"Promotional Copy"
artist: Robin Kahn

an anti_copyright public art anthology I edited where I offered free advertising space to artists, anarchists and self promoters. More than 100 artists participated. Anyone may recieve a free copy for an exchange of work, art, advice, songs or ideas. 

Certain invigorating ideas about creativity as an inherently selfless, gift-giving practice  seem to inhabit the Zeitgeist lately (If you're stumped, see Lewis Hyde's The Gift,  or  Marcel Mauss's seminal and hard to find essay of the same title, ca.1924). In any case, if you're of a mind to investigate alternatives to the market-driven art ethos of the day, check out artist Adam Simon's amazing ongoing project, Fine Art Adoption Network, commissioned by Art in General, which launched in early April '06.

Don't forget to check back for a forthcoming conversation with Adam on NEWSgrist...

from FAAN's front page:

Welcome to the Fine Art Adoption Network (FAAN). FAAN functions as an online posting board for artwork and as a network for artists and potential collectors. Feel free to browse these pages to view contemporary art. All of the artwork on view is available for adoption.

The goals of FAAN are to place artworks by committed artists into homes and institutions and to engage people who may never have thought of themselves as art collectors. By putting more art into more homes, we hope to increase and diversify the population of art owners, re-imagining the ways in which art can be experienced and shared.

As a website catalyzing the exchange of art for trust, FAAN is based on a gift economy between an artist, who generously gives their artwork, and an individual who commits to own and care for the artwork. [...]

 
"Castle (house)"
artist: Fawn Krieger

This is one of 20 castle relief paintings i made in the days following tuesday, september 11, 2001. it is acrylic paint and marker on acetate, with a wood and wire hanging structure in the back that sets it about an inch apart from the wall. they all look like unfolded foorplans or flattened architectures of cartoony castles, each housing an empty center and containing a secret thing...

Read Adam Simon on the story behind FAAN :

[...] This was not the first time I had found myself thinking about the art market and what it could or couldn't provide. In 1984, I had founded Four Walls with Michele Araujo. Four Walls was an exhibition space intended to promote dialogue about, or really around, art. It ran for about 15 years with almost no outside funding and no sales of art. We asked for a two-dollar donation at the door. Michele and I ran it for four years in Hoboken, New Jersey, and then, in 1990, I met an artist named Mike Ballou and he and I ran it out of his home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Mike brought a slightly different flavor, more playful, more project based. We had one-evening monthly exhibitions that started out like traditional gallery art openings but halfway into the evening turned into brainstorming, theatrical artist forums that sometimes included over 100 people in Mike's not so big former garage. At Four Walls, the artwork became a point of departure for dialogue that often left the art behind [...]