TEAMWERK

Featuring 20 Philadelphia-based artists paired in ten teams of two, this exhibition of all new collaborative artworks focuses on how artists find common ground and inspire others to work together and cooperatively arrive at their goals.

It’s not exaggeration to say that our current world feels filled with division and contention. While much more connects us to each other than isolates us, the social, economic and political concerns of our time appear to have resulted in an environment where we sometimes are more likely to define ourselves by what we are in opposition to than what we are in agreement with.

During times of agitation such as these a question arises about who will return us to one another—to see the common stakes of building a world together where we may disagree amicably and arrive at reconciliation graciously. Historically, artists are always the first at the ramparts facing times of such social development. We trust in artists to reconfigure our perception of daily life in bold and insightful new ways through their works. They rise to the challenge, on behalf of all of us, to engage rarely considered possibilities in an attempt to break through to new understandings.

In putting together TEAMWERK, COMMONWEAL curated ten teams of two artists, each who had not previously worked together, in order to develop a new series of objects and/or images. The only restriction given was on size—the gallery is not infinite as those who have visited us will know. Each team’s choice of how their collaboration operated was entirely up to them and based upon their own negotiations of each other’s artistic practices and availability. Some chose to pursue their partnerships through mostly digital means, others through transactional encounters, while some chose to open up their studios to one another. Each team took a uniquely different approach and yet each has created penetrating and thoughtful works that not only merge their artistic practices but also prove that there are always ways to find common ground.