Projects

Uncharted Territory, a multiple site event showcasing contemporary site-specific 2-D and 3-D art installations, video and performance art in the Central Valley Arts District of Orange, NJ. This is the first of two exhibitions that will take place in 2009 and are part of a long-term project, Sight Specific, which seeks to use installation and performance art to engage both public open space as well as raw interior spaces. The second exhibition, Reconstruction, is schedule for fall of 2009.

Contemporary artists used abandoned spaces, all located in the Central Valley Arts District, such as, Ironworks Studio at 406 Tompkins Street, , Oualie Art at 540A Freeman Street. These spaces have been a source of inspiration for temporary and ephemeral installations.

An exciting and eclectic event, Uncharted Territory lays the groundwork for an artist collective based in the Central Valley Arts District. It will define and promote the role of art in nurturing a community of artists and provide opportunities of exchange in the arts district and beyond. 

Curator Statement

“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.” Milton Friedman

“A society must assume that it is stable, but the artist must know, and [s]he must let us know, that there is nothing stable under heaven…The peculiar nature of this responsibility is that [s]he must never cease warring with [society], for its sake and for his[her] own.  For the truth, in spite of appearances and all our hopes, is that everything is always changing and the measure of our maturity as nations and as [humans] is how well prepared we are to meet these changes and, further, to use them for our health.”  James Baldwin

The current economic crisis, a historic political election, and a planet in crisis present unprecedented challenges.  They also create new opportunities to respond to these challenges and imagine new beginnings for our contemporary society. In many ways, we have entered uncharted territories.

This exhibition brings together artists who work in diverse media; what connects

them is the manner in which their art responds to, reflects or prefigures the

transformation of the current social landscape. 18 visual artists were chosen to

use raw and finished spaces in the emerging arts district that connects the townships

of Orange and West Orange. Their photography, painting, ephemeral installation

art and sculptures examine both physical and psychological space as territories for

exploration, interpretation and transformation.

The work of these artists demonstrates the necessity of artistic imagination to societal evolution, a reality that goes beyond the contemporary moment.  In fact they do what artists have always done, which is reflect society’s pasts, present and possible future realities in a way that makes what is present truly visible, revealing subjectivities, untold histories, and unanticipated directions.

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