The visual arts season in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties is as contradictory as ever, refusing to be slotted into any tidy categories.
The art soon pouring into museums and galleries gives as much attention to the natural world as it does to the imagined and synthetic realms, and shows by venerable artists open concurrently with exhibits introducing the newly minted and somewhat insouciant. Fluorescent light sculptures will soon dwell alongside hand-woven textiles, steel and Lucite will neighbor depictions of flora and fauna (or even the real greenery itself). Perhaps Walt Whitman’s words might be applied to this year’s preview: “Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.”
The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood has already opened its season with Bow Movement, a site-specific mixed-media installation created by Miami artist Justin H. Long, who examines his fascination with the ocean and with sailboat racing through his assembly of paintings, video, maps, and sea-centric artifacts, such as a 60-foot long hull.
Accompanying this exhibit in the ACCH’s Middle Galleries is Alex Trimino: Luminous, which combines the electric sizzle of micro-controlled neon lights with the traditional crafts such as knitting and weaving, and in the Project Room, Lori Nozcik’s Walkabout explores the theme of passage or journey through architectural and organic forms.
In November, Elisabeth Condon’s The Seven Seas revisits the Los Angeles nightclub scene in the 1980s as a place of self-transformation; in March, Jenny Brillhart: Accumulation presents common urban vistas and details in her beautifully spare paintings and sculptural collages. Next summer, Americana fans will savor Charles M. Schulz: Pop Culture in Peanuts. www.artandculturecenter.org
Bear and Bird Boutique + Gallery continues its tradition of delightfully intriguing shows with Monster Mash, an assembly of works by approximately 200 artists inspired by the ghoulish and gruesome. Later this year, Small Stuff 6 gathers tiny art by local, national, and international artists, such as Aurian Redson, Betsy Bauer, Brandy Rumiez, Cassie Hart, Scot Tolleson, Sickfeet, Snaggs, Tripper Dungan and more. In January, Hip to Be Square spotlights the power of perfect right angles and the South Florida artists who work within them, and in May, budding collectors can take in Starter Art, featuring more than 100 original visual works tagged at $100 or less. www.bearandbird.com
Currently on display through mid-November at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, War and Patriotism addresses conflict and country with watercolor, acrylic, and oil canvases by Roland Reverdy Moorhead. Also showing at this time: India and Woodburne, NY, photographs by Louis Jawitz that offer a realistic chronicle of historical and religious communities. Arriving in February is A Private Collection of Master Prints Featuring Dali and Picasso, and in April, Robert Forman presents his String Pictures, a collection of richly detailed yarn paintings constructed by gluing individual colored threads to board. www.csmart.org
Running now and through January, Shark: A Window into the Ecosystem through Art at The Museum of Art-Fort Lauderdale, Nova Southeastern University offers more than 70 artists’ interpretations on the aquatic predator with drawings, video, sculpture, paintings, and photography. Opening in November, Warhol and Cars: American Icons will explore the artist’s interest in automobiles and their place in consumerism, and Return to the Ashcan does (what else?) revisit the museum’s own recurring fascination with the early 20th century Ashcan painters, who depicted the lives of workers and the poor in their canvases. www.moafl.org
At the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, visual and performance artist Pablo Cano offers his latest musical production and exhibition, The Toy Box. Based on a composition by Claude Debussy and containing French folk melodies, this charming show spotlights common characters popular in European street theater; here, they appear in the form of marionettes and sets created with found objects in Cano’s signature whimsical style.
In December, MOCA presents Bill Viola: Liber Insularum, a significant solo exhibition of screen works and projections by the iconic video artist. Through a series of video installations, the show will consider spirituality and its place, or lack thereof, in the 21st century. And, in honor of the museum’s 15th anniversary, new works recently added to the MOCA’s permanent collection will be displayed in March for the first time. Featured: assume vivid astro focus, Bhakti Baxter, Joseph Cornell, Gabriel Orozco, Xaviera Simmons, and others. www.mocanomi.org
The Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami features Introspection and Awakening: Japanese Art of the Edo and Meiji Periods, 1615-1912. More than 200 paintings, works on paper, ceramics, and lacquer objects drawn from the museum’s holdings examine Japanese art and how the social, political, and cultural aspects of Europe and Asia shaped its countenance.
Christo and Jeanne Claude: Prints and Objects gathers more than 40 years of conceptual and sculptural work, including preparatory renderings and photographs of Surrounded Islands, Project for Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida; lithography and collages of Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped and Wrapped Opera House, Project for Sydney; photographs of Valley Curtain, Rifle, Colorado; and more. Opening in January, Infinite Mirror: Images of America Identity assembles paintings, works on paper, photographs, and video by multi-cultural artists from across the U.S. www.lowemuseum.org
Miami Art Museum presents two final exhibitions before moving to 32,000 square feet of new galleries at Museum Park in 2013. Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks is the New York-based artist’s first major museum solo show, wherein he investigates black identity by “hijacking the domestic” and re-envisioning everyday objects such as mirrors, CB radios, shea butter, and plants into compelling, and complex, works of art. New Work Miami 2013 showcases Miami artists by including newly commissioned sculpture, paintings, photographs, and site-specific installations. www.miamiartmuseum.org
101 Dresses, at the Art Center South Florida, leads viewers through a solo exhibition of works that reveals Adriana Carvalho’s fixation with metal dress sculptures made of ordinary hardware supplies. The show (which runs through Nov. 11) includes a life-size tribute to Frida Kahlo, as well as a thoughtful examination of process and inspiration. In November, smoke signals: istwa, paisajes and allegories, curated by William Cordova, features works made with textiles, building materials, and suburban flotsam; the group show includes Yanira Collado, Rashawn Griffin, Glexis Novoa, Robert Theile and others. www.artcentersf.org
The Wolfsonian-Florida International University has curated an eclectic roster of propaganda arts, beginning with Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection. These artists’ postcards –made from 1907 to 1919 by the Wiener Werkstätte (Vienna Workshop), a cooperative for artists and artisans founded in 1903 by two members of the Vienna Secession, architect Josef Hoffmann and designer Koloman Moser – depict turn-of-the-century Vienna cafes, architecture, fashion, and urbanites.
With video, audio, photographs, and text, Esther Shalve-Gerz: Describing Labor gives attention and a kind of dignity to the workers of the Great Depression, the Soviet Revolution, and World Wars I and II. Politics on Paper, election posters and ephemera from the Wolfsonian’s own collection, also includes political/propaganda ephemera from the United States and Europe between 1918 and 1945. www.wolfsonian.org
The paintings found in Mark Messersmith: Fragile Nature – The Florida Artist Series, at The Frost Art Museum beginning in October, are described as “dense and radiant,” influenced not only by northern Florida’s delicate ecosystem, but also by Southern folk art, medieval manuscripts, and the work of Martin Johnson Heade. With American Sculpture in the Tropics, the museum welcomes 10 additional, large-scale sculptures to its adjacent sculpture park at Florida International University. Materials are as varied as the artists who shape them: steel, fiberglass, wood, copper, and rubber tires are utilized by artists such as John Henry, Albert Paley, Chakaia Booker, Isaac Duncan, Bret Price, Verina Baxter, and others.
Reflections Across Time: Seminole Portraits brings more than 150 years of portraits of Seminole leaders and tribesman, along with Native American ethnographic objects. Traditional regalia, including materials from Osceola and other Seminoles will be displayed, along with artwork from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, and the National Museum of the American Indian. Co-organized with The Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum of the Seminole Tribe of Florida. http://thefrost.fiu.edu/index.htm
Now in its 11th year, Art Basel Miami Beach bills itself as “the most prestigious art show in the Americas.” Maybe. Or not. But we do know without doubt that it returns December 6-9 with its usual carousel of excess, innovation, and mountains of contemporary and international art from the 20th and 21st centuries. For the details, visit here: http://miamibeach.artbasel.com/