EXIT ART ANNOUNCES
5 ConceptPlus Calls
FOR SEA EXHIBITIONS IN EXIT UNDERGROUND
1) Vertical Gardens – Due January 15, 2009
2) End of Oil – Due February 15, 2009
3) America for Sale – Due February 15, 2009
4) Consume – Due March 15, 2009
5) Contemporary Slavery – Due March 15, 2009
In 2009 – 2010 Exit Art’s subterranean venue, Exit Underground, will present five exhibitions for its new initiative SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics). SEA is a unique endeavor that presents a diverse multimedia exhibition program and permanent archive of artworks that address social and environmental concerns.
We are asking artists to consider the following exhibition themes in the context of SEA’s central mission: to provide a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of socially and environmentally-engaged work, and to provide a forum for collaboration between artists, scientists, activists, scholars and the public. SEA functions as an initiative where individuals can join together in dialogue about issues that affect our daily lives.
Exit Underground’s gallery is a unique space that is roughly 480 square feet with eight-foot ceilings.
We are looking for work in the mediums of video, photography, painting, drawing, audio, poetry, and installation – the work MUST be sized appropriately for Exit Underground. Due to the underground aspects of the space, we are limited to presenting wall pieces.
Please Note:
Each exhibition has a specific due date which is listed below the title and in the description itself.
End of Oil – DUE FEBRUARY 15, 2009.
In July 2008, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Companies (OPEC) announced that the price per barrel
of oil had climbed above $145. About three months later, on October 16, 2008, the New York Times reported that oil had fallen below $70 a barrel, more than half of the July 2008 price. Fluctuating oil prices are evidence
of the instability of global oil markets and reminders of our urgent need to develop alternative fuels and forms of energy.
This is a call for proposals for an exhibition that will address human dependence on fossil fuels and the ramifications that this dependency has on the future of the environment and of global geopolitics. The exhibition will address renewable energy options, such as vegetable and electric-powered cars, geothermal energy, and solar power.
We are asking artists to envision alternative narratives for the impending oil crisis by creating works that imagine a future society forced to live with limited access to oil and alternative sources of energy.
DUE FEBRUARY 15, 2009.
How To Apply
NOTE: Artists may apply for one or all of the exhibitions listed above.
For all ConceptPlus calls, please submit the following:
• a description of the project, not more than 500 words
• a brief resume
AND
• up to 10 JPGs of the proposed project on CD or on the web (please send images at a low resolution
to open quickly), up to 5 JPGs of previous work, and an image list with descriptions
OR
• a 3-5 minute NTSC DVD (if the DVD is longer than five minutes, be sure to indicate which part the panel should view)
Submissions will not be returned. Please send submissions to:
Exit Art
[title of exhibition]
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Or email them to Assistant Curator Lauren Rosati at lauren@exitart.org.
No phone calls please.
SEA (Social-Environmental Aesthetics)
SEA is an exhibition program and archive of artworks that addresses social and environmental concerns. It is a large-scale initiative dealing with current environmental concerns and the way artists respond to them. It will assemble artists, activists, scientists and scholars to address these issues through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and discussions. SEA will occupy a permanent space in Exit Underground, a multimedia performance, film, and exhibition venue underneath Exit Art’s main gallery space. The SEA Archive will be a permanent archive of information, images and videos that will be a searchable database for scholars and researchers.
Artists have been making work related to social and environmental issues for a long time, but SEA will be the most comprehensive and probably the first initiative of its kind to bring this work together under a cohesive program. Central to the mission of SEA is to provide a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of this kind of work, to provide a forum for collaboration between artists and ecologists and to inspire them to continue the tradition of work that SEA presents. This project functions as an initiative where scientists, activists, researchers, academics, artists, and the environmentally-conscious public can join together in
support of issues that affect our daily lives.
ConceptPlus
Exit Art currently works with a curatorial model called ConceptPlus, which begins with a theme or concept that is then publicized through a call for proposals.
For each ConceptPlus show, we begin with a core group of artists, and then open up the exhibition by issuing
an international call for artists to propose new or newly-contextualized work in response to a given theme or cultural condition. The exhibition is then curated by Exit Art’s curatorial staff, who view all the proposals for new work and work samples submitted by artists 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 the reconstruction of global cities (Exit Biennial: Reconstruction, 2003) to the image of America’s highest office (The Presidency, 2004), to contemporary Latino icons (L-Factor, 2005) to neuroscience innovations (BrainWave: Common Senses, 2008). A fundamental precept of the ConceptPlus model is to remove barriers to cultural participation by creating exhibition opportunities limited only by the artistic idea itself. As we have implemented this model over the past five years, Exit Art has seen a dramatic rise in both the number and geographic diversity of artists submitting proposals in response to our open 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 475 Tenth Avenue (at 36 Street) 212.966.7745 www.exitart.org
Hours: Tue – Thu, 10am – 6pm; Fri, 10am – 8pm; Sat, noon – 8pm. Closed Sun and Mon.
