Exit Art announces the IDA APPLEBROOG AWARD AT EXIT ART

First recipient Rafael Sanchez to receive $10,000

Exit Art is pleased to announce the first biennial Ida Applebroog Award at Exit Art, established by Richard Massey, art collector and Exit Art board member, and Ida Applebroog, artist and Exit Art board member, to nurture outstanding artists at critical points in their careers. This award was named after Ida Applebroog to convey both the spirit of her work and Exit Art’s mission and to honor her for her accomplishments. For more than 25 years, Exit Art’s mission has been to support under recognized artists that consistently challenge cultural and artistic conventions. By establishing this award at Exit Art, Ida Applebroog wishes to further that mission by providing a substantial monetary award to support such artists.

The first 2008 Ida Applebroog Award at Exit Art has been awarded to performance artist Rafael Sanchez. The award includes a $10,000 unrestricted grant and a solo exhibition in Exit Art’s project room.

To see a video compilation of Rafael Sanchez's work, please click here.

Rafael Sanchez, Urban Renewal (2007) CONSTRUCT, Exit Art

Five artists were nominated by five distinguished curators and artists to be shortlisted for panel consideration. The shortlisted candidates were: Boyce Cummings, New York; Jessica Lagunas, New York; Lauren Woods, San Francisco; Regina José Galindo, Guatemala; and Rafael Sanchez, New York. Artists of all disciplines, nationalities, sexes, and ages, and working in any medium were eligible for nomination.

Five panelists convened to choose the 2008 award recipient: Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Curator at the Jersey City Musuem, Jersey City, New Jersey; Dean Daderko, Independent Curator, New York; Jeanette Ingberman, Co-Founder and Director of Exit Art, New York; Eungie Joo, Director and Curator of Education and Public Programs at the New Museum, New York; and Sara Reisman, Associate Dean of Cooper Union, School of Art, New York, and Independent Curator.

Rafael Sanchez(b.Newark, New Jersey, 1978) is a performance artist who often takes his work to the streets and other unconventional spaces. In his performances, Sanchez frequently subjects his body to extreme stress and pain to materialize ideas of memory, spirituality and endurance. In an early work titled Back to Africa (2000), Sanchez wandered around New Jersey in white face, carrying a suitcase and waiting for a bus that never arrived. In a more recent work, Calienté/Frio (2007) the artist traced the migration process of two women from Cuba to America during the 1960s. The artist, dressed in a light colored suit and hat and carrying a packed suitcase, submerged himself in a tub of water that alternated between near boiling and below freezing as interviews with the two Cuban women played in the background.

Rafael Sanchez, Calienté/Frio (2007), Tropical Area, Exit Art

The Ida Applebroog Award was presented to Rafael Sanchez at Exit Art’s EXPOSE 2008 Benefit Auction on May 1, 2008.

Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 25-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo. It has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.