Artist Kurt Perschke brings his highly acclaimed RedBall Project to Grand Rapids, Michigan as part of ArtPrize. The RedBall Project is an ongoing site-specific installation that has traveled the world’s cities from Sydney to St. Louis, Barcelona to Toronto, Chicago to Korea. Typically commissioned by cities themselves, RedBall offers a unique contribution to this grassroots event by actively and organically engaging the values put forth by the ArtPrize competition: to create an environment where public can engage artist and artist can engage public in a fresh way.
RedBall is a 15-foot high inflatable that gets squished into alleyways and pinned beneath bridges to offer citydwellers a unique glimpse into everyday spaces suddenly made special. Perschke’s chosen sites for RedBall: Grand Rapids include: The Gerald Ford Museum, Rosa Parks Circle, The B.O.B., City Hall, Kent Courthouse, Grand Valley State University, DeVos Place, and the Grand Rapids Ballet Company, with more sites to follow if RedBall becomes a finalist.
The RedBall Project has generated enormous public, critical and media attention worldwide throughout its travels, issuing passersby an irresistible invitation to imagine where they might put it. RedBall’s latest appearance as part of Luminato Festival in Toronto, Ontario was a favorite event among locals and visitors alike. The Artistic Director of Luminato, Chris Lorway, echoes the high opinion of the public: “We were thrilled by the way the RedBall’s presence in the city ignited people’s imagination and creative impulses.”
“..(Perschke) draws upon the already rich and full context of the city in which the ball is sited, not remolding it, but rather interacting and playing with it. In our experience of this work we find the spaces of the city and, in the tradition of Duchamp, we play a role.” “Art Outside In, Inside Out”, Mary Jane Jacob
To learn more about RedBall Project, please visit http://www.redballproject.com/
Kurt Perschke’s public projects have earned him a national award from the Americans for the Arts Public Art Network. Perschke has worked with Contemporary Art Museums in Barcelona and St. Louis and participated in the Busan Biennale. His work is in institutional and private collections throughout the United States. Having lived in St. Louis, Vienna, Egypt, the Virgin Islands and his native city Chicago, he is based in New York City.
About ArtPrize
ArtPrize exists to reboot the conversation between artists and audiences on a grand scale. ArtPrize is not anti-jury, anti-curator, anti-establishment or anti-anything else. [They] do not believe that [they] have contrived the "best" way to discover the "best" art. The prize money, the public vote, the open venue system simply creates an environment where public can engage artist and artist can engage public in a fresh way. It's an irresistible social experiment.