Photo By Maurice Mattei

Peter Huttinger (left) and Matt Distel (standing) have assembled Multiple Strategies, an exhibition on view at the CAC through August 2005

Matt Distel stands firmly with pocketed hands and an inscrutable expression. Like the multiple brown and white shipping boxes stacked on the second floor gallery of the Contemporary Arts Center (CAC), the assistant curator seems to hold a novel concept hidden from view.

One by one he reveals the boxes' contents -- a dissected shoe preserved in Plexiglas, a custom-made bowling ball, a traveling gallery of wishbones and phalluses. These works of artistic addition will be assembled into Multiple Strategies, a nine-month CAC exhibition opening to the public on Saturday. The artists in this show have made work in multiple numbers to reach a wider audience.

Curator Distel and guest-curator Peter Huttinger selected work from the 1960s to the present to highlight the development of the "artist multiple" as socially relevant work.

"I was charged with trying to put something together that had a recent historical angle to it," Distel explains. "This work informs much of what is happening in contemporary art right now."

In the 1960s artists began producing three-dimensional objects in limited editions. These artists used manufacturing technology to produce an affordable product. The process questions the traditional role of art as a luxury good.

"It's a democratic process, art for all. It's about making objects more accessible to everybody," Distel says. Rather than implying criticism of high-price artwork, multiples show how some artists reach wider audiences. When Distel operated his own space, Dileia Contemporary Gallery, he never allowed finances to motivate his decisions.

"It was a collaborative effort," he recalls. "We made conscious decisions not to become a for-profit or nonprofit gallery, we were a 'no-profit' gallery. We just wanted to create our own environment, and our own kind of network," Distel says.

Much of the art in Multiple Strategies has a social agenda, devoid of profit. But other work serves its purpose while making a sale. Huttinger traces this back to the Andy Warhol factory, where artists became manufacturers.

"They take command and control over their own destiny in a certain sense. I guess they are capitalists, so their motivation may be more about money," Huttinger says. An example of this is Jeff Koons' "Balloon Dog," a limited edition porcelain sculpture for sale in CAC's gift shop.

Distel and Huttinger divided Multiple Strategies into six sections: Art for All; Artist, Action, Object; Artist as Publisher; Do-It-Yourself (DIY); Like Life, Pranks and Interventions; Multiple as Alternative Space.

Artists in the DIY section ask patrons and proprietors of artwork to become the artists. John Giorno's "You Got to Burn to Shine" is a collection of poetry recorded onto tape and made into stencils; the artist provides two cans of spray paint, inviting anyone to tag a building in poetic verse.

"It breaks down the barrier between the artist and the viewer, because the viewer then becomes a participant in making the work," Huttinger says. "That changes the context in which a work can exist. The art can exist in the gallery as a discreet object but then it can also be on the side of a building."

In Like Life: Pranks and Interventions artists leave their mark on existing structures and institutions. Works by these artists can be found in magazines, newspapers and on bowling balls. If you visit the lavatory during Friday's opening, be sure to wash your hands: The soap you use was manufactured by the Nuts Society as part of the Bangkok Project #1.

Through the self-publication of books, magazines and albums, artists own the process of production and distribution to large audiences. According to Distel and Huttinger, Artist as Publisher blurs the line between high and popular culture. These artists can be shape-shifters, moving from performance art to selling industrial Rock albums and making pornography to sell in galleries.

Another example of the self-published artist is Sally Alatalo, who bought 188 Harlequin Romance novels, took them apart and reconfigured the pages so that one novel was comprised of pages from the 188 different novels. Surprisingly each assorted book reads like one single story alluding to the novel's formulaic structure and use stock characters.

"Looking at these novels in terms of serving a social agenda there's an investigation of sexual stereotypes," Huttinger says.

The body of work Distel and Huttinger have drawn from is massive. The show is larger than anything Distel has ever curated; it could have been larger.

"Multiples are a limitless source of material. The show could be 80 times its size, or we could have dramatically narrowed its scope. We had to figure out how to organize and correlate all of that data to find our own scope," Distel says.

The work has been arriving in boxes for several weeks. Distel is seeing some of it for the first time. He says he could not have done this without Huttinger's help. Both men worked for the Shiffler Foundation, which has lent roughly 120 of the show's 300 works. As an archivist, Huttinger has worked with artist multiples for years; as an artist, he produces his own multiples.

Distel's experience curating ambitious shows at the CAC goes back to May 2002. Most recently he co-curated Beautiful Losers, which brought in hordes of people interested in street art, counter culture and the DIY mentality. The show was significant in part because it featured cooperation between the CAC and emerging Cincinnati galleries including Publico and the Mockbee.