Waiting Room functions as
practice and platform.
We exist by virtue of presence.
ON VIEW
Creative Art Show
by Michael Gaughan
May 5th-28th, 2023
UPCOMING
KILLING FOR SPORT
Cade Duff
June 10th-July 1st, 2023
Quicksilver
Talulah R.M.
June 10th-July 1st, 2023
LOCATION
1900 Columbus Avenue
Minneapolis, MN 55404
Follow driveway to backyard.
HOURS
12-4pm
Saturdays & Sundays
CONTACT
gmail. waitingroomart@
instagram. /waitingroomart
ABOUT
STAFF
Kristina Johnson, Director
Jehra Patrick, Founder
Creative Art Show
Michael Gaughan
May 5th-May 28th, 2023
"Creative Art Show" by Michael Gaughan is an exhibition of masterful watercolor paintings. In short, Gaughan's paintings are awesome. Confrontational and bold in some cases yet subtle and enigmatic in others. If you're not immediately struck by the technical skill used to create these clever compositions, then you could be consumed with an intense feeling or emotion gleaned by the work. Much like the punchline of a joke, Gaughan's pieces provoke reactions. "Creative Art Show" offers insight into the mind of an eccentric artist who explores the use of irony, exaggeration, and the absurdity of stating the obvious. This is a creative art show.
Read exhibition essay here!
Michael Gaughan (he/him) is a visual artist in Minneapolis with over 20 years experience as an exhibiting, performing, and teaching artist. Specializing in water-based media, his work embraces humor. Gaughan also produces public art, sculptures, and commercial illustrations. He earned his BFA at Minneapolis College of Art and Design (’02), a Master of Arts Education at the University of Minnesota (’04) and his MFA in Painting at San Francisco Art Institute (’14).
Project support provided by the Visual Arts Fund, administered by Midway Contemporary Art with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.
Jaysen Hohlen
10.15.22 to 11.12.22
Opening reception 12-5pm on 10.15.22 as part of Twin Cities Art Week!
Drawing from histories of gay neighborhoods in Minneapolis and his father’s forty year career in framing houses in Greater Minnesota, photographer Jaysen Hohlen is developing a body of artwork spanning across multiple photographic genres in order to produce thorough investigations into class, sexual privacy and land use. His research pulls from two sites: the revitalization project of the Minneapolis Gateway District in the 1950s-60s, and current housing projects in Crow Wing County where his family resides and works.
Jaysen Hohlen (he/him) is a Minneapolis-based artist and writer whose works engage contemporary and historic gay cruising landscapes. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Studio Arts in 2019. Hohlen has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Minnesota State Arts Board Continuous Support for Individuals and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Fund. He has given artist talks at The University of Minnesota, Minneapolis College of Art and Design and Company Projects. Hohlen has exhibited locally and internationally at Yeah Maybe, Public Functionary and The Centre for the Periphery. He co-founded and currently runs the project space PAPA.
In your absence
Jeffrey Haddorff and Sophia Munic
10.15.22 to 11.12.22
Opening reception 12-5pm on 10.15.22 as part of Twin Cities Art Week!
In your absence brings together Jeffrey Haddorff and Sophia Munic, two Minnesotan artists in sculptural disciplines. Displaying absence is not easy. There are pitfalls along the way. And on the other hand, calling attention to absence can overwhelm what is being directly presented to you. Can we make the artifact’s presence the focus, rather than the ideas or story we want to tell with it? The melancholic potential this title seems to imply quickly gives way to the drama of Haddorff’s and Munic’s colorful objects. Frank Stella’s famous remark, “What you see is what you see,” a quip that signaled the demise of illusion and metaphor. Artwork in this show shares a bit of this intuitive drive, doesn’t deny the beauty of absence; rather, it draws on the pluralistic presence of time, taking stock of both where sculpture has been and where it is going.
Jeffrey Haddorff (he/him) is an artist, living and working in Northeast Minneapolis. He earned an MFA from the University of Minnesota, a B.A. in Psychology from Saint Olaf College, and studied the History of European Film at Kobenhavns Universitet.
Sophia Munic (they/them) recontextualizes traditional sewing and quilting techniques into sculptures that confront comfort, memory, and gender using a queer lens. They have recently completed a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska; and frequently hosts workshops at the Textile Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Muckout
Guest curated by Mike Curran
July 23rd, 2022 to August 21st, 2022
Water has a way of seeping in. It pools at the window wells and finds cracks in the foundation. Or it rushes in all at once, when the mechanisms we designed to contain it fail—when the channel becomes overrun or the levees break or the sewage line backs up. Once the floodwater is pumped out, the long labor begins to again make a basement inhabitable: throwing out soaked-through belongings, replacing drywall, scraping away the muck carried in with the water. This exhibition is built of that muck. It’s also built of that long labor, and the hope that this place can again be made livable. Read more here!
Featuring
Alejandra Aragón
Tom Bierlein
Jantsankhorol Erdenebayar
Carlos Macías Esparza
Rubén Macías Esparza
Sam Finegold
Maija Hecht
Ann Moody
Angus McCullough
Jonathon Rosemond
Exhibiton booklet, virtual tour and poster designed by Tom Gaasedelen
Images by Jaysen Hohlen
New work from Calvin Hafermann and Sam Dirck
June 4th-July 3rd, 2022
Opening reception June 4th, 2022
5pm-8pm
Just For Us is the first collaborative exchange between artists Calvin Hafermann and Sam Dirck. We are excited to present work from each artist after hosting our first studio residency at Waiting Room’s location on Columbus Avenue.
Engulfed between the shimmering, far-off beauty of one’s ideals and the inarticulate banality in the succession of days. The title is both deeply, viciously self-mocking and cynical, but also earnest in its intimate suggestion. The work displays a demeanor that resembles an aloof geniality, preserving aesthetic ties to Fine Art and Design as much as cosmic hyperbole. Once you delve deeper, past the aesthetics, it's hard not to wish for a few more distinguishing moments to hold onto. Maybe that’s an aspect of the artists, Sam Dirck and Calvin Hafermann’s well-developed gaze toward abstraction: one that sees the futility of overcrowding meaning, both personal and political, acknowledging that prescriptive interpretation is an unbearable alternative. Read more here.
Sam Dirck (he/him) is a visual artist living and working in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Dirck’s studio practice centers around concepts of camouflage, semiotics and simultaneity. He utilizes hard edge abstraction and expressionism to create a slurring of historically formulaic styles of painting. When situated properly, the work depicts a system of layers that oppose and reinforce eachother. Dirck’s work is owned by private collectors across the globe. His first solo show at Waiting Room in 2020, Boredom Fantasy Mimesis, was featured in Art Forum’s Critic’s Picks.
Calvin Hafermann (he/him) is an artist living and working in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Primarily working in sculpture, he is interested in surface as a polyvalent expression of synthetic design as it relates to desire, distraction, intimacy, distance and presence. He received his BFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2020.
All images taken by Jaysen Hohlen.