Chambers Fine Art is pleased to be part of the "Together in Distance" Benefit Auction. The auction launches on Artspace.com on July 8 and will remain live until July 20, 2020. Ever since the beginning of 2020, our longstanding belief in the peacefulness of daily life has been shattered as the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic attacks the whole world. In May, the George Floyd Protests as part of the Black Lives Matter Movement began in Minneapolis and soon spread over not only the entire United States but across the globe. During the pandemic and the protests, more and more people have united to confront both the virus and systemic inequality.
Battling natural disasters and human injustice is not heroism. It is “a matter of common decency” (Camus, 1947) that everyone should maintain. Besides supporting peaceful protests while keeping social distance, what extra efforts can we take as art professionals to help people who have been suffering?
Art has always been powerful and educational for the public. Even now, when physical access to art is extremely limited, creative insights, reflections and manifestos are not constrained. On the contrary, this is a time that motivates artists to recapitulate aspects of their work and move toward new breakthroughs. It is our responsibility to struggle and explore, to look for an outlet for our anxieties or a solution to the newly disrupted reality of life, and to respond to the upheavals that have happened or are about to happen.
Witnessing and living through the current situation, we as members of the art community have been reflecting on our responsibilities and capabilities. Harboring a strong desire to contribute, Fou Gallery, Helwaser Gallery, Chambers Fine Art, Allouche Gallery, Fisk Fine Art Services and several other art institutions and non-profit organizations, in collaboration with Artspace, are launching the online benefit auction Together in Distance, to raise funds to help with COVID-19 relief, in support of healthcare workers, socially vulnerable groups and artists. We will also be cooperating with N95forNYC, a COVID-19 relief project that is part of the non-profit organization Art in Touch based in New York. All proceeds of this online benefit exhibition will be donated to purchase PPE for underserved communities, and to support artists and art organizations who have been impacted.
We are featuring artworks from Jean-Michel Basquiat, Takashi Murakami, Cai Guo-qiang, Ai Weiwei, along with a stellar list of contemporary artists who are active in the U.S. and Asia. Exclusively for this benefit auction, Xu Bing created a new work under his “Square Word Calligraphy” series, reflecting his contemplation on the turmoil at this unrest. Through this benefit auction, we hope our endeavors against pestilence and unfairness will ultimately become our collective memory of how hard we have struggled to get through the darkness together before dawn.