The ASU Art Museum Project Space in Roosevelt Row is relaunching on Friday, October 6.
Though it's still the public face of the ASU Art Museum’s artist residency program, which works with national and international artists, the Project Space has undergone some changes in recent months. And more changes are coming.
“We want to have a greater presence in the downtown Phoenix arts community,” says Julio Cesar Morales, curator for ASU Art Museum.
The Project Space is part of a 6,300-square-foot mixed-use development called Combine Studios, founded by Phoenix artists Carrie Marill and Matthew Moore after they bought the building at Third and Garfield streets back in 2011.
They sold Combine Studios to Thomas Castleberry for $1.5 million this past June. But it continues to house ASU Art Museum's artist residency program.
Previous artists who’ve used Combine Studios include Postcommodity, an artist collective featured in the “2017 Whitney Biennial” exhibition, and Las Hermanas Iglesias, whose "Re:Sisters" exhibition at ASU Art Museum continues through October 21.
In 2014, the Project Space housed Librería Donceles, comprising an itinerate Spanish-language used bookstore created by New York-based Pablo Helguera. Seeing that installation inspired Rosie Magaña to launch the Palabras Bilingual Bookstore here in Phoenix.
Moving forward, the Project Space will be open every Friday night from 6 to 10 p.m. In the past, it opened on select First and Third Fridays. Which made it tough for people to know when new art was being shown.
For the 2017-18 season, ASU Art Museum is presenting a series of sound art installations.
First up is Sofía Córdova’s “Where Thieves Go After Death,” an installation created with sculpture, original music, and additional media. Córdova describes as an anti-documentary of her experiences in Arizona.
In her working artist statement for the show, Córdova calls it “a tableau formed from the collision between natural and human-made forms."
But don’t expect it to be static.
“Exhibitions will change every couple of months, but projects will evolve in the space,” Morales says. So, people who frequent the space will have different experiences over time.
Expect to see more local artists creating work inside the Project Space.
Kevin Nemelka, residency coordinator for ASU Art Museum, is working now to make that happen.
So, basically, the Project Space will mean more opportunities for Phoenix artists, as well as gallery-goers.
“We want to create more of a dialogue between local and international artists,” Morales says.