Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2007
Project Summary: Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2007 is a contemporary public art project which includes the commission, creation, and exhibition of approximately 30 multidisciplinary, site-specific artworks. These works will be displayed at a variety oflocations along Jamaica A venue, including banks, stores, restaurants, street comers, phone booths, parks, and other public spaces from September 29 - November 17, 2007. Participants include a diverse array of both established and emerging artists working in a wide range of media. Jamaica Flux 2007 assumes the point of view that an exhibition is not just a show representing an idea or an entity. An exhibition, when considered seriously, is a programmatic action with corporeal effects and consequences. Jamaica Flux 2007 also challenges ideas about where art should be displayed and explores the relationship between art, commerce, urban renewal, and community. Through Jamaica Flux 2007, JCAL, a multi-disciplinary and community-based organization, performs its vital function to serve the NY art world and the community by promoting contemporary art culture and providing seminal aids to improve social, political, and economic conditions of urban renewal. The project is an outgrowth of JCAL's very successful Jamaica Flux: Workspaces & Windows 2004 project.
As a part of the project, a companion exhibition will be presented in JCAL's landmark gallery from September 29, 2007 - January 12, 2008. The gallery exhibition, which includes participating artists' sketches and models as well as historic examples of site-specific artwork, is designed to give context to site-specific art practices and provide visitors with a behind-the-scenes look at artists' creative processes. The other crucial component of Jamaica Flux 2007 is the discourse scheduled to be published in late fall of 2007. This full-color publication will include artist profiles, reproductions of artwork, interviews, and critical essays on contemporary art practices. The project also offers a series of weekend public programs and educational programs such artist talks, symposium and tours during the period from early spring of 2007 to the conclusion of the off-site exhibition on November 17, 2007.
In addition to 31 artists, Jamaica Flux 2007 involves three curators, three to five scholars and art-professionals, several dozen business owners and merchants, and organizations such as the Rufus King Manor Museum, the Queens Public Library, the Greater Jamaica Development Corporation, the Jamaica Center Business Improvement District, and the Queens Borough President's Office. Over the course of the exhibition, we expect over 100,000 people to view the site-specific artworks on display. Jamaica Flux 2007 is co-curated by a curatorial team comprised of Kóan-Jeff Baysa, independent curator, Juliana Driever, curator and Director of Queens Public Library Gallery, and Olu Oguibe, artist and art-historian, as well as myself.
The List of the Participating Curators and Artists
Curators:
Heng-Gil Han, Project Director/Curator
Koan Jeff Bays a, Co-Curator
Juliana Driever, Co-Curator
Olu Oguibe, Co-Curator
Participating Artists
On/megumi Akiyoshi
Grimanesa Amoros
Shelly Bahl
Aileen Bassis Lishan Chang
Sook Jin Jo
Jon Cuyson
Stephanie Dinkins
The Rider Project (featuring Michele Gambetta, Mark Rentschler, Mary Pinto, Landon Jones, and Adam Lister) Shigeko Hirakawa
Leslie Hewitt & William Cordova
Christopher K. Ho
Akiko Ichikawa
Susan Kleinberg
Haejae Lee
Diane Meyer
Carol Pereira
Jenny Polak
Lisa C. Soto
Anna Stein & Athena Robles
Steed Taylor
Wei Weng & Heather Hart
Saya Woolfalk
Artists of Historical Works:
Gordon Matta-Clark (pending)
Robert Smithson (secured)
Felix Gonales-Torres (pending)