Smart Spaces - Tamara Gayer
Co-curated by Kimberly Marrero and Louky Keijers
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SMARTSPACES SET FOR INAUGURAL WINDOW EXHIBITION
Site-Specific Installation By New York Artist Tamara Gayer
On View From May 25th - May 31st 2008
NEW YORK CITY, MAY 12, 2008 – Smartspaces is delighted to announce its first window exhibition, premiering May 25th – 31st at 266 West 37th Street. Guest curators Kimberly Marrero & Louky Keijsers have selected New York artist, Tamara Gayer to create a site-specific installation, Color Coordinated. For this debut project, the curators were invited to select artwork for a vacant storefront located in the heart of Manhattan’s Garment District. The location evokes traces of New York’s manufacturing past; using this space as an impromptu gallery highlights the juxtapositions of old and new which infuse the contemporary thrust of the city. Color Coordinated, on view around the clock, provides a breathing space and a conversation piece for the continuous stream of passersby; a rare opportunity to enjoy contemporary art in an everyday setting.
For Ms. Marrero and Ms. Keijers — members of Smartspaces’ dynamic network of curators — and Ellen Scott, Smartspaces executive director, Tamara Gayer was a natural choice for this particular project that speaks pointedly to the city’s perpetual evolution. Her multimedia installations engage the current changes in the city resulting from this unprecedented construction boom. Ms. Gayer is fixated on how this seemingly never-ending reconfiguration is changing the physical shape of our city while mutating our character. The artist works in the vein of a romantic ecologist. She is interested in the ebb and flow of the urban landscape, which etches its form on our behavior, wearing into our comprehension. Ms. Gayer’s images, suspended between two and three dimensions, are created from adaptations of large-scale drawings of the city morphed into appliqués of self-adhesive vinyl, wall paintings and other advertising "mediums."
Color Coordinated serves as platform for Ms. Gayer’s personal, visual dialogue with the space, the street, its history and its energetic and colorful surroundings. She has shown extensively in New York and abroad including at Priska Juschka Fine Art, Kunst Buero, ExitArt and Foxy Production, and her work is represented in many prominent collections including that of the Museum of Modern Art. “I’m thrilled to inaugurate the Smartspaces campaign to integrate art into the streetscape of New York City,” said Ms. Gayer, “The chance to take a piece that hopes to enliven the way people view the shape of the city and how they use the street, and to place it directly ‘on the city’ itself is a very unique opportunity and central to furthering the meaning in my art.”
Kimberly Marrero is an independent curator and private art advisor based in New York. Louky Keijser is the owner and director of LMAK projects in Chelsea and Williamsburg, New York. Ms. Marrero commented, “When invited to guest curate a project for Smartspaces, I was immediately on board. There is such a need to further the integration of art and its connection to everyone. I think Smartspaces has found a clever and creative way to create an aesthetic intervention, by weaving it into the everyday routine of New York.”
“Tamara is brilliant at making spaces come alive and her work truly engages the public—exactly what Smartspaces is all about,” said Ellen Scott. Smartspaces weaves art into the fabric of daily life by placing it in the windows of temporarily vacant property—spaces between tenants or in late-stage construction. Part of a growing movement bringing art to the public in unexpected ways, Smartspaces has a unique focus on windows, spaces between tenants, and connecting real-world experience with digital media and dialogue. In the blink of an eye, empty space becomes the next public gallery – and a place tenants want to be. Art grabs the attention of passersby, sparks conversation, and advertises a landlord with integrity and vision.