Ian Breidenbach is a conceptual artist, curator, and educator based in Findlay, Ohio. In 2012, he founded The Neon Heater Art Gallery, an artist-run space servicing the community of Findlay, Ohio and surroundings, providing access to contemporary art in a rural setting. The Neon Heater is currently in its 11th year of programming. His artistic practice explores the connective quality of narrative in the creation of worlds and possible futures. Most recently he has been engaged as the founder and leader of an artist collective aimed at envisioning a global-scale Utopia, called the Utopian Megaproject.
In 2018, he received the Palmer Scholarship from the Toledo Art Museum to conduct national research into Artist-Run Galleries and community engagement. In May 2022, alongside members of The Blue House Gallery, he organized Futures: A National Artist-Run Symposium in Dayton, Ohio to bring together gallerists from around the country to explore the issues and difficulties, as well as possible futures of the Artist-Run gallery community. This symposium follows years of research into the way that art can be a catalyst for community engagement, and how the Artist-Run model of curation is specifically suited to thinking about collaboration between artists and non-artists alike.
He holds a BFA from Wright State University in Selected Studies: Video Art (2009) and an MFA in Studio Art from Texas Tech University (2022). He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at The Ohio State University at Lima, OH teaching Studio Art and Theory courses, and is the curator of The Farmer Family Gallery.