Home(work) is the title of a new exhibition hosted by ArtHelix Gallery through the SHIM Art Network that will open this coming October 23rd in New York City at a unique new pop-up venue on East 29th St. provided by City Chateaus Realty.

 

This former restaurant/bar will allow over 25 artists from the around the world to showcase their art works made during the pandemic, but also act as a place from which they discuss with others how the shut-down made each re-think their own practices. The artists in Home(work) focus on a new hybrid craft based art that is modest in scale, but ambitious in intention. Removed from typical university, or private studios artists have had to respond by employing materials at hand and reduced spaces, but the results are often a more complex body of work that seems deeply connected to a real and private space rather than an idealized white gallery. The hosting of this exhibition is also a new hybridized model that will accommodate the actual terms of art engagement in the era of Covid protocols. Half of the exhibition will be of art that is only posted online through SHIM/Artsy, the other half will be in an actual site in New York City, but even then there will be no official public opening. Rather the restaurant/bar will act as an experimental laboratory for the artists to produce streaming videos and interviews for those unable to attend.

 

As a whole this exhibition will address the new ways art and galleries must adapt to the realities of the pandemic. Softening, but not eliminating the borders between the analog and the digital; embracing how local art practices can be stitched together into a globalized online community; accepting new forms of art media; and eschewing traditional galleries for quirkier, but more interesting art spaces.