Description

The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit original works about individual components, about reconfiguration, about building blocks, and about the parts of the whole. Open to all traditional and non-traditional genre and media.

Modules are discreet objects that can be assembled into a larger body. This same body can be broken down into its parts, re-configured, re-assembled, broken down again, made whole again.

A module can be a mass-produced part, a building block, an amino acid, an atom. Modular construction allows for streamlined assembly, easy repairs, iterative outcomes. There is comfort to be found in the uniformity of repeated design, in the even aisles of the supermarket, in the ease of exchanging a burnt-out fuse, the simplicity of sliding customized part B into slot A.

Modules are configurable into a myriad of possible forms, but to be effective they need to be iconic, repeatable, replaceable. To a degree, they must conform to a structure to be a successful puzzle piece. How different is that piece allowed to be before it wreaks havoc, like a misfolded protein?

Can variety be found within standardization? How many parts can be exchanged before the body is different? What relationship does the body have to its parts?

Can’t everything be broken down into pieces?

$40 for up to FOUR entries submitted. $5 per each additional entry.

Includes exhibitor honorarium of $50 for each exhibiting artist, and new Grand Jury Award of $1,000 for one jury-selected work from among the exhibits on view.