In 1961, a surprise awaited fashionable shoppers strolling through midtown Manhattan as they passed before the windows of Bonwit Teller, a department store specializing in luxury apparel for women long established at the heart of New York’s posh retail district. A storefront window presumably devoted to the attractive – and tempting – presentation of clothes had on exhibit a group of contemporary works of art. Five recent canvases by Warhol hung in a space also occupied by several female mannequins outfitted in elegant summer dresses and accessories. Other pop artists such us Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg also exhibit their own artworks in the same store windows.

These actions led to the following claims from some of the New York art critics of the time: “There’s a lot more art and artistry in them (referring to the store windows) than you’ll find in many of the galleries that are spotted in Manhattan” or “The department store introduced modernism to the United States before any other institution” . Whatever the case may be, these artists around New York’s Fifth Avenue accomplished the objective of connecting art and popular culture, stimulate the aesthetic experience of the New York public and generate unconventional exhibition spaces far from the modern art canon.

Frame on Frame is an artistic project aimed at creating public, independent and unconventional exhibition spaces in the city of Madrid. The focus is on intensifying the experience of the onlooker offering him a different relation with the artistic object, near to the urban environment and distanced from the discourses of galleries and museums. In one word, an unusual approach to art exhibition that offers an innovative way of experiencing art and at the same time gives an added value to the place that hosts it.

With the purpose of generating diverse artistic content, Frame on Frame calls for proposals to select a number of projects to be exhibited at the space and to expand this initiative to other venues that could become “windows” for artistic creation.

 

 

 

Window 03: To pay attention (Los Torreznos)

 

Window 04: Kiss my name (Art Gallery Begoña Malone)