Click to enlarge

About a year and a half ago, Daniela and I popped into the Charles Bank Gallery on the Bowery and were welcomed by Allen Grubesic’s modified Exit sign reading “EXCITING”. We both found the sculpture very clever. Since that day, when perusing gallery and artists’ websites online, I’ve run into many other sculptures and installations that repurpose old exit signs or are simply influenced by them. Also, when Emma interned at a gallery the summer before last, one of the tasks assigned to her was to research inexpensive exit signs for one of their artists who was planning to use them in his work. That’s when I realized there was some sort of trend here. I started bookmarking these works as I came across them and though there are some that I’ve lost in the shuffle, this is a roundup of most of them.

And here’s Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Reference Flow in action: