SPRING/BREAK Art Fair 2024 - Behind the Scenes

For this special episode of The Art Career we travel behind the scenes of SPRING/BREAK Art Show to speak with co-directors Ambre Kelly, Andrew Gori, in addition to chatting with artists, Dani Klebes about her installation this year.

SPRING/BREAK Art Show is an internationally recognized exhibition platform using underused, atypical, and historic New York City exhibition spaces to activate and challenge the traditional cultural landscape of the art market, typically but not exclusively during Armory Arts Week New York and Frieze Week LA. The 12th Edition of SPRING/BREAK Art Show New York City will be held from September 6th - 11th, 2023, with details on their 5th LA Exhibition to come.

Founded by Andrew Gori and Ambre Kelly in 2009, The They Co. creative supergroup has organized, curated, facilitated and produced events with the New Museum, Brooklyn College, Art Hamptons, Flux Factory, Collective Show, Nuit Blanche New York, Silvershed, The Metric System, The Underground Library, Gowanus Studio Space, and numerous other community-based arts organizations. In May of 2011 and 2013, the group organized the SCHOOL NITE exhibition event for the New Museum's Festival of Ideas for the New City, and in September 2011 intercepted the city's San Gennaro Festival with a 90-foot sculptural interpretation of the Roman oculus, created by SOFTlab. Under the gender-melding moniker BOYFRIENDGIRLFRIEND, Gori and Kelly have collaborated on several formal projects, most recently their ongoing SIGHTSEERS photographic series since 2016. In 2017, SPRING/BREAK launched it's biannual IMMERSIVE program, with large-scale sculptural installations at a mall for the BKYLN IMMERSIVE in May 2017, followed by TIMES SQUARE IMMERSIVE, a Times Square Plaza takeover with monumental sculptures created onsite in each public plaza of Times Square in March 2019, and UPSTATE IMMERSIVE in 2021 with ten unique sculptures to create a sculpture garden in Poughkeepsie, NY during Upstate Arts Weekend. And another OLD SCHOOL IMMERSIVE Secret Show during Frieze Week. Gori and Kelly have new projects forming in the film and tv landscape and in the published written word in 2024 with collaborations upcoming with The Portland Museum of Art & more.

Danielle Klebes lives and works at Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY. Danielle has exhibited in notable galleries and museums throughout the United States, Europe, and Canada. These include Keeping Company (2023), a solo show at NARS Foundation in Brooklyn, NY, Midnight Adventure Club (2022), a solo show at AVA Gallery in Lebanon, NH, House Fire House Party (2020), a solo show at Installation Space in North Adams, MA, Aimless Pilgrimage (2020), a solo show at L'Atelier Silex Gallery in Trois- Rivières, Quebec, Canada, Fifty (2022), a group show at MoCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, FL, Summer (2022), a group show at Galleri Christoffer Egelund in Copenhagen, Denmark, Portraiture Today (2021), a group show at the Springfield Museums, Springfield, MA, and Confluence of Tongues (2021), a group show at Grove Collective in London, UK. Danielle’s work has appeared on the cover of many publications including Cream City Review, Artscope Magazine, Studio Visit Magazine, Gertrude Press, and Prairie Schooner. Danielle received her MFA in Visual Arts from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA, in 2017.