Swept Away: Love Letter to a Surrogate(s), a Guild Hall: Offsite Exhibition Creates a Transcontinental Heartbeat

As part of GUILD HALL: OFFSITE, SWEPT AWAY: Love Letter to a Surrogate(s), the second and final exhibition of 2022, will commence on September 10 and run for four consecutive Saturdays through October 1, from 7-10PM at East Hampton’s Main Beach (101 Ocean Avenue, East Hampton). The project was conceptualized by Warren Neidich who created the successful Drive by Art event in 2020. It is co-curated and co-coordinated by Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Museum Director/Chief Curator of Guild Hall, Anuradha Vikram, Los Angeles based independent curator, and Los Angeles based conceptual artist Renee Petropoulos.

In reference to the East Hampton event, Strassfield remarked “With Guild Hall being under renovation we felt this was a wonderful way to bring accessible art to our community and have everyone feel welcome and enjoy themselves. We are delighted to have the chance to expand the museum’s reach through our collaboration with our West Coast partners.”

“Swept Away: Love Letter to a Surrogate(s) is a community-oriented artistic project that aims to create a transcontinental heartbeat across America,” said Neidich. Sixty-five artists from Los Angeles will write sets of instructions, in the form of love letters, to an equal number of artists from the East End of Long Island who will then perform them in an open and improvisational way at the waters’ edge in front of the pavilion at Main Beach in East Hampton. In the spring the reverse will occur; with East End artists writing love letters to LA artists to be executed at Will Rogers State Beach, Santa Monica in conjunction with the 18th Street Arts Center.

Regarding the Los Angeles happenings, Anuradha Vikram and Renee Petropoulos shared “Over two consecutive days, West Coast artists will respond to prompts submitted by their East Coast counterparts that address themes of deep ecology and the interdependence of humans with other living beings and ecological networks. Each artist will be limited to using only what they and their collaborators can carry to the shoreline and retrieve at the close of their action.”

These ‘Art Happenings’, borrowing a term of Allan Kaprow, who’s famous Happening #3 was performed in East Hampton in August,1966, will likewise create ephemeral performative gestures and time-based works. They might take the form of building a sandcastle, singing a song, reciting poetry, dancing, surfing, making a sculpture that interacts with the tide, interventions with shells, doing a light projection, picking up garbage on the beach, etc.

The general community is invited to enjoy the performances amidst the pounding of the surf which will act, on one hand, as an acoustical backdrop and, on the other, as a reminder of the importance of the sea in the prevention of ecological degradation brought on by climate change. Its protection is imperative and as Neidich has stated “It is hoped that through these combined experimental gestures and performances, a sense of solidarity between local and national artists and their respective diverse communities will emerge, and through them, new innovative social tools and structures with which to confront the ecological catastrophe.”

The list of East End and West Coast artist pairings is as follows:

EAST END ARTISTS > LOS ANGELES ARTISTS
Pamella Allen > Jade Gordon + Megan Whitmarsh
Suzanne Anker > Margarethe Drexel
Elena Bajo > Jasmine Orpilla
Lillian Ball > Dana Duff
Monica Banks > Jamie Ross
Dianne Blell > Lisa Anne Auerbach
Scott Bluedorn > Robert Herbst
Sanford Biggers > Sterling Wells
Megan Chaskey > Lionel Popkin
Scott Chaskey > Kathryn Andrews
Philippe Cheng > David Horvitz
Andrea Cote > Nina Waisman
Ivana Dama > Rodrigo Arruda
Peter Dayton > Anita Pace
Katrina Del Mar > Taisha Paggett + Meital Yaniv
Jeremy Dennis > Debra Disman
Sabra Moon Elliot > Rochelle Fabb
Carol Edwards > Pamela Hudson
Eva Faye > Patty Chang + David Kelly
Saskia Friedrich > Fran Siegel
Margaret Garrett > Susan Kleinberg
Veronica Gonzales > Cassandra Marketo
Kimberly Goff > Cheri Gaulke + Xochi Maberry-Gaulke
Jeremy Grosvenor > Vincent Johnson
Jerelyn Hanrahan > Andrew Berardini
Candace Hill > Anna Joy Springer
Virva Hinnemo > Sam Shoemaker
Alice Hope > Krysten Cunningham
Erica-Lynn Huberty > Corazon del Sol
Terri Hyland > Joseph Mosconi
Ruby Jackson > Alice Könitz
Ilya + Emelia Kabakov > Carolyn Castano
Carlos Lama > Elisabeth Houston
Laurie Lambrecht > May Sun
Joseph Liatela > Badly Licked Bear
Donald Lipski > Raul Baltazar
Sutton Lynch > Yrneh Gabon Brown
Josephine Meckseper > Jiayun Chen
Paul Miller > Lucia Santini Ribisi
Tanya Minhas > Allison Wyper
Richard Mothes > Kristin Calabrese
Michelle Murphy > Sarah Beadle
Jill Musnicki > Victoria Vesna
Eileen O’Kane Kornreich > Iman Person
Dalton Portello > Ryat Yezbick
Jaanika Peerna > Marcus Kuiland Nazario
Toni Ross > Sharon Barnes
David Rothenberg > Beatriz Cortez
Will Ryan > Jody Zellen
Sara Salaway > Melinda Altshuler
Matthew Satz > Katie Grinnan
Bastienne Schmidt > Jisoo Chung
Barry Schwabsky > David Schafer
Christine Sciulli > Karen Lofgren
Arlene Slavin > Jenny Yurshansky
Janice Stanton > Kearra Gopee
Christina Sun > Catherine Scott
Carol Szymanski > Xiouping
Sara Vandeerbeek > Alicia Serling
Ryan Wallace > Joshua Aster
Ross Watts > Justine Harari
Allan Wexler > Dan Kwong
Nina Yankowitz > Francesca Gabbiani
Darius Yektai > Barbara McCarren + Jud Fine
Almond Zigmund > Marissa Mandler