FULL MOON. UNMARKED.
It was legendary New York City nightlife celebutante James St James who lamented, in a 2001 documentary about the downtown scene, that it was in the mid 1980s when mainstream America, gripped by Reganism and a booming Wall Street machine, became hip to what was then percolating in the art scene and realized there was money to be had. It wasn’t long after that he looked out his window onto Avenue A and realized, “its all Gaps and Starbucks now.”
Nowadays, St James words could not ring truer as we sink deeper and deeper into the ‘Walmart Era’, a time when capitalism reigns above all of the virtues, and the ability to mass market products for profit is, in itself, the new art.
So as art for art’s sake becomes increasingly scarce, particularly in New York City where artists are forced to sacrifice their time to the reality of paying their skyrocketing bills, it becomes all the more necessary to safeguard the few places where creativity can still flourish unadulterated by the outside world. This is the goal (some may say a lofty one, but still an admirable one nonetheless) behind the creation of UNMARKED, a collective meeting place to share ideas and bring attention to the emerging talent so often lost among the rampant scramble to sell.
UNMARKED is the result of a desire to obtain new inspiration. The contributors from the FULL MOON collective invite you to a new dialogue in the spirit of art. We thank each of you for sharing in this endeavor to propel us toward new horizons.