Local Artist Paints Outside the Box, Ships Peace around the World
New York, NY – November 16, 2009 – With labels that read Fragile Contains: Peace, Freedom or Justice, visual artist Franck de Las Mercedes sends abstractly painted, seemingly empty boxes to anybody, anywhere in the world, for free.
The Priority Boxes project is a public art series that makes people reconsider their ability to influence change and question the fragility, value and priority of entities like peace. Each box, sent by mail to anyone who requests one, is both a canvas for a unique abstract painting and a platform for communication through art. A mixture of art and activism, the boxes are sent free to show that something of such priority as peace should not have a price and that art can be both inclusive and accessible at all.
The project which started as an experiment and is funded by the artist and donations from supporters, has evolved into a movement that has been embraced by popular culture, the mainstream media and schools and art educators across America. From his small New Jersey studio, the artist has sent over 6500 boxes around the globe, to countries in every continent.
With his boxes, de Las Mercedes is in the process of creating a phenomenon that is as visceral as it is visual. The boxes fuse elements of painting, sculpture and conceptual art that transform the exhibition space into a broader environment than that of a gallery. By having the art on the outside for all to see, the addressees and spectators are incorporated as part of the work and the concept.
Franck de Las Mercedes is a New York area artist who has exhibited alongside important artists like Romero Britto and Robert Rauschenberg. He has also been featured in many publications around the world including, Art Business Magazine (USA), School Arts (USA), La Prensa (Nicaragua), Selecciones (USA) and Diario Clarin (Argentina). FdLM has also appeared on several national television shows including, CNN En Espanol, Univision's Primer Impacto, LatinNation and Noticiero Telemundo. He has also been the subject of films by Dan Yadin and Cara Weiner.
For more information on the boxes go to: