Exit Art, NY - ConceptPlus Call for Works: IT'S NOT EASY
Deadline : 11 July, 2008
Exit Art is asking for responses to the question: What does green mean to you? for the exhibition It’s Not Easy, a show inspired by the recent tidal wave of efforts to go “green”. Curated entirely through email submissions, responses will be printed on 8½” x 11” paper and exhibited in Exit Art’s lower level gallery venue, Exit Underground.
As buildings seek LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, as major corporations seek to “green” their practices, and as global warming puts the need to be green at the forefront, we are virtually inundated with social pressures to be environmentally sustainable. But what does the word ‘green’ really mean? Does it adequately describe a movement to be sustainable? What does green mean to you? Exit Art wants to investigate the etymological, historical, environmental and psychological readings of GREEN.
You may respond both in image and text to the question: What does green mean to you? by submitting your work formatted to fit on an 8½” x 11” sheet of paper. Your submission can take the form of a letter, text, drawing, poem, collage, photograph, or any other format that can fit on a piece of paper. Submissions should be sent as a PDF or JPEG in an email attachment. All images must be 300 dpi or greater and all texts should be embedded. Please include your full name, city, state and country of residence in the email. You may submit more than one response.
Accepted submissions will be exhibited in Exit Underground from July 24 – August 29, 2008. Submissions should be emailed to Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator, at green@exitart.org by Friday, July 11, 2008.
It’s Not Easy will be the second exhibition of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), a major new exhibition program and archive initiative in Exit Underground that presents social and environmental issues and the way artists respond to them. The first show in the series, EPA (Environmental Performance Actions), closes July 12, 2008. It’s Not Easy opens concurrently with Summer Mixtape Volume 1: the Get Smart edition, on view at Exit Art through August 29, 2008.
Exit Art currently works with a curatorial model called ConceptPlus.
For ConceptPlus, the curators expand the possibilities of a thematic exhibition by soliciting proposals for new and/or existing work through email. We begin with the concept of the show, a base of artists, and open it up to our global network of artists through the internet. We enrich the exhibition with more information and artists whose work we didn't know, expanding the concept of the show by finding other artists outside our own circle, thus opening the possibilities of the art of curating.
For each ConceptPlus show, we issue an international call for artists to propose new or newly-contextualized work in response to a given theme or cultural condition. The work is then selected by Exit Art's curatorial staff, who view all the proposals and work samples submitted by artists (as many as 600 for each show) and select projects to be presented and/or commissioned for the exhibition. Every artist who submits a proposal has equal access to the curators, regardless of their previous experience, making ConceptPlus a highly democratic curatorial model.
Recent ConceptPlus exhibitions at Exit Art have addressed ideas ranging from reconstruction and rebirth of global cities (Exit Biennial: Reconstruction, 2003) the image and concept of America's highest office (The Presidency, 2004), to investigation personal and political ideas of terror (Terrorvision, 2004), to contemporary Latino icons (L-Factor, 2005), to the global crisis in energy (Electric Lab, 2007), to a show dedicated to investigating our relationship to the 5 year war in Iraq (Love/War/Sex, 2008) and most recently a poetic and scientific investigation of the brain (Common Senses, 2008).
A fundamental principle of the ConceptPlus model is to remove barriers to cultural participation by creating exhibition opportunities. Since implementing this model in 2003, Exit Art has seen a dramatic rise in both the amount and geographic diversity of artists submitting proposals in response to our calls. ConceptPlus also enables us to directly support the production of new work, as an increasing proportion of artists propose new projects that are commissioned exclusively for Exit Art exhibitions.
Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 25-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo. It has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.
EXIT ART // 475 10th Ave at 36th Street // New York // http://www.exitart.org
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