NEW YORK, NY.- Orange Barrel Media, in partnership with gallery We Buy Gold, presents Walls for a Cause NYC, a multi-site public art project and corresponding online exhibition featuring original paintings by nine contemporary artists. The works are being displayed on OBM’s prominent and large-scale outdoor wall spaces throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan and are being featured in an online exhibition by We Buy Gold titled On the Other Side of Something. A percentage from the sale of each artwork will be donated to Project EATS, a New York City-based non-profit community enterprise organization. Additionally, OBM is donating space on two walls to Project EATS to further promote the organization’s work. The public murals are on view together beginning January 2021 and then displayed on a rotating basis throughout the year. The We Buy Gold online exhibition is available on the gallery’s website from January 21 – March 24, 2021. The project is curated by Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels of We Buy Gold and Diana Nawi for Orange Barrel Media.

The artists participating in this project are Felipe Baeza, María Berrío, Theresa Chromati, Ariel Dannielle, Chioma Ebinama, Marcus Jahmal, Christopher Myers, Naudline Pierre, and Ilana Savdie. In different ways they each consider the supernatural, surreal, and otherworldly possibilities of representational painting. The artists use figuration and representation for a range of purposes, from exploring history and the self to creating narrative and spiritual forms. The public art component of the project seeks to "populate" the cityscape with larger-than-life figures and scenes, considering the role that these bodies and ideas have in the public sphere.

“We Buy Gold has always been interested in thinking of space as a means to approach ideas and access. At a time when 'outside' has taken on many new meanings, I'm particularly excited about this collaboration and being able to present the works from On the Other Side of Something in spaces and at scales where they will be experienced uniquely and more widely than we have been able to work before,” said Joeonna Bellorado-Samuels of We Buy Gold.

OBM has a longstanding commitment to developing media that supports community investment and public art. With its latest project, OBM continues to expand its footprint to New York City.

“From the beginning, OBM has partnered with artists and institutions to present their work in a highly visible and egalitarian way. This had taken on a new level of urgency even pre-COVID, as artists have sought to engage with a broader and more diverse audience, and have realized the enormous impact possible beyond a gallery’s walls. We’re excited to share the work of these nine extraordinary artists at a monumental scale and to support food security in the city,” said Pete Scantland, CEO of Orange Barrel Media.

Representing a breadth of approaches to painting the artists featured in Walls for a Cause NYC and On the Other Side of Something include both leading contemporary artists and emerging voices: Felipe Baeza, a painter and printmaker based in Brooklyn whose work focuses on the body in states of transformation and within interstitial landscapes; Colombian-born visual artist María Berrío, whose works reflect cross-cultural connections and personal histories; Guyanese American multimedia artist Theresa Chromati; painter Ariel Dannielle, who creates large-scale portraits that depict the daily experiences of Black women; Chioma Ebinama, a Nigerian-American artist interested in how animism, mythology, and precolonial philosophies present a space to articulate a vision of freedom outside of Western social and political paradigms; New York-based artist Marcus Jahmal, whose paintings synthesize a range of inspirations and autobiography; Christopher Myers, a multimedia artist, author, and playwright from New York City; Naudline Pierre, whose works are informed by narratives and are laced with spiritual references and personal mythology; and Colombian New York-based painter Ilana Savdie.