In partnership with the New Museum IDEAS CITY Festival 

VIP Preview and Reception: Wednesday, May 8^th, 4pm – 8pm Invitation only 

Daily Show Hours: Thursday, May 9^th – Sunday, May 12^th, 12pm – 6pm 

Location: Old School, 233 Mott Street @ Prince Street, Nolita, New York

Ambre Kelly and Andrew Gori, co-creators of SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York City’s conceptual curator-driven art fair, are pleased to announce their upcoming collaboration with the New Museum’s IDEAS CITY festival. Wish Meme Art Exhibition will showcase over 50 artists in three stories and the back recess yard of Old School at 233 Mott Street in NoLIta. To coincide with both IDEAS CITY Festival and Frieze Art Week, the organizers will host an opening event on Saturday, May 4^th and remain open to the public May 8 – 12, 2013.

Artworks centered on the theme Wish Meme, will examine ideas of 21^st Century wish fulfillment in the Recession world – and how gestures of commodification, consumerism, and American dreaming online and off trend in the contemporary human psyche. The theme considers the overarching concept of IDEAS CITY, “Untapped Capital.”

In an effort to clearly delineate sales and exhibitions space within the show, works will be available for sale exclusively through virtual auction-house Paddle8. An online auction of selected works will launch May 4th – 20th, in tandem with the exhibition. View the auction at www.paddle8.com/auctions/wishmeme

Paddle8’s sale of the works from Wish Meme Art Exhibition will benefit The New Museum’s IDEAS CITY festival – to continue the support of this landmark cultural endeavor for Lower Manhattan and further the breadth and scope of the festival for years to come.

WISH MEME will feature performances that include Eve Sussman’s curation of Cate Giordano’s Dolly Presley. As the physical combination of Dolly Parton and Elvis Presley, Dolly Presley is a symbol of dystrophic Americana and a homage to faded icons.

Curator Maureen Sullivan presents Ghost of a Dream’s text based installation works HOPE/LESS and TRIUMP exploring the hopes, dreams, and success stories of the everyday person struggling to stay afloat in punishing economic times.

Premiering work by Fall On Your Sword + Sarah Bereza, Blaze of Thunder will transport the viewer to the NASCAR pits as they race a slot car around an apartment and into scenes from legendary racing films. 

Watershed by Anita Glesta will transform the ground you walk on into a river of frenzied fish, presenting a metaphor for our survival within the ecosystem of our planet and a forum to think about our city in a global context when global warming is an increasing concern.

Tom Smith will offer new re-structured paintings in congress with the exhibition theme.

Ballast Projects curator Adam Mignanelli presents Make Your Own Luck with artwork shared by Jenna Ransom, Samuel T. Adams, Russell Tyler, Devin Powers, and Ian Toms as an introduction into the journeys and hopes of their passions – artistic storytelling and image making.

thefuturefuture will create a series of unique 3D printed crystals that create a taxonomy of excessive characters that represent a new image of currency.

Bel Linquist’s DIVING/BEL project is launching a closet-sized SAVE THE WHALES initiative in support of Allied Whale (Bar Harbor, Maine). Linquist’s Whale Adoption Headquarters installation will be offering an exclusive line of silkscreened paintings on various materials that come with an official certificate of adoption for a whale currently living in the North Atlantic.

Filmmakers Celia Rowlson-Hall and Hannah Fidell will present a sound & video installation exploring online beauty tutorials and their summation of cultural fixation in the face of cyberspace girlhood. 

Patrick Meagher of Silvershed presents I Wish I Had A Wish To Wish Away exploring collaborative consciousness, dreaming, wishing, creative thinking, and how our decisions sculpt our lives and feed into our culture. Featuring artists Zain Burgess, Alexander Dawson, Michelle Heinz, Patrick Meagher, Holly Overton, Sophie Plimpton, Lina Scheynius, Ali Van Octopi Wallstreet, and Nadia Witte.

The longing desire of social progression through an intimate relationship with nature and return to basics is realized in David Flinn’s curation of After Nothing with works by Niall McClelland, Adam Ianniello, Alice Waese, Melissa Ling, Gerald Collings, and David Alexander Flinn.

Artist duo Aaron Anderson + Eric Carlson will present Before and After Science Fiction, an installation of sound, and objects at play with ideas of immanence, antagonism, rhythm, and redundancy in correlation to cultural excess in the world today.

Interstate Projects will curate a collaboration between Joseph Jagos and Christopher Puidokas to complete a physical tableau expressing the conundrum of societal whimsy expressed through the limitations of modern technology. 

Artist William Rahilly will premiere Optical Out – a video piece held hostage in a gallery, as curated by Eyelevel BQE. 

In addition, Gabriela Alva C. and Aurora Pellizzi of Eyelevel BQE will display a series of coin-drawings – which leave behind the soft, hint of value on the paper.

Curator Cecelia Stucker presents multi-channel, ambient light and sound piece The Powerful Bond, by artist Shelley Burgon. The installation transports viewers to a space of serene contemplation that reduces the anxieties that stem from our quest for success as well as our tendencies to value worth through superficial and popular qualifiers.

Artist Joe Brittain will showcase a group of works that strive to create a sense of magnetism through their unique materiality and imbedded histories. Like relics of saints, these works will act as examples of how to re-mystify objects, create a personalized sense of spirituality, and build a concrete connection to the larger universe. 

Ambre Kelly will exhibit formal artifacts memorializing art-world business aspirations, as seen through a previous self.

Michelle Devereux will show drawings aligning the disposable adult counterculture with other elements of low-nutrient Americana.

Myla Dalbesio will curate the group show Magic Kingdom, exploring the lifelong spiritual and ethical effect of youth-based consumer culture. Featuring works by Jason Nocito, Matt Jones, Weston Ulfig, Yung Lenox, Joe Roberts, and Stephen Zerbe.

Elena Parasco presents an installation by Rachel Rossin that offers an immersive platform for inner and outer body-ritual that incites patron participation by way of walking on 7,000 hollow eggs.

Video artist Julian Bozeman will present Come Home, a sci-fi rom-com pop-music closed-circuit TV/video program and tape-recording presented on multiple TV monitors and projectors in conjunction with a one-man performance, telling the story of multiple realities on multiple monitors in a 30 minute real-time time-frame.

Curator John J. McGurk will present the work of Joseph Burwell through an installation of a fictitious archeological installation of Burwell’s own, idealized studio sometime in the future

Jonathan Rosen will display a series of collage on canvas works about the secret desires and fantasies people have.

For more information on Wish Meme Art Exhibition visit: www.springbreakartshow.com/wishmeme

For press inquiries or to RSVP for the Press Preview, please contact: Ellie Clark at The They Co. schoolnite@thetheyco.com or 646.504.6523.