Objective:
To continue creativity while participating in an exhibition that mirrors our collective experiences.
To produce a long-term record of this time of isolation, hardship, and sadness.
To find glimmers of hope.
Open call to all artists of all mediums to participate safely in a group exhibition.
Dates: from April 25th 2020 for as long as is needed. During the 2020 season 83 artists joined the project.
From November of 2020 to April 1st of 2021 the show was removed from the ground and placed in storage over the winter.
On April 12th of 2021the show reopened to the public at dusk.
Click Here to see the artist in the show and images of thier work.
The overall exhibition is intended to be an ongoing record of this time. Artworks will be accepted throughout the life of this exhibition. The project will close to new submissions once the gallery can have an indoor opening of 100 people safely. At that time the boxes will be put into storage under the floor of the main gallery space for the next 10 years. In 2032 the gallery hopes to show the work again outside. To facilitate these long-term hopes the works of art will not be returned to the artist, nor will they be for sale. The art created and donated will remain a record of this unique time in our history.
Anyone who wishes to participate is asked to make a piece inside a small box (vitrine). The top of the vitrine is a window that when buried in the ground allows the viewer to look inside. Each box is illuminated by a solar powered light that is buried next to the vitrine. The site for this mass exhibition is the grounds of The Re Institute, a 32-acre farm/alternative gallery. The show is open to the public as an outdoor walking experience from April through October. The gallery is located in rural Dutchess County near where New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts all meet. The show launched without an opening or a group audience. It will
close with a public event -- a reverse opening.
Guests use an online calendar to make an appointment to see the show. At night the landscape gently glows from the indirect light of the buried boxes. The low light allows one to experience the sky as a mirror of the project under one’s feet. The sound of the environment changes nightly depending on the season and the weather. A somber reflection on these times prevails as one walks in the dark guided by the illuminations emanating from the ground while exploring the creativity within each box. The interplay between art, light, nature and one’s movement through the landscape makes for an immersive and powerful viewer experience.
Some general themes have covered:
The Covid-19 virus.
The death and illness of countless people worldwide.
The isolation that many of us have felt.
Loss of millions of jobs and the financial hardship this has caused.
Hunger, homelessness, lack of healthcare.
Police violence against minority populations both nationally and internationally.
Acknowledgement of systemic racism.
The lack of trust in science be it the existence and severity of Covid-19, the efficacy/safety of vaccination, or the existence of global warming.
Attacks on the security of elections in America.
Loss of commitment to the peaceful transfer of power on a national and state level.
But all is not negative in these times and the positive is just as valuable to document…
The continuation of creativity that time in isolation has allowed.
The time available to focus on those that we live most closely with.
The ability to spend time in nature or on the elemental parts of life -- cooking, reading, playing.
Thoughts that may help the artists as they make their box:
1. Everyone is an artist.
2. We are all working alone, each of us in our own studio/home. The isolation of our studios is echoed in the placement of the boxes across the landscape.
3. The box is chosen for its versatility to all artistic art processes. The box will allow artists that normally do not make outdoor work to also participate in this exhibition. A drawing, a painting, a photograph, or a poem placed in the bottom of the box could all work to capture these times.
4. We all dream of being back in a world where our art can be experienced by others. The architecture of these dreams is often the white walled rooms of a gallery. A space where our friends all gather to see what we have made. The box and its interior space is a metaphor for this architecture that we dream of.
5. We strive to record our lives and to bring meaning to the present. We do this through the production of artifact. Some of the work presented may talk directly to the experience of loss and isolation. Other pieces may be the record of one artist’s present interests. Some may be a wonderful treasure that the finder/participant will be given as reward for their search.
6. This may be a time of mass burial. The small cemetery near where I live recently set out flags demarcating the rows for future grave sites. This exhibition with its individual art objects may stand in for a similar act of reverence.
7. As humans, what we bury has always been deeply important to us. Think of the amazing Ice Age carving of swimming reindeer at the British Museum. The reindeer sculpture has no practical purpose. Yet it completely links us with humanity 50,000 years ago.
This exhibition is open to anyone who would like to document their creative process and in so doing join with others in this collective isolation.
a writen piece by
Ashley Mayne
