MIAMI, FL.- Miami Art Museum, is currently hosting an exhibition of more than 30 artists based in the Miami area, presenting new and recent artworks in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, environmental installation and performance. New Work Miami 2010 opened to a massive and enthusiastic crowd. How does this exhibition measure its success? We’ve heard talk about the political nature of curating such an exhibition drawn from our increasingly diverse community, but how do all the various concerns of the artists converge or diverge? It really makes a bit of sense to approach this exhibition as an outsider, but that approach ignores some of the political implications raised in Alfredo Triff’s article. However, the purpose to such an exercise would be to focus on what has actually been curated, and base ones analysis on that alone; sort of, letting the work speak for itself. The problem with that approach is that we’re looking at cultural objects, not geologic objects that are outside human manipulation.
Survey type exhibitions are always problematic, even though we continue to be attracted to them. How does it make you feel? How closely aligned do the works have to be aesthetically? The one thing that certainly can come from this exhibition is a further investigation into each artist’s production. Aren’t there works in the exhibition that make you want to see more, or less of?
Talking Heads Transmitters
Although Talking Head Transmitters use analog with some digital mixed in, there are some interesting ways they are producing their work. They record their programs, including the audio from Skype transmissions (audio and video), them upload them to their site. In 2008-09, maybe Miamiartexchange.com was taking on too much by starting a podcasting series using an online application that was a live broadcast using both audio and video, that could be immediately archived and re-viewed. This was really a one step process, and special guests could be viewed in a “talking head” window, and also broadcast and recorded. The beautiful thing about live internet broadcasting is that the reach is worldwide, and not limited to a few blocks from the broadcast origination point. At the end of the day, isn’t the point of this project in particular to reach as many people as possible? After all, one half of the team, Eugenia Vargas, lives in Chile.
Felecia Chizuko Carlisle had the oddest installation in the exhibition. It looked like a few things with the intention of making it like a messy artist’s studio. Maybe, I was missing something. It wasn’t the simplicity of the piece; look at Adler Guerrier’s work where is has more elegant shapes and forms, in addition to a variety of simple objects. Jenny Brillhart’s view of the former consulate on North Miami avenue and 59th Street, is of the present and the past, but it’s a Miami that is too clean, and idealized. That’s only to say the current residents of the area don’t care as much about cleanliness of the neighborhood the way it may have in the past, certainly when it was a brand new building. Her work on paper refers more to an architectural drawing than to a nostalgic look at a local neighborhood. Christina Pettersson’s extremely refined drawing, a self portrait in a sheer dress, finds her lying prone and bleeding on a stepped ledge, with her animal totems (?) watching over, is nothing but a masterful work of draftsmanship. I do want, and have seen more of her work recently. (I have been doing some contract work and two of her drawings are directly in front of my work area.)
Kevin Arrow (from Miami Collabo Show – July 2009)
Kevin Arrow is also an artist that produces an analog slide menagerie, with a collaged audio track swimming along behind the many images, “moment in time” that create little poetic visual sentences. Arrow’s installation, or visual travelogue, take us back and forth in various decades, to various events, important and insignificant. The texture created is warm, drawn mostly from the now yellowed color film of the slides, but also the memories attached to other’s lives. Speaking of audio, Gustavo Matamoro’s sound work in the elevator area was captivating, but heard up close. Across the gallery one might not know what they are hearing. Perhaps, the wall label could have been put on a stand to make it more evident to approach the space.
New Work Miami 2010 artists include: Maria José Arjona, Kevin Arrow, Beings, Jenny Brillhart, Felecia Chizuko Carlisle, Jim Drain, Flash orchestra, Frozen Music, Oscar Fuentes & the Gipsy Catz, Lynne Golob Gelfman, Michael Genovese, Jacin Giordano, Guerra de la Paz, Adler Guerrier, Jacuzzi Boys, Don Lambert, Gustavo Matamoros, Ana Mendez (with Aja Albertson & Richard Vergez), Beatriz Monteavaro, Gean Moreno/Ernesto Oroza, Peggy Nolan, Fabian Peña, Christina Pettersson, Poem Depot, Vickie Pierre, Manny Prieres, Bert Rodriguez, Christopher Stetser, Talking Head Transmitters, Robert Thiele, Mette Tommerup, Humberto Torres, Frances Trombly, Tatiana Vahan, Marcos Valella, Michael Vasquez, Viking Funeral and Michelle Weinberg.
In spite of the fact this type of exhibition will continue it is no grounds for dismissing the art. There is no doubt you, dear reader, would find something both good and bad about this exhibition. I still recommend seeing it.
(Part 1)
Miami Art Museum
101 West Flagler St.
Miami, Florida 33130
Tel: 305.375.1705