Notes related to Miami

In order to promote the commercial and artistic opening of the country at an international level, the Ministry of Foreign Relations, International Trade and Culture of the Argentine Republic, the Consulate General and Promotion Center of Argentina in Miami, together with Arte al Día International and Pinta held an open call for Argentine emerging artists for an international online exhibition. Get to know the ten selected artists:

Titled Mongrel, this site-specific installation transforms MOAD’s largest gallery into a dynamic interior that evokes domestic space and the artist’s early experiences as a Cuban refugee. A series of twenty-five new drawings created expressly for this exhibition meld a wide variety of images into arresting abstractions of pulsing color and form, while still occasionally revealing their representational sources.

Geometries Reimagined, the title of the inaugural exhibition at the Tanya Brillembourg Art space, inquires the way in which the incessant transformation of the abstract forms imagined since cave art, is once again realized in the works of Colombian Juan Raul Hoyos, Guatemalan Tepeu Choc, and Haitian Marcus Blake. By different means, the three of them confront the form that, since the onset of the 20^th century, generated the whole current of geometric abstraction imposing itself, according to Rosalind Krauss, as "the emblematic image of the modernist ambition" [1]: the grid. Its presence, explicit or tacit, continues to be unraveled and remade incessantly in contemporary art, and it is no stranger to that "schizophrenia" which, as Krauss wrote, arises between its concentration on the materiality of the pictorial surface and the undeniable spiritual tension that its mythical geometry contains [2]. No less is the opposition between the "discursive silence" sought in the grid through the "complete liberation from naturist appearances" [3], and the paradoxical conversion of its geometry form ─inexistent in nature─ into the matrix of urban modernity: Mondrian ended up creating Boogie Woogie, 1943, in allusion to the rhythm and pulsating vibration of New York.

The memorial of the Cuban artist Arturo Cuenca Sigarreta (1955-2021), held on the same September 21 as his birth, in the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, was a symbolic event, surely the first of many that, after his early death, will finally allow the artistic institutions to recognize the visionary character in the work of this unruly and complex creator, who, like few others, embodied a way of criticizing power, both institutional and political, that did not compromise with convenience.

The exhibition HyperLeak at Diana Lowenstein Gallery brings together two artists, Alex Trimino and Felice Grodin, who, through installation, moving image, and sculpture, collectively engage with material to understand different experiences of time as a poetic proposition towards redefining our relationships with ecosystems.  

The all-female group exhibition examines the mainstream portrayal of women, confronting the stereotypes, violence, limitations, and ideals imposed on the disputed image of the female body. Featuring 23 diverse female artists, the works in the show come together to address contemporary discussions on gender, race, body politics, resilience, and self-representation amid today’s social landscape.

Invisible Threads, Evelyn Politzer’s solo exhibition at the Miami Dade College Hialeah Art Gallery, curated   by Noor Blazekovic of Irreversible Projects.

ArtMedia Gallery, Miami

META Miami and Henrique Faria New York present Selected Works (2003-2019), José Gabriel Fernández’s first solo exhibition at the foundation's Wynwood space. This exhibition features a selection of works in different media (sculpture, reliefs, photography and collage) that spans over 15 years of the artist’s production. 

Curated by Ariel Jiménez, this exhibition is where abstract-geometrical and concrete artists such as Lygia Clark and Tomás Maldonado engage in dialogue with those of artists who, while bordering abstraction, or even clearly abstract in nature, such as Julio Alpuy, Martín Blaszko and César Pasternosto, still bestow their works with a metaphorical and/or symbolic dimension that they consider to be essential. It is also an opportunity to discuss concepts that are not always well-comprehended, such as the difference between geometric abstraction and concrete abstraction, or between works that, while geometric, can work in a radically different manner; some with the plastic autonomy sought by the concrete artist, and others integrating a metaphoric dimension that many Latin American artists consider to be fundamental in maintaining the ties that bind them to the history of the continent.

A lavish, satirical and vertigo-inducing meditation on the Hollywood ‘Dream Factory,’ Heaven’s Gate is a work of digital psychedelia employing the same state-of-the-art computer compositing technology as the films it references. On view at the Pérez Art Museum Miami until early 2022.

As the gallery announces exclusive worldwide representation of Villalba, it also presents the artist’s first solo exhibition since his death in 2009. Set for Art Paris 2021, the gallery will exhibit Villalbas’s 1960-1970 works under the title of Le réalisme de l’aliénation (The Realism of Alienation ) and curated by Manuel Neves.

Michael Scoggins, New York-based artist, exhibits metonymic imagery of hints and references of the American culture in large scale artworks. On view until July 31st at Diana Lowenstein Gallery in Miami.  

María de los Angeles Rodríguez Jiménez (Cuba), Karlo Andrei Ibarra (Puerto Rico) and Adolfo Bimer (Chile) are the three artists who participated in Fountainhead’s residency program in Miami during the month of May.

When Cortada first witnessed a violent uprooting of mangrove forests in the Florida Keys in 2006, he became motivated to take action and protect these native habitats. He launched the Reclamation Project on Earth Day 2006 at the Bass Museum. This year, Cortada’s solo exhibit, “The Reclamation Project: Engaging Community For 15 Years Through Participatory Eco-art,” honored the quindecennial of his participatory eco-art project at the University of Miami Wynwood Gallery.