Exhibition Spac.es

Resource of free empty galleries

Exhibition Spac.es started in 2016 as a free database of high-resolution emptied contemporary exhibition spaces and frames, as well as tutorials and resources. This online database serves as a resource for other artists, curators, or students, to establish their online and documented presence. The images and resources are published under the Creative Commons Zero license (free to copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission). The emptied gallery images are free to download, and you can photoshop your own art images and objects into them. On one-hand it's an earnest resource, and the other, it's a prompt for artists to consider alternative ways of producing images that allow them to participate in the capital-A Art world.

Owen Duffy in E-Flux Education wrote “Josh Sender unveiled two websites: exhibitionspac.es and itwasallveryimpressive.com. While the latter clearly read as a net art project, exhibitionspac.es was more of a resource, helping artists fabricate documentation of their work by providing Photoshop tutorials and an image database of thousands of empty white cubes. At once a public service and cheeky comment on today’s overemphasis on image circulation, exhibitionspac.es actually provoked a question I had not bothered to think of for some time: Is this art?”

When I made Exhibition Spac.es in my second year of grad school, I believed that installation shots were a show of power and framed images within a new set of expectations - the image of an artwork installed in a space asks that the art object is considered with a weight of institutional validation. The 'implied object' never delivers on the promises of its potential, but it also doesn’t need to. Online audiences view the fictional documentation and imagine the art object as a real thing, worthy enough to be printed and framed.