experimental project or as an outlet for younger artists who may not yet have a body of work but want to create a first-time installation.
Application form
Applications are reviewed year-round by a committee of working artists.
Contact SPACES at 216-621-2314 for an application.
Previous SPACELab Artists
Nichola Kinch received an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University ( Elkins Park, PA). In the past, Kinch used video installation incorporating interaction with viewers to examine how physical perspective and proximity can act as metaphors for psychological perspective.
more ...
Dustin Grella received a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Akron and is currently seeking an MFA in Computer Art at the School of Visual Arts (New York, NY). The artist/writer has based his past projects developing artifacts and events that explore elements of human experience through the passage of time. Through animation, performance, the creation of fabricated artifacts and experimental processes, the artist intends to unite us in humanity and emphasize the importance of the Now.
more ...
Double Dutch Will Take You Higher (DDWTYH) is a jump roping performance art troupe that hopes to bring communities together and take them higher.
DDWTYH will hold all of thier practices in the gallery. When the troupe is not present in the gallery, videos of past performances, advertisements and invitations to visitors will be posted to bolster interest and participation in the practices.
DDWTYH will work with community groups and local school children to create a performance to take place at the end of the exhibition.
more ...
Aaron L. Peterman currently attends Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI) where he is seeking an MFA in scultpure.
Petermant constructed a large-scale installation based on an expansion of past projects including the use of upholstered furniture, mirroring, and compicated patterns to depict the interrelated nature of gay lifestyle and stereotype.
more ...
Artist's Statement:
I am fascinated by collections and collected objects. I am amused by the wacky relationships sprouted between collectors and their collected objects. I love that any silly lil’ ole object can become charged with meaning, h istory, sentiment and the authority to tell stories. Collections are spectacularly self ish sat isfactions that are classless and limitless. Rich, snooty museum collectors in search of obscure works of art and unemployed QVC shoppers looking for one more crystal unicorn are essentially doing the same things that I do—strategically collecting objects to organize and make sense of our surroundings through interactions with the material world.
Jul 14 –Aug 3, 2007
Right Outside
Artist's Statement:
I'm interested in the deconstruction and alteration of space, as well as creating abstract imagery from the complete collections of different thematically chosen and kitsch-like items. I'm also interested in my behavior and how it decides and controls the choices that I make. In the end, I try to alter the original content and also add other visual and very subtle political touches.
more here ...
Jun 22–July 13, 2007
The Tuco Picture Puzzle Series
Kent State University · Kent OH
College of Architecture & Environmental Design
Graduate Students
Apr 20–Jun 8, 2007Group Exhibition
Jake Beckman · Cleveland OH
The Plain Dealer
Dan Tranberg:
Pristine white walls function as the ultimate neutral background in contemporary art galleries. They allow light to fill the room and hide architectural details that can distract viewers from focusing on the important stuff: the art.
But in the case of Jake Beckman's new untitled sculpture, on view at Spaces gallery in Cleveland through Friday, Feb. 9, an otherwise standard gallery wall is ripped open to reveal a mysterious, cavernous space.
more here...
Jan 19–Feb 9, 2007
Untitled
Artist Statement:
The body not only acts as a container for my soul but also as a vessel that leads my mind and thoughts into various investigations. My body is both outward and inward, and it is also a widely open “site”. I’ve presented sceneries of the imagination regarding the extensive site based upon personal and bodily experiences.
Feb 13–Mar 9, 2007
Bodily Landscape
Jean Alexander Frater
Artist's Statement:
Time is often represented by a line: A timeline, marking specific moments which are spatially relative, and usually a notation of some value accompanies each point. It is a representation of an ongoing series of moments or points, which leap gaps of massive conceptual shifts, that perhaps denied conventional wisdom of the time.
The works Frater presents has made the timeline is made even more minimal. Taking the point, as one unique form: Points; and the line, as another: Horizon 1 and 2. Combined here, not on the same plane, but within a time concept context.
Dec 12-Jan 5, 2006-07
Time Flies
Sreshta Premnath
Artist Statement:
In KCAPUT (read C crossed out) I force a juxtaposition, a slippage. Caput in Latin means head, Kaput in German means destroyed, over, broken. A kind of verbal decapitation signaled by the crossing of the C is explored by the photographic diptych in the installation. Both images are derived from press photos, one of Al Zarquawi holding Nick Berg's decapitated head in his fist, the other, a more recent image of US officers holding a framed photograph of Al Zarquawi's dead visage.
Nov 17–Dec 8, 2006
Eiko Sugi
Artist Statement:
I describe my work as self-portraits, exploring my cultural and personal identity as a Japanese woman living in the U.S.. I employ a process of enabling and disabling to wander through themes of identity and the body.
My work is about own questioning of ever changing negotiations of polarities and multiplicities that shape the identity of the self.
Jul 18 - Aug 4, 2006
Untitled
Artist's Statement:
These sound sculptures resemble urban detritus from which emanate a sort of sound graffiti—seemingly random street sounds, scarcely audible, like the deep background noise of urban life. Ferraro, collaborating with Leonardo Pellegrino, Stephen Pellegrino and Maurice Rickard, also creates street performances that are momentary interventions in busy urban streets. In one of them, RU-FM, a group of four musicians dressed as street workers assemble around a Ferraro sculpture that resembles an abstract machine and use it to perform a series of sound pieces composed by Stephen Pellegrino.
Sep 7–Oct 20, 2006
Kyoto Heights
Artist Statement:
This body of work deals with the residue left behind after an event takes place. Each piece in this exhibition was produced by sandwiching a consumer grade firework between two painted wood panels and detonating it. I used basic firecrackers, sparklers and fountains because they are the fireworks I played with most as a child and they are readily available and recognizable to most people. I chose to work with fireworks because they are sold as individual ready-made events with specific intended outcomes. Once the event is over everything left is refuse. I placed those events in a situation where the refuse would create a two-sided physical history or narrative of each of those simple manufactured events. In recording the event in this way, the focus shifts from the phenomenon of the explosion to the physical effect it has on its surroundings.
May 16-Jun 9, 2006What's Left Behind
Artist Statement:
The central theme in my work is the relationship between environmental influence and individual will; how space affects experience and how fantasy can allow us to alter and gain control over these effects. I use miniature environments to illustrate this relationship, incorporating familiar objects and symbols that engage the viewer's imagination and empathy. I have been exploring the traditional miniature formats of the tableau -- the dollhouse, the museum diorama, sets for stop-motion animation, and architectural models -- all of which depend on the viewer's imagination to create the illusion of space.
Apr 21-May 12, 2006City
Artist Statement:
My sculptures and installations depict imaginary artificial environments, and are built from a range of brightly colored industrial materials such as foame, styrene, velcro and plastic. These materials are altered so that their initial utilitarian purpose is disguised. My environments often function like daydreams, with scenes of immense forests, snowy landscapes or a sky full of fictitious constellations. The landscape-like pieces contrast the natural world with the artificial matter that makes up our daily lives. With these sculptures, I am interested in calling into question what we consider real and synthetic, and in drawing attention to our surroundings. My sculptures of environments explore my ecological concerns about current conditions such as global warming, deforestation, and pollution along with my sentimental attachments to these places.
Feb 14-Mar 10, 2006
Twilight
Sarah Bednarek
Artist Statement:
I am interested in rhetoric and its uses in the world.
Hotel Soubise is an exploration of the rhetoric of power and money. The actual ballroom of the Hotel Soubise in France is a monument to the reckless frivolity and ostentatious wealth of France's pre-Revolutionary rulers. I have attempted here not only to create for the viewer a smaller-scale reproduction, but also a comment on the underpinnings of this kind of ostentation. If the actual Hotel Soubise ballroom can be considered an argument for the preservation and supposed goodness of France's monarchy, then my reproduction can be considered a parody. My copy is insubstantial, transient, packable and mobile.
In a sense, a shade or sketch of the original, impoverished of stability.
Jan 20-Feb 10, 2006Hotel Soubise