Click to enlarge
About a year and a half ago, Daniela and I popped into the Charles Bank Gallery on the Bowery and were welcomed by Allen Grubesic’s modified Exit sign reading “EXCITING”. We both found the sculpture very clever. Since that day, when perusing gallery and artists’ websites online, I’ve run into many other sculptures and installations that repurpose old exit signs or are simply influenced by them. Also, when Emma interned at a gallery the summer before last, one of the tasks assigned to her was to research inexpensive exit signs for one of their artists who was planning to use them in his work. That’s when I realized there was some sort of trend here. I started bookmarking these works as I came across them and though there are some that I’ve lost in the shuffle, this is a roundup of most of them.
From top to bottom and left to right: Nicholas Consuegra, Untitled; Allen Grubesic, Exciting; Bobbybabe, Exit; Kelly Mark, Exist; Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Reference Flow; Cecile Colle & Ralf Nuhn, Exit Wall; Dana Depew, Exit Strategy; Ingo Maurer, Exit (and bottom); Foreign Flash, Exit Installation; Ji Lee, Exit, Word as Image; Marke Johnson, No Exit; Lowe+Partners, Axe Ad Campaign; Philip Cheater, First Emergency Fire Exit
And here’s Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Reference Flow in action:
CollabCubed 
hello – thank you for included one of my pieces in this piece –
the free-standing exit sign tower is an ongoing series of works that initially began as a concept of going into abandoned buildings and removing an object that would be made into a work of art.
Dana L. Depew
“Exit Strategy”
reclaimed exit signs obtained from vacant and abandoned commercial buildings in downtown Cleveland, Ohio USA or the span of sevral years.
The boxes were reassembled and retrofitted with low wattage LED lighting
6′ 5″ H x 4′ 2″ W x 4 ’4” D
2010
Thanks for the interesting background information, Dana!