Irato : Site-Specific Installation by Anthony Luensman

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. WESTON ART GALLERY in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces three new exhibitions: Filter, a site-specific installation that investigates the transmission of light and color by Frederick Ellenberger, addresses, for the first time, an area of the Aronoff Center beyond the traditional confines of the gallery; Irato, a highly imaginative sound installation by Anthony Luensman inspired by the acoustic elements of the gallery’s upper exhibition space; and The Diaries of Little Red Hen, the latest installment in Michael Scott’s whimsical yet satirical series of paintings that presents a colorful cast of bird characters set within a tableaux rich in contemporary commentary and art historical references.

Highly imaginative and innovative, Irato is a site-specific, sound-based installation conceived and created by Cincinnati artist/composer Anthony Luensman. Inspired by the acoustic elements of the Weston Art Gallery’s upper exhibition space, the project represents the third of three site-specifc installations that have received major funding from a two-year grant awarded to the gallery by the National Endowment for the Arts.

The installation consists of invented or re-created instruments, both acoustic and electronic, whose visual and aural aspects are given equal consideration. Instruments have been specifically created to address the unique architectural elements of the gallery’s upper level exhibition space, most notably the unusually hard surfaces (stone, glass, aluminum) and the tremendous height of the split-level ceiling. Many of the instruments will be self-sounding, driven by motors, rushing air, computers or viewer interaction. Instruments include a bike horn speaker series, a remote-control-car-played piano harp, a series of interactive sound-altered doorbells, and a suspended electric black-pipe harp.

Luensman is an artist of many talents working in a variety of disciplines from the visual arts to music, often combining these interests through the creation of original musical instruments and sound devices that he has exhibited in numerous local and regional venues. He received a bachelor of arts in studio art from Kenyon College, Gambier, Oh., and in 1997 completed coursework for a master of arts in English at Xavier University.

He was awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council in June 2000. For the past five years, he has brought his sculpted instruments and sounds into multi-media collaborations with visual artist Mark Fox, through a series of highly sophisticated and inventive theater presentations performed under the ensemble name of Saw Theater. Luensman is also an active musician in the Cincinnati area and often performs on woodwinds and original instruments with local musicians in club, gallery and university settings.