SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical, and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week New York and Frieze Week LA. The 12th Edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York City will be held from September 6th - 11th, 2023, with details on their 5th LA Exhibition to come.

By first inhabiting St. Patrick's Old School, and then the former James A. Farley Post Office, Condé Nast building at 4 Times Square, UN Plaza building, and most recently Ralph Lauren's former 625 Madison Ave offices in New York City -- and in former Fruti & Vegetable stalls, and clothing and munitions factories in Los Angeles -- the fair positions itself as a cultural destination 'on the coattails of the collatoral damage of capital' -- building into its exhibitions a witness of the dissolution of 20th Century grandeur as much as the flowering of -- and support for -- 21st Centrury artists and their work.

Mulching from what is becoming bygone of the institutions of contemporary society -- be they ecumenical, postal, or plenipotentiary; or, more recently, indicative of the bygone primacy of empires in publishing, weapons manufacturing, and textile -- the initiative offers in the relics of industry free space for independent curators and low-cost space for galleries within New York City and Los Angeles landmarks, past and future. In exchange for no- and low-cost exhibition space, visionary perspectives both established and unknown are charged with engaging these areas under a unifying theme and pushed to extend the boundries of typical market week practices, low overhead and shifting curatorial themes their assets to this end. 

All artworks in the show are displayed and available for purchase online, giving artists unknown, emerging, mid-career, and beyond a virtual compliment to their tactile exhibitions.

No- and low-cost exhibition space and low-cost entry for art patrons, public, and practioners alike aims to widen the arts audience in New York and Los Angeles and broaden the dialog of what constitutes value and economy in a 21st Century city.

Through Skylight Studios, over 40 curators occupied a former fruit and vegetable warehouse kittycorner to the Arts District in DTLA for the first SPRING/BREAK Art Show LA in February 2019. In February 2020, 70 curators occupied the industrial areas of the ROW DTLA, and in 2022 80 curators occupied a former 1940s munitions factory in Culver City through RedCar. Backlot has been an official partner of New York City shows since 2020 and facilitated the use of the iconic checkerboard locations on Madison avenue up through Fall 2023.

MEET THE ORGANIZERS

Founded by Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly in 2009, The They Co. creative supergroup has organized, curated, facilitated and produced events with the New Museum, Brooklyn College, Art Hamptons, Flux Factory, Collective Show, Nuit Blanche New York, Silvershed, The Metric System, The Underground Library, Gowanus Studio Space, and numerous other community-based arts organizations. In May of 2011 and 2013, the group organized the SCHOOL NITE exhibition event for the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for the New City, and in September 2011 intercepted the city's San Gennaro Festival with a 90-foot sculptural interpretation of the Roman oculus, created by SOFTlab. Under the gender-melding moniker BOYFRIENDGIRLFRIEND, Gori and Kelly have collaborated on several formal projects, most recently their ongoing SIGHTSEERS photographic series since 2016. In 2017, SPRING/BREAK launched it's biannual IMMERSIVE program, with large-scale sculptural installations at a mall for the BKYLN IMMERSIVE in May 2017, followed by TIMES SQUARE IMMERSIVE, a Times Square Plaza takeover with monumental sculptures created onsite in each public plaza of Times Square in March 2019, and UPSTATE IMMERSIVE in 2021 with ten unique sculptures to create a sculpture garden in Poughkeepsie, NY during Upstate Arts Weekend. And another OLD SCHOOL IMMERSIVE Secret Show during Frieze Week in May. Gori and Kelly have new projects forming in the film and tv landscape and in the published written word in 2024 with collaborations upcoming with The Portland Museum of Art & more.

www.thetheyco.com  /  www.andrewgori-official.com  /  www.ambrekelly.com   /  www.instagram.com