Unlimited Partnerships: Collaboration in Contemporary Art (July - December 2000), a multifaceted project that celebrates and explores collaborative art practices in and across artistic disciplines. Through gallery, satellite, and web exhibitions, public art installations, a publication, and Art Works! community components, Unlimited Partnerships critically questions conventional notions of artistic partnership and opens a space for artists who challenge the definitions of art and aesthetics. Often the history of modern art is associated with the emergence of the solitary genius, but throughout the history of modernism, what has not received much attention is the parallel history of dispersed authorship, collaborative interaction, and process-based forms of production. Unlimited Partnerships: Collaboration in Contemporary Art presents a range of collaborative approaches that explore the production and reception of art, ranging from artists working with other artists in and across media boundaries, to collaborative groups and collectives, to works located outside the institutional confines of the art world - calling into question the distinction between artist and audience.
Unlimited Partnerships presents retrospective exhibitions and commissioned installations that reach beyond the limited partnership to a broader world of social relations including works that involve the active participation of artists, art works, and audiences. The project includes a special edition of the CEPA Journal (edited by Grant Kester) featuring critical essays by artists, scholars, critics, and curatorial consultants Jill Cassid and Maria DeGuzman. Viewers (at all project sites) will be offered an informational brochure that explains the curatorial premise and individual artist's projects in accessible language. Additionally, throughout the course of the exhibition, visiting artists will participate in CEPA's newest artist advocacy/community outreach program, Art Works!, creating a forum for working artists and audiences to come together for community talks, studio visits, and project related youth and adult workshops.
Conversation Pieces: Collaboration and Artistic Identity; Essay by Grant Kester
Two Degrees of Separation: Emily Blair, Michelle Illuminato and Phuong Nguyen
SPIR: Jill Casid & Maria Deguzman
REAL TIME SHIFTS: Peer Bode, Joseph Scheer, and Jessie Shefrin
VIROCODE: Peter D'Auria & Andrea Mancuso
Millie Chen & Evelyn Von Michalofski
This project is generously supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for theVisual Arts, Communication Workers of America, The John R. Oishei Foundation, Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The New York State Council on the Arts.