Steal My Sunshine Invitational

Conceived and Organized by Jason Isolini

Hosted by Mery Gates Saturday, July 23rd, 2022

The Steal My Sunshine Invitational was a guerrilla-installation performance piece incorporating twenty-four artists works on rentable e-scooters. Through invitation, each participating artist provided one graphic for one section of the scooter. Once e-scooters entered the gallery a professional vehicle-wrapper wrapped the e-scooters with the specified graphics. Held at the gallery through time-based reservations, participants subverted user-applications and e-scooter location. Once the e-scooters were complete, they re-entered the public realm as the rentable objects. This show took form as an event including a DJ set, and a barbecue. The full press release is below. E-scooter layouts can be found here

Mery Gates press release:
Steal My Sunshine by pop-band, Len, notoriously appropriated the bassline from More, More, More by Andrea True Connection. After short lived success, Len's popularity dissipated. Riding scooters along Daytona beach, Len's music video symbolizes momentary happiness within decline. Watching Len and his friends swerving along a sun bleached street, carefree smiles serve as discordant visuals with the bleak lyrical quality of the song. A similar sense of impending loss accompanies the regularity of e-scooters and rental vehicles in the city's landscape. Using the ‘sharing economy’ as camouflage, corporations continue to intrude in the public sphere. Rather than accept this reality, participating artists claim corporate strategy and subvert it.

On July 23rd, professional vehicle-wrappers will work to adhere artworks to e-scooters that have been driven into the gallery. Each of the twenty five artists has provided decals or artworks for a section of the scooter. Once wrapped, the scooters will re-enter the public realm as rentable objects, debranded.

The Steal My Sunshine Invitational seeks to promote an alternative to acceptance. It's a one day performance featuring twenty five artists' pieces on five e-scooters. Conceived and organized by Jason Isolini and curated by MG, it’s both a singular work and a mobile group show.

Featuring works by:

Bora Akinciturk, Balfua, Jane Balfus, Ali Bonfils, Collin Clarke, Courtlin Byrd, Caroline David, Mark Fingerhut, Joe George, Matthias Krankl, Deirdre Keough, Danny Ische Knoblauch, Tom Koehler, Logan Kruidenier, Liliana Lacayo, Nandi Loaf, Angeline Meitzler, Mario Miron, Muien, Greg Nachmanovitch, Anna Pederson, Sam Siegel, Shori Sims, Tea Strazicic, and John Verdil.

This performance took place July 23rd, 2022 from 2pm to sunset.