Calling All Artists/Designers/Architects/Performance Artists/New Media Artists:

For six years Gallery 400 has presented an annual series of commissioned projects entitled At the Edge. The project was originally initiated to support artists’ projects and has sponsored projects ranging from an off-site store to gallery installations, from a public performance to a CD compilation, from curatorial projects to websites. This year, in an effort to expand the gallery’s reach and scope, the gallery is expanding the call to include architecture, design and new media and projects that exist between these disciplines, as well as between them and art.

Inquiry, experimentation and ingenuity are the basis of At the Edge. As Chicago’s artistic, architectural and design scene continues to be an expansive, resourceful and energetic creative arena, Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois at Chicago encourages the most innovative aspects of that dynamism. We are looking to work with individuals ready to take a conceptual, political, speculative or aesthetic risk. Propose a project you might not be able to realize elsewhere, one you never thought could get made.

Propose a new project for the 2009 At the Edge: Innovative Arts in Chicago showcase.  Four individuals or group collaborations will be chosen to present projects lasting from one night to two months (possibly longer for public projects; gallery exhibitions typically last six weeks) that will be supported by Gallery 400’s professional resources, an honorarium and a moderate production budget.

Gallery 400 has the capacity to present projects that are public objects or architectural installations outside of the gallery; installations occupying the entire Gallery 400 space; events, seminars, or web-based projects; new media, video, and/or film installations; prototyping displays; sound works or radio plays; performance pieces; printed ephemera; and projects of similar scope. At the Edge supports projects that push boundaries, which may include social, economic, political or artistic commentaries; self-critical examinations of medium or context; or the expansion of practice in non-traditional, as well as traditional (e.g. photography, sculpture), media.

Gallery 400 challenges you to challenge yourselves and us.

for a PDF of complete guidelines and proposal cover sheet click here  

for a PDF of gallery floor plan click here