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#opencall #callforentries

We are currently hosting two curated open calls for group exhibitions to be featured at the gallery in September 2024.

Deadline for submissions for both open calls is 15 April. For general information on exhibiting at the gallery, read the “About” page here on the gallery website.

Contact the gallery with any questions, and email us with your entries.

Have other ideas? Dark Gallery CPH is an artist-driven exhibition space. Contact us with ideas or projects…

The two open calls:

Open Call 1:

Ting tager tid (Things take time)

Dark Gallery CPH is currently hosting an open call for submissions to the art photography exhibition Ting tager tid (Things take time) to be featured at the gallery in September 2024.

Exhibition topic

We all aspire to reach a place that fulfils us. For some, this place is a dream job – creative, meaningful, and financially rewarding. For others, it’s about having a family and a devoted partner. Perhaps, universally, we’re all in search of a state where we feel complete and healed.

However, for better or for worse, “Ting tager tid” (Things take time). Our current position may not always align with our desires, often finding ourselves in a transitional phase. We are in the process of becoming… or perhaps, merely hoping to evolve into someone.

“Trust the process, enjoy the process,” they say.

Analogue photography mirrors the processual essence of life, encompassing shooting, developing, and printing. Each step requires time and carries a considerable degree of uncertainty. Conversely, digital photography offers a shortcut, enabling us to bypass the laborious technicalities and considerations inherent in traditional film-based photography and jump directly to the desired outcome.

This open call is seeking submissions that shed light on “the process.” Show us how time stretches, wounds heal, or how faith runs out, etc.

Photography

Artists and photographers are invited to contribute with up to 4 images to the joint exhibition. All images must be analogue darkroom prints (not digitalised prints). The images must be ready for wall-mounting or supplied ready for exhibition using other means.

Curator

“Ting Tager Tid” (Things Take Time) is curated by Maria Heines, an American artist and researcher currently based in Copenhagen. In her photographic work, she is drawn to the subtleties and details that convey the softer, perhaps more delicate aspects of life. Concurrently, through her collaborative artistic research, she focuses on co-creating healthier and happier realities. More on her work can be found at mariaheines.com.

Submission

For selection, please submit your imagery as attached files or send a link to your general portfolio to the gallery by email to dark@darkgallery.dk before 15 April 2024. Selected contributors will be notified by 30 April.

Contributors will have until 24 August 2024 to submit their physical prints of the selected images either by post or directly to the gallery in person. Following the exhibition, all material will be returned to the contributors before 1 November unless otherwise agreed.

Read more

Read more about Dark Gallery CPH in the “About” section of the website. Read more about the 2024 Golden Days Festival here: https://www.goldendays.dk/golden-days-pa-arbejde

Open Call 2:

Is Photography Dead?

Dark Gallery CPH is currently hosting an open call for submissions to the photography exhibition Is Photography Dead? to be featured in the Dark Spaces in the gallery in September 2024 as part of the Golden Days Festival på arbejde.

Exhibition topic

As artificial intelligence permeates the realm of human industries, photographers and filmmakers may face a monumental transformation in their work and thought processes. This shift is potentially unparalleled since the advent of digital technology in photography.

How does the advent of AI-generated images, simulating real life, affect the authenticity traditionally promised by photography?
In an era where AI can replicate styles, what becomes of the originality once inherent in photography?
Since AI relies on statistical probability, can photographers still find artistic avenues to evade the conceptual predictability of AI-generated images?
What role does a photographer play in envisioning, when text-to-image technology becomes a tool accessible to all?

Is there life after AI for photography?

Projects

Artists, documentarians, filmmakers, AI developers, photographers, and all those deeply invested are encouraged to submit projects, ideas, multimedia imagery and analogue photography for consideration in our collaborative exhibition.

Dark Gallery CPH is dedicated to analogue photography. However, for this particular open call we also welcome submissions across all forms of multimedia image-making. Projects that incorporate analogue photography, including those digitised, might nonetheless receive priority.

Dark Gallery CPH is also dedicated to slow and immersive storytelling. As such, projects that engage the audience directly or are documentary in nature may be favoured.

All materials submitted must be prepared for display or integration within the Dark Spaces of the gallery.

Exhibition spaces

The exhibition will be featured in the gallery Dark Spaces where all light is a performative part of the exhibition. The Dark Spaces are pitch black, so all lighting and illumination must be carefully considered and preferably interactive. Read more about the Dark Spaces in the “Dark Spaces” section of this website.

Curator

The exhibition Is Photography Dead? is curated by Kim Wyon from Dark Gallery CPH

Submission

For selection, please submit your ideas and any imagery by email to dark@darkgallery.dk before 15 April 2024. Selected contributors will be notified by 30 April.

Contributors will have until 24 August 2024 to submit their physical material either by post, email or directly to the gallery in person. Following the exhibition, all physical material will be returned to the contributors before 1 November unless otherwise agreed.

Read more

Read more about Dark Gallery CPH in the “About” section of the website. Read more about the 2024 Golden Days Festival på arbejde (in Danish) here: https://www.goldendays.dk/golden-days-pa-arbejde

Previous Open Calls:

Wasteland

2-18 September 2023.

Dark Gallery CPH is currently hosting an open call for submissions to the art photography exhibition Wasteland to be featured at the gallery from 2-18 September 2023.

Exhibition topic

The topic of the exhibition is the relationship between wild nature and urbanity. Through millennia, humankind has sought to control, confine and culture our surroundings. Agriculture has been industrialised and our cityscapes developed into urban habitats where nature is tamed and landscaped. As our exploitation of the natural world inevitably exceeds its sustainable limits, we now also experience a newfound cultural revival of the untamed and seemingly unproductive. Environmentalists set out to rewild cultural landscapes, while protecting the world’s last remaining untouched ecosystems. Wilderness has in a roundabout way become a new, romantic civilisation project.

But what about the in-betweens?

The Wasteland exhibition turns the camera lens on the urban blind spots where wild nature takes revenge as well as on desolate places of abandoned human activity in open nature. Such urban rustbelts have in recent decades become free zones where we feel liberated from the industrious purposes of our own civilisation, all while allowing us to reboot and reimagine our relationship with nature. The Wasteland exhibition embraces an investigative appetite for such playful and suggestive locations in the intersection between wild nature and urbanity, places that offer freedom of thought and new perspective.

Photography

Artists and photographers are invited to contribute with up to 4 images to the joint exhibition. All images must be analogue. The images must be ready for wall-mounting or supplied ready for exhibition using other means.

Submission

For selection, please submit your imagery as attached files or send a link to your general portfolio to the gallery by email to dark@darkgallery.dk before 1 June 2023. Selected contributors will be notified by 15 June. Contributors then have until 11 August 2023 to submit their physical prints of the selected images either by post or directly to the gallery in person. Following the exhibition, all material will be returned to the contributors before 1 November 2023 unless otherwise agreed.

Read more

Read more about Dark Gallery CPH in the About section of the website.

I have a crown, I am a queen

What makes you an everyday queen? We posted an open call on social media looking for co-interpreting female models. Six women approached the gallery to share their life, dreams and ideas with us. Exploring the uncharted borderland between social-media selfie and photographer-guided portraiture, we created individual kaleidoscopic storyboards that reflected on the co-creative process and dialogue.

The exhibition was developed in partnership between photographer and artist Kim Wyon from Dark Gallery CPH and artist Mahmoud Alibadi.

The exhibition was part of the Golden Days Festival 2022 and remained open from 2 September until 28 October 2022.

Open Call

May 2021

Dark Gallery CPH invites photographers, models, artists and anyone with psychiatric experience treating people with mental disorders to take part in a collaborative artwork for the exhibition “NARCISSUS – og de syge myter” (NARCISUS – and the pathological myths).

Subject-matter

The classic myths of Antiquity are the founding narratives of modern-day psychiatric diagnosis. They are tales of phobia, traumas and madness. In the Greek myths, these states of mind were often seen to be induced by the gods. “NARCISUS – and the pathological myths” seeks to mirror these ancient tales in our panicked age of pandemic and power-grabbing narcissism.

The artwork

The artwork will consist of 5-7 individual collages of analogue photos each consisting of 4-16 images organised to create semi-kaleidoscopes. The framed collages will be exhibited in a blacked-out gallery space illuminated by visitor interaction. Candle-lit shrines will furthermore be erected by the curb-side in the gallery neighbourhood to commemorate the fictional drive-by killing of mythological figures.

The aim

The aim of the exhibition is to emotionally engage the audience in the twisted mind frame of our times and to reflect on the fragility of such values as truth, generosity, empathy and compassion. The choice of tactile analogue photography as the exhibition media seeks to emphasise the authenticity, urgency and timelessness of the messages.

The process + timeframe

The exhibition process will start with workshops in late June and early August 2021. Participants unfamiliar with analogue photography will be offered an introductory course. All expenses for materials used in the exhibition are to be covered by the individual contributors. The exhibition opens on 4 September 2021 at Dark Gallery CPH and will be part of the programme for the Golden Days Festival.

Please contact the gallery directly.