Art Miami 2011 features Bernice Steinbaum who discusses the melting pot of artists and their artwork.
At Art Miami 2011, many artists as stated by Dr. Steinbaum have shown the melting pot of art and have amplified the meaning of this word and ways to express it. Galleries from all over the world displayed their work and took a risk with political, cultural, and social themes. Many featured commentary on society including an angel that stood at the entrance with what looked like spilled blood all over her white dress and wings. Other artists showed subjects of homosexuality that made people uncomfortable or quite the opposite, while one particular gallery displayed political sculptures on the matters of Cuban Communism.
This melting pot was one one inch wide but certainly one mile deep and although Art Basel 2011, and Red Dot Fair 2011 were within walking distance, Art Miami 2011 presented an impressive challenge to both fairs with the variation of artists and the talent that roamed the tents. This event was overwhelmed everyone,as it was nearly impossible to cover that much ground and absorb that much content in one day. It began outside with shirt installations and slowly made its way into the three tents that were crowded by art collectors from all over the world as well as art lovers looking to satisfy their annual hunger for the newest art. Many sold and few flopped but I daresay nothing but talent filled the air.
Holly Lynton’s Fleeced, a photographic exhibition at Bernice Steinbaum Gallery runs from Nov. 12 through Jan. 7th. Fleeced explores religious allusions of how sheep have been symbolized in the past as well as what sheep mean today for small scale, local farmers. Lynton compiles several themes into agrarian photographs subliminally questioning what is beauty.
Each photograph is large in size and sometimes includes images of plants and other animals from local farms. These images frame sheep by depicting them in enclosed pens, revealing their irrelevance in a large industrial world. Conversely, there is a parallel between the size of the physical print and the grand, eminent presence sheep have continuously had throughout history.
Images are controlled yet relaxed; they are small yet grand, and reveal the beauty in pastoral nature as well episodes of the ordinary monotonous farm life. These collections of images seem very genuine and demonstrate moments in nature rather than nature in moments. The artist reestablishes that “grace” by attempting to photograph them at their eye level rather than from the height of the artist. Lynton prints them in sharp focus in order to unmask the wonder behind these iconic subjects.
The Calling of Saint Matthew, Caravaggio, 1599, Oil on Canvas
Hooded, which portrays six sheep in their wooden slab fenced shed, has one sheep with a daring white cloth over its head not unlike the notorious group, the Klux Klux Klan. She alludes to the obvious slaughtering of animals: people. With this image, Holly Lynton inculcates that sheep are animals to observe and animals to esteem. In fact, with a light source on the left and contrasts of light and dark, it is possible to associate these sacrificial embodiments of purity to iconic lambs. Italian artist Caravaggio’s The Calling of St. Matthew, a religious work of Christian predominance, manifests this embodiment and foreshadows Lynton’s Hooded, where the selection of apostles took place or the lambs that represent them.
When photographing such banal animals in nature, one begins to raise questions of the past; however the rest of the images should not be ignored for they communicate the alternative message of humble small animals as faces of nature and an introspective look into the past and society in the present.
21st century post black folk intuitive artist, Tony Wynn, reemerges from his gallery Serious Studios to the Wynwood area where he focuses his energy into the Upcoming Art Basel 2011. Evolving from Citizenship Projects, as well as subthemes : The Right to Remain Silent, Ugly American Tour, and Accidental Patriot, he re-launches old political series’ into his latest exhibition PATRIOTICA, a visual angle on intuition, spirit, and the people’s “American Heaven” along concepts of victory, confusion, and eminence that suggests a “Patriot.”
The idea behind Patriotica is demonstrating exactly what a Patriot entails, hence the title, but more so distinguishing the meaning of this word from that of the word “citizen.” A citizen is a native inhabitant of a state or a nation; while a Patriot seeks ownership, belonging, and allegiance to his or her own country. Artist Tony Wynn targets this loyalist support and depicts this in his collection of images, uncovering a deeper meaning rather than just love for a country. Patriotica talks us through the imagination of a patriot and what it means to have a voice (The Right to Remain Silent), and how to acknowledge it (Accidental Patriot). It uses this voice to reveal a patriot in disguise, at the same time paying homage to a country that can reinforce and reciprocate loyalty. Both subjects, the citizen and the country must act as buttresses in order to unfold Patriotica.
After savoring his newest showcase, he reflects back as being simply a gallerist or curator and admits “After 14 years in the background I always felt like the best man but never the groom. Until now. Now it’s my turn. The walls are all mine.” Indeed, they are. At first glance, it is made evident that all the walls that enclose his new gallery Tony Wynn Modern Art Gallery, represent art belonging only to him. It is his return to “his [My] Miami 2.0” where he can begin exchanges between what he considers to be the two kinds of people in the art world, artists and art lovers. “It is the rare opportunity”, he continues, “to see the man and the years of work and really understand.” With walls inundated by his very own artwork, he is finally able to manifest and transmit man’s predicaments and advances through contextual images.
Upon completion of his latest exhibition, Patriotica, he will showcase his older and newer images both at his gallery and online. Located at 3223 NE 2nd Ave in Miami, this is the perfect opportunity to witness and see a black folk intuitive artist at work, especially in a predominant Latin American community and gather a different perspective on our country as we approach the 2012 election.
Every Man’s Land
By: Kimberly Susana Colomer
…And I thought it was almost like that with me too except I wanted to live to see 2012.
That I wanted my everyday breathing life in my constant cognizance and to keep my living Heaven.
Keep my Love American Dream…
Which was a mix of fund raising promises and first lady fantasies
That I call my Patriotica….
(Old Gloria,mixed media collage w/ acrylic, canvas poem by Tony Wynn)
Tony Wynn’s latest exhibition features a vision of “first lady fantasies and fundraising promises,” a show that pays homage and support to the “land of millions.” This series identifies an “American Heaven”, a promise land that derives from mind of the man, or rather the man of the mind. This is the man of Hope with his Heaven of Red, white, and Blue and his Patriotica.
Patriotica is a controlled intervention of what the citizen ultimately stands for, particularly with the nearing of the 2012 election. It is a prologue to the fate of a country and a verbal and visual representation of the country’s convergence. It is the face of union depicted through iconic subject matter and color themes.
This exhibition is a cultivation and continuation to prior showcases Citizenship Projects, first launched in an exhibition in Helsinski in 2001 and Ugly American Tour, in Berlin 2006. With the upcoming Art Basel and nearing election, Patriotica seeks to synergize the art world and the political realm in order to establish a more active and substantial relationship between art fantasy and political reality.
The themes of American life are expressed through the perspective of a citizen, a man or woman within the system gathering and bestowing his or her intuition and spirit into a series of images that filter concepts of America and its preconceptual notions.
Patriotica ultimately addresses a fostered nature of “American Heaven” all the while withholding an ambiguity, allowing the viewer to formulate his or her own insight on Patriotica’s story. As undecipherable as it is, images like First Lady Fantasies, My Miss America Moment, and Fundraiser evidently parallel artist Tony Wynn’s narrative poems, framing a system similar to our nation’s own. Each image, filled with its own rendition of American spirit, studies moments of victory, exhaustion, and confusion as well as indiscernible icons whose subject matters breathe allegiance and attachment for its country and it’s Patriotica.
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My name is Kimberly Susana Colomer and I am working on my Art History bachelor's degree from the University of Florida. I am currently interning at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in Miami, Florida, as well as Tony Wynn Modern Art Gallery, Miami, Fl, where I have the chance to see a Gallery Dealer and an Artist at work. I have the pleasure to see first hand what a gallery director does and how they manage a gallery. Along with Bernice Steinbaum's assistant director, Johanna Monserratte and Chief Preparator, Juan Jose Griego I am exposed to current contemporary artwork and gallery responsibilities. With the knowledge I acquire from both galleries, my art history research, and the Miami Art scene itself, I will blog about current and upcoming exhibitions as well as reviews that will update art loyalists and art collectors.
Two weeks ago was the opening reception for Karen Rifas's "Strung Out" and Aurora Molina's "A Critique of Established Attitudes Towards Aging and Beauty." Both very different artists, each managed to attract many viewers to the gallery as well as collectors. Karen Rifas, an established artist, showcased her linear installation cords that emphasized setting and rigidity. Her dancers, performing rhythmic sways around and between chords, evoked very abstract yet methodical thoughts producing audience contemplation and pensiveness as they walked through each installation. It was a severe atmosphere giving the gallery a harmonious balance when equated to Aurora Molina's animated vivacious sculptures.
In the Project Rooms upstairs was Aurora Molina's "A Critique of Established Attitudes Towards Aging and Beauty." Her pieces were robotic mechanisms made from pantyhose that possessed the childlike and grotesque elements of the elderly. They had sensors which made the crowd responsive and allowed viewers to see the beauty and lightness of the aging population even through the most ugliest of faces. It was an evident contrast that many people seemed to enjoy, making the exhibition very successful and notable. As for me, I networked with the crowd and observed reactions from both showcases, concluding that two artists, both the complete antithesis of one another, were able to synergize art under diverse circumstances and under one roof.
It was my first opening reception and just one of the many at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery. I will keep you posted on future exhibitions as well as interesting tips on how galleries in Miami function and what being an artist in the 21st century entails.
