apexart Franchising - Resolving another boundary between art and business

apexart Franchise Two - Samut Sakhon, Thailand, 2010

apexart Franchise One - Los Angeles, California, 2009

apexart Franchising - Resolving another boundary between art and business

Based on the idea of creating its own franchise, apexart has held two worldwide open calls for 250-word proposals asking participants why the franchise should come to their town and provide all of the support necessary to produce an exhibition.

As the art world adopts strategies from the world of business, cultural organizations have set up franchises around the globe. For the second year, apexart is joining this trend and setting up its own franchise in a new city. The Franchise competition is an opportunity for anyone from anywhere to create their own temporary apexart. For a four-week exhibition, the winner will be the director, curator and/or staff of your own apexart franchise with a budget, a modest salary, and almost complete control. apexart provides the funding, along with the necessary guidance to make the curated exhibition happen. This includes an apexart brochure in an edition of 10,000 and its distribution around the world to more than 108 countries and a visit or two from us. The winning curator will also write an essay about the show. The Franchise is an opportunity to help bring an idea to fruition in a new place and to give someone an interesting opportunity.

The Franchise was conceived to explore a relationship between art and commerce and to enable an exhibition based on meritocratic consensus. To further extend the public interactive nature of this idea, we ask a large number of individuals to take part on a jury to score proposals. Submissions come in from countries around the world. Reading them provides an interesting view of what people are thinking and what they feel needs attention in their respective art communities.

apexart Franchise Two - Samut Sakhon, Thailand, 2010

March 13- April 17, 2010
apexart opens in Samut Sakhon, Thailand

For Franchise Two (2010) we excluded submissions for exhibitions to take place in large cities like New York, Rio de Janeiro and Tokyo, to focus on locations with less than 500,000 people — places such as Moshupa or Priboj, Baton Rouge or Lübeck, Cadiz or Az-Zawiyah, Heidelberg or Zinder. In response we received 243 exhibition proposals from 63 countries, and jurors submitted over 5,000 votes to identify a winner. We are pleased to announce that an exhibition to be located in Samut Sakhon, Thailand, authored by Logan Bay, has won.

The full proposal reads:
Opening Soon: apexart Thailand In a mass produced world of global goods, the act of creation is often lost or forgotten. Hidden machinery cranks and sweats out elements of our everyday life, yet we rarely glimpse into that world where ideas are physically forged. By bringing contemporary artists into a global manufacturing hub the realms of production and creation will exist in a simultaneous space. With the allotted budget we would transform a small factory into an active generator of creative capital. Inviting four artists to participate in a residency where they work directly in the factory along side employees creating works of art and transforming the factory space. Making this franchise of apexart more than a passive spectacle of viewing art. Samut Sakhon is provincial town that houses many factories. Over the past decades Thailand has worked to become a producer of exportable goods and inexpensive items for domestic use. While the machinery of manufacture is abundant, many of the products are designed elsewhere. This exhibition would work to foster a sense that industrial spaces can also be incubators for creative thought and social evolution. Initial list of prospective artists to invite: Cody Hudson, Seri Pop, Jen Stark, Douglas Young, Juan Angel Chavez, Paul B. Davis

June 4 - July 3, 2009
apexart moves to Los Angeles
apexart presented the exhibition X, Y, Z, and U curated by The Franchise winners The League of Imaginary Scientists at Outpost for Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Projects by: Kim Abeles, Kelly Jaclynn Andres, Jason Bobe, Mackenzie Cowell, Liz Kueneke, Andrea Polli, Chuck Varga

For The Franchise (2009) we received 456 proposals from 65 countries, with the greatest concentration from the U.S. (38 states). We invited 295 jurors to participate in the evaluation, who cast 6,942 votes (scoring them 1-5) with each proposal receiving approximately 26 votes.

The winning proposal comes from Los Angeles, CA:
The League of Imaginary Scientists is a group of interdisciplinary thinkers and tinkerers who present ambitious participatory art events with repurposed mechanics and scientific assertions. The League concocts micro-festivals for microorganisms, invites scientific luminaries onto local stages, and pours limited paper money into our bottomless pit of ideas. The resulting diversions from the everyday celebrate the everyday: past exhibitions showcased a communication device for talking to bacteria and a machine for reversing progress and returning viewers to childhood. League exhibitions simultaneously subvert and revamp the story of science. More than anything, the League of Imaginary Scientists is a consortium for ideas — a mental exhibition space where conversations and collaborations are hatched. We seek affiliation and guidance by Apexart because A) we do not have the know-how or funds to leap from independent art collective to independent art space, and B) the League was formed on a street called Apex Avenue in Silverlake in 2006. For our dream exhibition in our city of Los Angeles, the League proposes an exhibition of artworks that function as scientific research for studies without intentionality — purely for experimentation. Examples of the types of projects we would like to exhibit include art and science in the vein of research practiced by artists such as Andrea Polli, whose work includes a study on locust eyes, and Kelly Andres, whose mobile laboratory allows city-goers to listen to ecology, as well as groups like Harvard's neuroscience laboratory, currently creating the first molecular film of an unraveled mouse brain. Aspirations for an evocative idea-oriented exhibition aside, the League gives great weight to the word, Apex. Our own origins anticipated an eventual peak. Perhaps this is it.