This fall and into next year, Heights Arts will participate in a city-wide exploration of surrealism in partnership with the No Exit New Music Ensemble and other collaborators. The celebration will begin with Collaborage, an exhibition opening in late August for which Heights Arts will tap its unique multidisciplinary resources. The concept for the exhibition employs the game strategies avant-garde artists used in the years after World War I to move beyond the world of forced rationality and unlock access to the unconscious (authentic) world. Many of these artists were part of the Dada movement, which soon was absorbed into surrealism. Surrealists were pioneers in the use of collage and other means or appropriation of visual material from diverse sources. These works for Heights Arts will be created using elements of chance.

Here’s how it will work:

The Heights Arts Exhibitions Community Team will create four groups of three visual artists. The Heights Writes Community Team will randomly assign a few words to each group of artists. Additionally, the Heights Arts Music Community Team will select twelve pieces of music from Northeast Ohio, again randomly assigned to the artists.

The nature of and process for the collaboration between each visual artist team should also employ strategies from A Book of Surrealist Games, which Heights Arts will provide to them. These strategies prevent artists from consciously influencing one another’s work throughout the game. Each individual artist will listen to provided music and incorporate provided words into visual components they generate for three collages per group.

The result will be twelve works of art, each the product of three visual artists, three sets of words, and three pieces of music. These will be on view at Heights Arts in the Collaborage exhibition, August 18 to October 15. Every work in the show will be auctioned off—another layer of chance and randomness—with the proceeds split between contributing artists and Heights Arts.

HEIGHTS ARTS
2175 Lee Road
Cleveland Heights, Ohio 44118
heightsarts.org
216.371.3457

EVENTS:

Group Show, June 16–August 13

Spotlight : Paula Damm, June 16–August 13

Artbar, 7-9pm Thursday, June 29

Free Gallery Concert, 7-8pm Thursday, July 6

Ekphrastacy: Group Show & Paula Damm, 7-8pm Thursday, July 20

Free Gallery Concert, 7-8pm Thursday, August 3

Collaborage, August 18–October 15