SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical, and historic New York City and Los Angeles 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 14th Edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York City and 6th Edition of SPRING/BREAK LA will both premiere in 2025.

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 former publishing offices at 75 Varick in Hudson Square -- and in former Fruit & 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 struggle.

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, international deplomacy, and textile -- the initiative offers, in these 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 dialogue 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, 2023, and 2024 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. Other partners have include ChaShaMa, Empire State Development, Times Square Arts, The City of Poughkeepsie, Company Agenda & more.

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, People For Bernie, 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. SPRING/BREAK Secret Shows have also commensed regularly, often during New York Frieze Week in May, and featuring Downtown artist Jo Andres as curated by Laurie Berg, Stephanie Acosta, Christina Massey, co-produced by Anna Adams Stark and suggested by Sara Driver, a special group show curated by A +A of past S/B participants, a collaboration with Mooncalf Gallery and Ryan Boch featuring the works of Noah Kloster, a collaboration with The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation to feature the late Anspach's emmersive machines, and 'Frank', a group exhibition curated by Arielle de St. Phalle and Taylor Roy with downtown artists' work as disparate as Lucy Sante, Jim Jarmusch, and Robin Winters. Covered heavily in both the award-winning documentary 'The Art of Making It', directed by Kelsey Edwards, and 'Get The Picture' by New York Times best-selling author Bianca Bosker, Gori and Kelly have new projects forming in the film and TV landscape and in the published written word in 2025, along with projected collaborations upcoming with The Portland Museum of Art & more.

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

 Photo by Samuel Morgan Photography, THE OLD SCHOOL, 2013