Driven by the widening opportunity gap artists continue to face, spurred by lack of gallery representation, art fair cancellations, shuttered physical galleries, and dwindling exhibition opportunities, ArtEmerge, one of the first artist-owned virtual galleries, announces its launch and inaugural exhibition - Unbroken: Cross Currents and Contemporary Time. The show will “go live” on April 20, 2021. Curated by Jennifer Chi, Ph.D, the exhibition illustrates how time has a multiplicity of meanings by  the diverse works selected for the exhibition.

Visitors to the virtual exhibition can expect to encounter recent artworks by two artists. Houston based artist Justin Garcia 2019 Winner Medici Award who has created a powerful series, and is particularly concerned with crystalizing society’s perception of time. His current series focuses on the impact of change over time. These will be juxtaposed with the sensorial, yet elusive color field paintings by Pollock-Krasner Foundation Awardee, Todd Williamson and co-founder of ArtEmerge.  Williamson’s works immediately engage the viewer with a rich and unusually surprising use of colors. They often pull you into another world that suspends our notion of time through an explosive control of the canvas. The artworks are intended to serve as metaphors to examine, define and make sense of our place during this salient moment in world history. 

 ArtEmerge’s programming will focus on presenting exceptionally talented artists who have thus far been under-appreciated in the mainstream art world.  The gallery will serve as an alternative conduit to choose, exhibit, and make available for sale online, a robust body of works by artists who hold exceptional, yet unrecognized portfolios of collectible art. In a departure from traditional galleries, artists presented are encouraged by ArtEmerge to communicate with collectors directly, as they seek to learn and understand their creative practice.  Additionally in seeking to expand its scooe the gallery will accept cryptocurrencies as payment on select artist's portfolio and will offer NFTs.

Inaugural Exhibition - Unbroken: Cross Currents and Contemporary Time

Unbroken is influenced by the jarring events of 2020 and their ripple effects on society’s psyche.  The show is structured to visualize the connections and conversations centered on a series of topics such as self-reflection, human imperfection, and the need to cancel the noises that permeates our daily existence.  It looks at the significance of signs and symbols and asks how and why we continue to break the rules for love and survival and begs for deep introspection and investigations of our thoughts.

Williamson’s “Say What You Want” and Garcia’s “Documented Thoughts Through Time,”  set the tone for the exhibit and serve as pillars for the five visual conversations of the show, as told through the works of the two participating artists; one who seeks to conceptualize society’s perception of time and the other whose art takes the onlooker through rippling waves of emotions, metaphors for the state of society today which beg for deep introspection as we navigate and evolve through this strange and transformative time.

Conversation 1

Suddenly-Now / Love Lives:  Williamson’s “Suddenly-Now,” influenced by Ruscha’s word paintings and Garcia’s, “Love Lives” inspired by Banksy’s work on crumbling walls and buildings, steers the conversation towards deep inner passion, and muses   “Art, like love, moves the heart in unexpected directions, sometimes asking the hardest questions and soliciting a closer look at our innermost feelings and insecurities.”

Conversation 2

Life Moments / Coming Together:  Signs and symbols appear to us at moments in our lives when we need them most. They inadvertently direct us when we’re in search of guidance. Sometimes serving as precursors to strange difficult times where we emerge with clearer directions and insights - defining moments in our lives we remember with reverence and respect.

Conversation 3

That Someone / Beauty & Dying:  Garcia’s “That Someone” and Williamson’s “Beauty & Dying” examine society’s nature to love and break rules in order to survive. These two works question each other in discord, “Which rules have you broken?”

Conversation 4

Canceling the Noise / Tainted Love:  We are surrounded by a lot of noise in our daily lives- news, politics, anger, judgment, and more. We need stillness to reflect on who we are and how we move forward in a world that has changed.

 Conversation 5

Not Perfect But It’s All Yours / Lost in Transition:  The imperfect heart and jagged walls of Garcia “Not Perfect But It’s All Yours” reflects the imperfection that exists in all of us and the deep, hazy blue that encapsulates Williamson’s, “Lost in Transition” symbolizes imperfection as it transitions through its many forms. 

Artists in the Exhibition:

Justin Garcia is a Houston native and2019 Winner Medici Award from the XII Edizione, Florence Biennale, Firenze Italy.   Garcia is a self described “time architect, influenced by the connection between art and science.  His work focuses on how change occurs over time and is evident in his current body of work.  “Walls of Time,” his eighth series, focuses on the complexity of time and the human perception of it through the simplicity of aging walls as architectural structures representing reality.

Todd Williamson, Co-founder of Art Emerge is a Pollock Prize for Creativity winner with the Pollock Krasner Foundation.  Williamson’s project “Processional” was 1 of 20 official exhibitions at the 2019 58th Venice Biennale and was visited by over 100,000 people.  Processional was named as 1 of the Top Ten Exhibitions for 2019 by Forbes magazine, Domus, Widewalls, Arteez, and the Venice Insider.  The film documentary “Dreams in Color” on his process of getting to the Biennale won him the Special Artist Recognition Award with the Art NonStop International Film Festival Buenos Aires.  Williamson is based in LA. 

About the Curator

Jennifer Chi is currently a freelance curator based in New York City. She was the founding Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator and of  New York University’s uptown galleries as well as the Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Brooklyn Museum and has held positions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Ashmolean Museum. She has a Ph.D. in art history from New York University and a Master of Studies with distinction from Oxford University, England. 

Unbroken will be accessible on www.ArtEmerge.org on April 20,2021 and runs through June 20th, 2021.