“Call & Response” is a group exhibition that includes twelve artists examining formal and theoretical structures and systems in three and four dimensional forms within the context of current events that have caused economic, political, and social disarray on international levels. The exhibition theme addresses such cataclysms as the recent break down of world financial systems to the BP oil leak in the Gulf, and other instances where traditional structures and systems proved outdated and obsolete subsequently unveiling the increasing need for innovative resolutions. “Call & Response” includes work by artists Manuel Acevedo, Bang Geul Han & Steven Pederson, Heather Hart, Timothy Hutchings, Osman Khan, Rachel Kohn, Jon Laustsen, Lori Merhige, Risa Puno, Ryan Roa, and Kevin Sampson. The exhibition is curated by Jennifer Junkermeier.

The title of the exhibition alludes to a number of different ‘call & response’ scenarios that will be considered in production and post-production of the exhibition. On one level it refers to the open call format in which the exhibition and each of the artworks are brought to fruition. At the same time, the title makes reference to a term used in music referring to a succession of two distinct phrases played by different musicians, where the second phrase is heard as a direct commentary on or response to the first. In terms of the exhibition, the artists (in varying degrees) have translated ‘call & response’ into three and four dimensional forms working together to develop individual site-specific works creating an active ‘call & response’ scenario within the exhibition space.

Included work will ‘respond’ to one or more of the following ‘calls’: the Exhibition Space (The Hyperlocal), a response to the physical, architectural, environmental structure(s) of the exhibition space; the Exhibition Place (The Regional), a response to the physical/conceptual/social/historical structure(s) of the site, the building, the neighborhood, the city, people, the community, the resources, or products, of Newark, NJ and/or the Exhibition Time (The Global), a response to the “break down” of political/social/economic structures or systems that are transpiring now, in 2011, with effects of international scope.

By playing with scale, movement and form using a range of materials from found objects, industrial products and plants to light, technology and dangerously high-powered magnets in a variety mediums ranging from installation, sculpture, social interventions and performance each artist creates new situations in ‘Response’ to the ‘Call’ (and vice versa) of the world around them that is in need of alternative visions.