Call for Artists in New York City: The CALL FOR CHELSEA Award

Call for Chelsea’s inaugural 2015 show, (Re)envisioning art’s aura in the age of turbo-capitalism was an international exhibition focused on shaping definitions of contemporary art in an Anthropocene dominated by man’s new tools.

These technologies have enabled art to assume the same characteristics of mass production to social media interactions, both of which remain governed by marketability.

Erin Ko re-solicits Internet ads to viewers through a smart phone app, personalized from general ads to individualized ads for collectors. James Hannaham and Elizabeth Laplace extend Yves Klein's exploration of what art is selling. Hannaham tapes the edges of what would be a canvas onto the gallery wall and puts a price on earth. All with careful consideration to the text that so often surpasses the works. Laplace solicits the senses addressing the buying and selling of sensorial and intellectual experience, an experience that becomes secondary to notoriety.

Bob Clyatt welds the chains that imprison us to our own debts. Encircled around the necks of infants we must also consider the debts left to us. Chris Ekstrom draws the consequences of construction into a children’s playground. Imani Roach and Joe George address the packaging of identity that capitalism has come to find the highest value in. George warps the surfaces of Gameboys and cereal boxes properly repackaging the gender identities sold to young audiences. Roach reworks Post WWII photos of Black Americans determining the salability of the contained black figure. Chin-Lung Chuang and Marjan Moghaddam’s works manipulate the digital to reflect our emotional ties to it, both elated and conflicted.

In 2015, Call for Chelsea exhibited in conjunction with A Free Bird, which encourages youth through therapeutic arts. A Free Bird presented Ryan Reyes, a then fifteen-year-old sophomore, and his mentor Ramiro Davaro-Comas. Salvaged from an apartment fire, Reyes uses debris as base to build anew, garnering major success and support at his first public exhibition.

The Call for Artists CALL FOR CHELSEA returns in 2018 to host The Beauty of Appropriation. To start your application, click here: