SPRING/BREAK Secret Show of artist Bobby Anspach’s Meditation Machines and Drawings to open September 

Free & open to the public - machine experience appointments available here 

September 19 - November 10, 2024 

Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays 12 - 6pm 

Press kit

September 4, 2024 (New York, NY): Today, SPRING/BREAK Art Show and the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation announced that they are collaborating on a ‘Secret Show’ for this September’s art fair season: a pop-up exhibition of the work of late artist Bobby Anspach. Featuring two of Anspach’s sculptures – immersive sound, light, and motion machines created with the aim of healing the world by expanding human awareness – as well as a series of his drawings, the show will provide an opportunity for viewers to experience Anspach’s work, which was a highlight of previous editions of the SPRING/BREAK Art Show and emblematic of its inquisitive, connective approach to contemporary art. 

Titled Bobby Anspach: The Beautiful Nothing, the exhibition will be open to the public on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 12-6pm at 38 Little West 12th Street in New York’s Meatpacking district. Visitors will be able to book appointments to experience the machines here, but walk-ins are also welcome. On Thursday evenings, there will be a series of activations, including talks, cocktail hours, and meditation sessions. Programming will be announced in the coming weeks, but partners include past and future collaborators of Bobby Anspach and the Foundation, such as ambient musician Eluvium and the Reality Center, a leader in digital psychedelics. 

“We’re so happy that Bobby’s immersive, multi-textural artworks can continue reaching new audiences,” says SPRING/BREAK Co-Founder Ambre Kelly. “After having him participate in numerous fairs with only single artworks throughout the years, we couldn’t be more excited to support the Foundation’s vision of an entire exhibition dedicated to his work in a manner that is quite standalone.”

In anticipation of the opening of Bobby Anspach: The Beautiful Nothing, the Foundation will also bring one of Bobby’s machines to the fall edition of the Spring Break Art Show during Armory Week, providing a preview of what visitors will be able to experience during the exhibition’s run. 

“Bobby Anspach’s works invite you on an extraordinary journey of awareness and connectivity. His machines - crafted from everyday materials like pom-poms, LED lights, and hand-blown glass - create an immersive space that initially appears chaotic but quickly transports you to psychedelic worlds or takes you on a meditative journey. Subsequently, each visitor embarks on a uniquely distinct and meaningful voyage of self discovery” noted the exhibition’s curator, Saul Ostrow.

In coordination with the exhibition, the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation will also open applications for a grant program, launching in 2025, which will support the practices of creatives and researchers whose work furthers the dialogue on meditation, psychology, creativity and our engagement with each other as drivers of global harmony and health. Applications will open during the exhibition, and will be juried by a ground of thought leaders across industries. The foundation will provide six unrestricted grants of $2,500 to recognize outstanding work and support continued exploration across art, psychology, science, wellness, ecology, and music. Each of the grantees will participate in future programming with the foundation to explore their work. 

Inspired by Anspach’s sculptures, the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation was founded to foster a global dialogue on how meditation, psychology, and creativity can be drivers of connectivity, compassion, and well-being. The BASFoundation will provide opportunities for both emerging and influential creatives and researchers to build on this dialogue, and create moments for the public to experience Anspach’s machines in the context of this larger interdisciplinary conversation. 

Prior to this collaboration with SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the Foundation had opened Bobby’s studio to visitors last Fall and this past Spring, welcoming over 1,000 visitors with consistently sold out appointments and events. In conjunction with the exhibition, there was a series of programs exploring and inspired by Anspach’s work. Comprising panel discussions, performances, and poetry readings, the program series involved creatives across disciplines, including writer Nina St. Pierre, musician Cameron Mesirow, artist Ben Ross Davis, and psychotherapist/cultural ecologist Ash North Compton. 

The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation is led by a board of directors from across the art, wellness, and mental health spheres, including Adam Adelson, Executive Director of Adelson Galleries, Paula Baldoni, Director of River House Arts, Jimmy Avari, Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, as well as members of the Anspach family. In 2025, the Foundation plans to engage in year round public programming to extend this feeling of calm and peace. Opportunities for collaborations and partnerships will be announced along with plans for a permanent exhibition and event space, which are currently in development.

About Bobby Anspach

Bobby Anspach was an American artist whose work centered around the creations of machines designed to deliver transcendent experiences to viewers, all part of a series titled Place for Continuous Eye Contact. As much a sculptor as an inventor, these devices are currently undergoing a patenting process. Employing a DIY-technique through all of his work, Anspach was focused on creating brilliant, unexpected, and sublime experiences that blend common objects with high craft, ranging from pom-poms to hand-blown glass to medical beds, aiming to inspire viewers to look within and discover everyday beauty and the natural world. The machines create an experience that at first appears scrappy and chaotic, and quickly blends into a seamless, all-encompassing, and otherworldly space. His work was informed by a deep respect for the environment and meditation, and founded on a belief of the interconnectedness of all things that was aimed to create a cared experience between all viewers of his work. 

During his lifetime, Anspach’s work was celebrated and exhibited across the United States, most notably at the SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York, 2018 and 2020, the 2019 BRIC Biennial: Volume III. Brooklyn, NY, and the 2019 Governor’s Island Art Fair, as well as in numerous gallery exhibitions across Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and California. In the public sphere, he presented his machines and made them available for visitor experiences at a pop-up space in Beacon, NY in 2021; in a Walmart parking lot in Newburgh, NY in 2022; and on Fifth Avenue outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York in 2022. 

Bobby Anspach was born in 1987 in Toledo, OH, and died in 2022 in Beacon, NY. He received his BA from Boston College in 2011, studied at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, and received an MFA in sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2017. There, he produced the earliest versions of the Place for Continuous Eye Contact series of machines. 

About the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation 

The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation (BASFoundation) is a not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to preserving and providing access to the work of Bobby Anspach, who built sound and light sculptures with, on the one hand, the ambitious aim of preventing the world from destroying itself and, on the other hand, the more modest aim of providing individuals with singular aesthetic experiences. Continuing Bobby’s mission, the foundation grounds itself in the same principle that fueled Bobby’s work: a conviction regarding the power of meditation and art. Alongside continuing to preserve and share Bobby’s work, the foundation engages and supports artistic and mindfulness programming, as well as artists, educators, and meditation practitioners, all with the aim of offering people the opportunity to encounter and express something singular in their human experience.