The Ohio Artist Registry (OAR) is an exciting opportunity for artists to share their work, connect with the creative community, and establish an online presence—all on a free, virtual platform! The OAR encourages artists working in all art forms, throughout Ohio and beyond, to create a profile, which allows them to better promote themselves and their work. Being listed in the OAR provides artists with new opportunities to share their work with clients, galleries, patrons, and audiences. A listing in the OAR does not confer an endorsement, approval, or verification by the Ohio Arts Council.
For more information, contact Kathy Signorino, artist programs director, at kathy.signorino@oac.ohio.gov or 614-728-6140.
2025 Ohio Artist Registry Juried Exhibition
Jesse Ly
Bio
Jesse Ly is an Asian-American photographic and image-based artist. They hold a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts with a minor in Art History and a certificate in Critical Visions from the University of Cincinnati’s college of DAAP. They currently are the Graphic Design and Photography Media Facilities Coordinator for Art & Design at the University of Dayton.
They have exhibited work both nationally across the United States and internationally. A selection of solo and two person exhibitions include Image Interference at Basketshop Gallery – Cincinnati, OH, Support Systems at SHAG (Stone House Art Gallery) Charlotte, NC and I witness, I Observe, I am not, I am. at Capsule Gallery – Dayton, OH. Notable group exhibitions include Wild Frictions The Politics and Poetics of Interruption at The Contemporary Arts Center Cincinnati, FotoFocus – Auto//Update at the Carnegie – Covington, KY, and About Future at Millepiani – Rome, Italy. They are a recipient of the MCACD & Culture Works Artist Opportunity Grant, the Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, as well as the Dayton Regional Artist Renewal Grant via the National Endowment for the Arts, and was recently named a finalist for the Aperture Portfolio Prize for 2023.
Ly has also worked collaboratively as a member of Hot Take Press, producing publications to expand the possibilities of exhibition through print with other artists at institutions including: The Carnegie (Covington, KY), The George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY), Beeler Gallery at CCAD (Columbus, OH) the Geffen at MOCA (Los Angeles, CA) Denny Dimin Gallery (New York, NY) and Printed Matter.
Artist Statement
Jesse Ly is a visual artist who primarily uses a photographic approach that incorporates processes of sculpture, bookmaking, and writing to inform and expand imagery. Their work explores identity through representation, comprehension, and context in photographs via considering their transitional qualities of existence. This examines how photographic depictions may incite differentiation in presence and portrayal versus actuality.
These concepts surface in formats of self-analyzation, fixating on how Ly, those they have immediate discursive relationships with, their inhabited spaces, and objects of interaction exists through photographic imagery. By utilizing these depicting objects, a further dialog of the relationships of image-making, existence, and conceptual formulation is apprehended. By then sequencing, intervening, and examining the contextual structure of these photographs, a visual inquiry of physical, ethereal and psychological spaces become re-contextualized through the perceptions and depictions of the liminal spaces, futility, and notions imagery creates.