The Painting Center, an artist-run gallery in Chelsea, announces a call for entries for its juried summer exhibition JuxtaPositions. We invite artists of all stripes to submit work that excites by forging new connections, and surprises by discovering unexpected juxtapositions.

Creativity isn’t only about making entirely new things out of whole cloth. The creative process can involve seeing old things in new contexts; joining things that previously seemed completely unrelated; or turning conventions, tropes and ideas upside down and inside out. Sometimes, these juxtapositions are humorous; sometimes, they are enigmatic, or striking; sometimes, they are shocking. High and low, serious and funny, real and fake, observed and invented, political and personal…these are all choices an artist can make in his or her work…but they aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive.

In a culture that is stuffed full of imagery, icons, argument, products, brands and just plain junk, can we invent something new by mining, reframing, re-contextualizing, and re-conceiving some of the ideas and objects that make up the cultural moment in which we live?