The visual arts season in Broward and Miami-Dade counties offers its usual host of dichotomies, plus some surprises.
There are trippy, hallucinatory drawings and religious icons; Baroque paintings and contemporary female-centric photographs; sculptures both austere and intricate and installations inspired by the American palate, vinyl records, Beethoven and the Beats. If we so desire, we can view the cinema of modern design or listen to art world denizens talk shop, enter the glamorous maw of Art Basel or drift between the working studios of artists in residence.
Fairs, museums, galleries, and art centers have assembled a wide and tasty slate of art, with offerings for the schooled and novices alike. Here’s a sampling of what’s in store.
The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood ratchets up its already stellar programming with the Hot Topics Lecture Series, presenting visual arts luminaries discussing trends, film, web-based media and more. The lineup includes Marvin Heiferman, who has curated projects at the New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Whitney Museum of Art; senior art critic for New York Magazine, Jerry Saltz; and filmmakers and visual artists Julie Lara Kahn and Hayley Downs, who collaborated on Swamp Cabbage: A Dark & Sweaty Survival, a documentary set in Central Florida that chronicles personal experiences with cracker culture.
Also at the ACCH this season (Oct. 29-Jan. 29): Artist Unknown/The Free World – Organized by John D. Monteith and Oliver Wasow, the U.S. premiere of hundreds of photographic images by anonymous amateurs, collected by organizers as a window into American culture and social media. Mysterious geometries and psychedelic segments appear in drawings and a site specific installation in Freddy Jouwayed: Forks in the Wave Function. Giannina Dwin: Nothing We Can Call Our Own mines rituals and women’s bodies as fodder for performance pieces and photographs, and a slice of Florida’s exotica is examined in the drawings of Christina Pettersson: The Sentinel (Feb. 11-March 11). In spring, look for exhibits by John De Faro, Philip Estlund, Moria Holohan, Nathan Sawaya, and Karen Starosta-Gilinski. (www.ArtandCultureCenter.org)
On exhibit through early November at the Coral Springs Museum of Art, Jan Kolenda, Susan Maguire, and other ceramicists present utilitarian objects and figurative works in Ceramics: By Artists for Collectors, and Jan Johnson & George Lyon: The Print Connection explores printmaking, painting, drawing, and alternative photography. Michael Mills: The Object in Question presents recent photographs by the locally based artist and art critic, and Dagmar Hollmers: Connecting to Nature, a series of mixed-media and collage, examines South Florida’s palettes and curious vegetation (both exhibits, now through Jan. 5). (www.csmart.org)
The Girls’ Club Collection hosts Art Fallout, in conjunction with Sailboat Bend Artist Lofts and 18 Rabbit Gallery, in mid-October. The Girls’ Club will showcase visual works on paper
for one day, selected through an open call and by South Florida artists and curators. The event also features a free trolley whizzing patrons between the three venues and nearby artist spaces and galleries.
Then, beginning in November, GCC presents Re-framing the Feminine, a survey of prominent female photographers working in film and digital media. Curated by Dina Mitrani, more than 50 prints address gender as subject and object; artists include Julie Blackmon, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Rineke Dijkstra, Nan Goldin, Sally Mann, Lori Nix, Peggy Levison Nolan, Catherine Opie, Cindy Sherman, Zoe Strauss, Jo Ann Walters, Gillian Wearing and other talents. (www.girlsclubcollection.org)
Primordial: Paintings and Sculpture by Isabel de Obaldía 1985-2011 (now through May 27) showcases demons, gods, and beasts in a mid-career retrospective by the Panama-based artist at the Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale-Nova Southeastern University. The work is inspired by the primitive art forms of ancient cultures, at times engraving symbols acquired from Panamanian antiquities and pre-Colombian art. Offering of the Angels: Old Master Paintings and Tapestries from the Uffizi Gallery (Nov. 19-April 8) is a traveling exhibition of 45 paintings and tapestries by Botticelli, Parmigianino, Allesandro Allori, Luca Giodano, Lorenzo Monaco and others. In Wall Paintings: Installations by Auturo Herrera, Gavin Perry, Jen Stark, and Roberto Behar & Rosario Marquardt, four public artworks can be viewed on the museum building’s exterior walls through 2013. (www.moafl.org)
At the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, 11 international artists investigate the impact of products and conventions within art, film, media, fashion, and architecture in Modify, As Needed (now through Nov. 13). The majority of art on display was made specifically for this exhibition and include works by Kathryn Andrews, Darren Bader, Nina Beier, Karl Holmqvist, Adriana Lara, Natalia Ibáñez Lario, Jose Carlos Martinat, Amilcar Packer, Nick Relph, Anders Smebye, and Nicolas Paris Velez. Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop presents the artist’s large-scale sculptures, inspired by quotidian objects such as a lamppost, a coat hanger, a traffic stop sign, and a mournful moon. The show brings together more than 30 works imbued with Handforth’s thoughtfully playful aesthetics, as well as works ensconced throughout South Florida, including an Electric Tree in Griffing Park, North Miami.
Other highlights at the MOCA include Pivot Points V: Teresita Fernandez, featuring the spare and organically spatial installations and sculptures of the internationally acclaimed artist (and recipient of a MacArthur “Genius Fellowship”); a survey of identity-rich paintings, collages, and drawings by Rita Ackermann (March 15-May 6); and the new body of work found in Ed Ruscha: On the Road, paintings, drawings, photographs, and a limited edition art book inspired by the classic novel by Jack Kerouac (May 24-Sept. 2). (www.mocanomi.org)
The Miami Art Museum has organized Schneebett (“Snow-bed”) in its Anchor Gallery, a two-room environment by Enrique Martinez Celaya inspired by the end of Beethoven’s life in Vienna in 1827. This powerfully austere ode to the self and the past makes its U.S. premiere at the MAM (Oct. 14-Jan. 8). American People, Black Light: Faith Ringgold’s Paintings of the 1960s offers a thorough survey of the African-American artist’s pictures, murals, and political posters, many which respond to race and gender, as well as to the social strife of the Civil Rights era (Nov. 6-Jan. 1). Absurdism, new myths, and raw color appear in the narrative canvases of Dana Schutz: If the Face Had Wheels (Jan. 15-Feb. 26), and The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl (March 18-June 10) promises to explore the devoted culture of vinyl records as it has appears in contemporary artworks from the 1960s to the present, combining sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video and performance. (www.miamiartmuseum.org)
In the Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at The Frost Art Museum, the technology and design behind food production, preparation, consumerism, and good old-fashioned chowing down is considered in Modern Meals: Remaking American Foods from Farm to Kitchen. Posters, prints, advertisement, and objects such as cookware and tableware trace how food moves from field to factory, from grocery to table. The Venezuelan-born artist Magdalena Fernandez’s installation 2iPM009 assembles a collection of geometrically abstract sculptures and videos, and The Florida Artist Series: Humberto Calzada: The Fire Next Time presents recent works themed around the element of fire by the Cuban-American artist (all three exhibits, Oct. 12-Jan. 8). Tour de France/Florida: Contemporary Artists from France in Florida Private Collections features paintings — many never seen by the public — by French artists such as Christian Boltanski, Sophie Calle, Annette Messager, and Bernar Venet (Nov. 9-March 18). Interactive and conceptual installations that consider the environment are presented in Annette Turrillo: A Thought for the Planet / Un Pensamiento por el Planeta and the rich flora and habitats found on the Amazon River inspired the monumental canvases of Maria Therreza Negreiros: Offerings. (http://thefrost.fiu.edu/)
At The Wolfsonian-Florida International University, The Visual Language of Herbert Matter (Oct. 21) screens the life story of the masterful, mid-century modern designer, and early 20th-century stats graphics, used by Portuguese imperialists and American New Dealers alike, are culled from the museum’s rare book and special collections library in Statistically Speaking: The Graphic Expression of Data (now through January). In Manifest and Mundane: Scenes of Modern America from the Wolfsonian Collection (now through Aug. 1), more than 50 American paintings, sculptures, and fine art prints from the 1920s to 1940s address how artists utilize both profound and banal aspects of American life in their works. Closing the season, Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (Nov. 25-March 26) examines French cultural identity through design, with approximately 150 furniture, industrial design, and craft objects displayed by Philippe Starck, the Bouroullec Brothers, Pierre Paulin, Roger Tallon, Oliver Mourgue, and others. (www.wolfsonian.org)
Reliably unstoppable, and celebrating its decade anniversary in South Florida, Art Basel Miami Beach returns Dec. 1-4, with the expected (demanded!) blur of gallery events and openings, satellite fairs, public murals and performances, bands and DJs, wine and coffee bars, guest lists and hangovers, lectures and panels, and yes, loads of 20th and 21st-century art from more than 2,000 artists from around the globe. (www.artbaselmiamibeach.com)
On the first floor vitrines at the ArtCenter of South Florida, How I Lost My Accent, by Cecilia Moreno-Yaghoubi displays gender-infused paintings by the artist, who references Goya, Delacroix, and ethnic Middle East influences in her work. Newly Juried Artists in Residence showcases artists who have recently entered the center’s long-term residency program, including Tony Chimento, Pablo Contrisciani, Katerina Friderici, Gustavo Matamoros/Rene Barge, Peter Hammar, Tom Cocotos, Rosa Naday Garmendia, Lissette Schaeffler, and Antonia Wright. In January, Jenny Brillhart’s serenely minimal cityscapes, which include oft-ignored views of back alleys and parking lots, appear in collages and paintings, along with the urban and architectural canvases of Vincent Hempel. Mixed media and photographs transmogrify religion and its icons in the works of Alex Heria. (www.artcentersf.org)
Gathered in Vanishing Points, paintings from the collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl at the Bass Museum of Art offer three categories of works: “Sweeping Horizontality and Aerial Views,” which considers perspectives often seen in cinema; “The Painterly Without Paintings,” where painting dissolves to unrecognizable forms; and “Impossible Task,” an examination of cosmology and order (now through Oct. 30). Laurent Grasso runs through mid-February and blends imagery from the historical works found in the museum’s permanent collection with the artist’s paintings, video, sculpture, and neons. Funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, TC: Temporary Contemporary curates a selection of artists who will create and display temporary, site-specific public art projects in the City of Miami Beach through 2012. (www.bassmuseum.org)
Sacred Stories, Timeless Tales: Mythic Traditions in World Art at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami (now through Oct. 23), features 100 paintings, drawings, ceramics and sculptures, drawn from the museum’s permanent collection, that note the thematic connections between mythic traditions in world art, spanning 5,000 years and representing western and non-western cultures. Saintly Blessings from Mexico: The Joseph D. And Janet M. Shein Collection of Retablos (Oct. 8-Sept. 23) collects 28 retablos, paintings featuring images of saints and made by folk artists in supplication or in gratitude for answered prayers, and China: Insights (Nov. 12-Jan. 15) draws together the work of seven photojournalists who have documented emerging or vanishing facets of Chinese culture. Also on view from the museum’s permanent collection: the Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts; Points of View: African Art; the Kress Collection of Italian Renaissance and Baroque Art; Native American Art; and Art of the Pacific. (www.lowemuseum.org)
Emma Trelles is an arts writer in South Florida and the author of the poetry collection Tropicalia.