About

Push the envelope: to attempt to extend the limits of what is possible; to innovate, or go beyond commonly accepted boundaries.

Push the Envelope is an art product and public program enabling dialogue between artists in Chicago, Thessaloniki, and Athens. It proposes to provide a balance between criticality and practice, the everyday life and the spectacle of art, going beyond the idea of art within the art world to becoming part of a conversation within the public realm.

Over the span of three weeks DYNAMO Project Space in Thessaloniki, Greece (www.dynamoprojectspace.blogspot.com) and Spoke in Chicago, U.S.A. (www.spokechicago.blogspot.com) will host the commencement of dialogue between selected artists. The conversation will spring from an open, collaborative process and will be used to identify topics relevant to the group.

Invited curators, artists, and historians will lead discussions during each weekend for the duration of the DYNAMO exhibition. Artists will display past work at DYNAMO, while an exchange of knowledge, ideas, and influences will spur each artist to create new work in response to discussion, as they each contend with where they situate themselves politically in contemporary culture and within their historical past.

The purpose of this project is to promote cross-cultural conversation and collaboration, exposing perspectives from a multitude of backgrounds, attempting to actively engage artists in the public forum and raise awareness (as a catalyst for change). The intent is then to extend the project by exhibiting the work created from this dialogue as part of a larger program in Thessaloniki and Chicago.