Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami
Exhibition Schedule 2011-2012
Exhibitions and dates are subject to change
For more information contact
Donna Fields dfields@mocanomi.org
Valerie Ricordi vricordi@mocanomi.org
(305) 893 6211
RYAN TRECARTIN: ANY EVER
On view through September 4, 2011
Ryan Trecartin’s Any Ever (2009-2010) is a seven-movie epic video produced in Miami with collaborator Lizzie Fitch and other contributors ranging from friends and artists to professional child actors. The presentation of Any Ever at MOCA will be the first time that the work will be shown in its entirety in Miami, the city that was not only the setting for the movies and inspiration for some of their content, but also a character within the works . For the exhibition, MOCA’s galleries will transform into spaces that are quasi-recognizable as particular public and private settings, anchored by key seating elements. These environments will poetically relate the sets and themes of the movies. Another iteration of Any Ever will simultaneously be on view at MoMA PS1 in New York from June 19 through September 3, 2011. The presentation of Any Ever at MOCA is coordinated by MOCA Associate Curator Ruba Katrib.
MODIFY, AS NEEDED
Knight Exhibition Series
September 23 – November 13, 2011
The artists in this exhibition use playful tactics to confront, alter and inhabit existing societal structures. By shifting their artistic practices, the artists operate as active agents, employing curatorial, administrative, and educational strategies and aesthetics to insert new meanings into existing realms. Most of the artists will be creating new works specifically for this exhibition. Works by Darren Bader, Nina Beier, Adriana Lara, Natalia Ibanez Lario, Jose Carlos Martinat, Amilcar Packer, Anders Smebye, and Nicolas Paris Velez will be featured. Modify, As Needed is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Associate Curator Ruba Katrib. Made possible by Knight Exhibition Endowment. Additional support provided by Funding Arts Network.
MARK HANDFORTH: ROLLING STOP
Knight Exhibition Series
November 30, 2011 – February 19, 2012
MOCA is currently celebrating its 15th anniversary in its Joan Lehman Building. An important part of the museum’s history is its strong support of Miami-based artists. Mark Handforth was the first Miami artist to receive a solo show at MOCA, North Miami in March 1996. He has since achieved major international recognition and has become an important role model for Miami artists. This exhibition makes a strong statement about MOCA’s role in shaping Miami as an international center for contemporary art.
Handforth’s large-scale sculptures take their inspiration from everyday objects. Items such as an illuminated lamppost resting on the ground, a crying neon moon, a monumental coat hanger and a giant traffic stop sign are poetic, lyrical, and comical objects that wryly comment on daily life and human interaction. By blowing up their scale and distorting their form, Handforth imbues each object with a distinctive personality. Although each sculpture is a self-contained work, Handforth intended for groups of works to be shown together and has conceived the installation at MOCA as a landscape through which viewers can wander. The exhibition brings together over 30 works, including a major new light installation occupying over 80 feet of the museum’s wall that will highlight the unique space of MOCA’s current galleries designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and will lead to the groundbreaking for its new expansion. The exhibition will spread out to locations throughout South Florida, including an installation of Electric Tree, located in Griffing Park, North Miami that consists of a giant banyan tree illuminated by over 60 fluorescent light fixtures. Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. Made possible by Knight Exhibition Endowment. Additional support provided by Christie’s.
PIVOT POINTS V: TERESITA FERNANDEZ
November 30 – February 19, 2012
MOCA’s Pivot Points exhibitions focus on the museum’s extensive collection. Teresita Fernandez received her first solo museum exhibition at MOCA’s former building in 1994 and has since achieved world renowned for her installations that evoke the relationship between space and the body. Untitled (Swimming Pool), donated to the museum by Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, was created for the museum and was the first work to be exhibited in MOCA’s Pavilion Gallery as part of its 1996 inaugural exhibition Defining the 90s: Consensus-Making in New York, Miami and Los Angeles. This installation illustrates MOCA’s focused approach to collecting pivotal works that mark important moments in the development of the artists’ work and turning points in contemporary art. Over the past 15 years, Fernandez has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide and she has completed several large-scale site-specific commissions in Seattle, WA, Dallas, TX, Naoshima, Japan, London, UK, and New York and will have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2012. She is a recipient of the 2005 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Fellowship.
RITA ACKERMANN
March 15 – May 6, 2012
After moving to New York from her native Hungary in the early 1990s, Rita Ackermann first attracted attention for her drawings depicting young female figures representing the total freedom of living outside the rules and constraints of society. This survey exhibition examines the artist’s paintings throughout her career and the changes in her work that occurred through her immersion into Western culture. One of the few contemporary artists to discuss her work in terms of “style” rather than practice, Ackermann has forged a new visual language in painting, drawing and collages, which ranges from psychologically intense expressionism to colorfield abstraction. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. A major monograph published by Skira Rizzoli with essays by Clearwater, Harmony Korine, John Kelsey, Felix Ensslin and Josh Smith will accompany the exhibition.
RAGNAR KJARTANSSON: SONG
Knight Exhibition Series
May 24 – September 2, 2012
Ragnar Kjartansson: Song is the first solo US museum exhibition of the work of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. A musician as well as artist, Kjartansson (b. 1976) has been drawn to the theater and performance since he formed a band in his teenage years. The exhibition includes a selection of video works from the last decade. Kjartansson’s videos reflect an interest in music and theater and the personae of its performers, often coupled with extreme environments. The End (2008) features two musicians in a mountainous snowy landscape, while Satan is Real (2005) finds the naked artist buried to his chest in the lawn of a public park, playing a guitar.
In addition to his video work, Kjartansson has become known for inhabiting galleries and more unexpected locations where he performs live, often for extended periods. For the 2009 Venice Biennale, he painted portraits of his friend, every day for six months, in a crumbling palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal. Kjartansson’s approach wavers between besotted optimism and deadpan, sometimes unnerving, directness. Ritual, repetition, and an almost hallucinogenic reverie share the stage with humor, levity, and a charismatic impulse to entertain as in his film installation God 2007, in MOCA’s collection. The exhibition is organized by Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and is curated by Associate Curator Dan Byers.
ED RUSCHA: ON THE ROAD
May 24 – September 2, 2012
Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha, whose career spans five decades, is known for his use of language to document and comment on the shifting character of American culture. For this exhibition Ruscha has drawn inspiration from the classic American novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac to create his own limited edition art book version of the novel and a new body of paintings, drawings and photographs,
The exhibition, organized by Douglas Fogel, chief curator of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, includes Ruscha’s artists book, large paintings and drawings each taking its text from the novel. Just as Kerouac’s words provide Ruscha with new means to explore his archetypal landscapes, Ruscha’s art adds new analysis to Kerouac’s original and radical use of language.