The Artist's Studio: Paintings, Photographs, and Sculptures by Joe Fig: Fig's miniature constructions of artists' studios encourage voyeurism. Viewers are invited to peek inside the cloistered areas where artists struggle with creativity in isolation, a kind of sacred atelier immune to the outside art world. Fig manages to respect his real-life subjects by crafting delicate and tremendously detailed compositions that don't necessarily infringe on the artists' privacy. Rather they celebrate their talent and the setting in which they create most of their work. Glance into painter Chuck Close's studio, which, like Close's work, is realistic down to the smallest detail (there are even specific art magazines scattered across his desk). In Jackson Pollock's Long Island sanctum we see the artist pondering one of his action paintings laid out on the floor. -- Omar Sommereyns Through July 11. Bass Museum of Art, 2121 Park Ave., Miami Beach; 305-673-7530.
Vanity II and
Vanity III by Ray Felix
at mia Gallery
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Good Titles from Bad Books: Walk by, lounge, chat, see and be seen. It's all part of the aesthetic experience. The Kevin Bruk Gallery, recently moved to a huge and handsome space in the heart of Wynwood, opened with a big two-exhibit splash. Among the many works (organized by Mathew Brannon) was Michael Phelan's Sunshine Daydream, suspended silver Mylar strips bunched together like plant tops; Carol Bove's What the Trees Said, an installation of an Eames shelf filled with books and objects (Nietzsche among them); Peter Coffin's Untitled (Orgy Photo, Diagram Colex), a clashing of magazines fun and serious; and a huge red banner by David Noonan. Liam Gillick added luster to the gallery floor with plenty of silvery glitter. The music touch was just right. -- Alfredo Triff Through June 11. Kevin Bruk Gallery , 2249 NW First Pl., Miami; 305-576-2000.
loss/entry/return: Adler Guerrier's series of works on paper and photographs presents an artist in transition. Guerrier, a graduate of Miami's New World School of the Arts, earlier had created "back yard" photos in which life was a real-time continuum of trivial and pointless events. Here you see the artist looking through binoculars at the expanse of the metropolis. But it's not a real city. This is more like a superimposition of events, black blotches and green tempera splashes (with directional tentacles) moving near the background of the metropolis's silhouette. Amid these images you find linear sentence fragments, remarks silent as if coming from a lost century of ideologies. Guerrier has become a more gregarious, unconventional observer, exploring his own situation in relation to the rest of us. Now he should incorporate into his photography some of the new elements present in this series. -- Alfredo Triff Through April 30. Fredric Snitzer Gallery, 2247 NW First Pl., Miami; 305-448-8976.
Robert Rauschenberg: Considered a central figure in late-twentieth-century art, Rauschenberg is also a long-time resident of Captiva Island, Florida. His recent work has begun to reflect distinctively local input: gators, punchy shadows, pink and green. His move to water-based media, inspired by safety and environmental concerns, forced his palette into a gentler range of intensity. This makes his new works more pleasant to look at than the saturated images he became known for, but the oomph has gone out of them as well. They're fun and lighthearted (the man is famous for being the same), but they seem to want for more resolution and gravitas. -- Franklin Einspruch Through July 3. Miami Art Museum, 101 W. Flagler St., Miami; 305-375-3000.
True North: The works of ten artists from upstate New York are wayward, pale-skinned travelers to sun-drenched Miami. The subtropical sun obliterates details and flattens forms in a wash of light, while the northern brand of winter sunlight meekly trickles through sealed windows at oblique angles to throw crevices, folds, moldings, and other crannies into relief. Drawings are delicately rendered on finery scrounged from thrift shops or the local historical society. Assemblage sculptures don't completely abandon their utilitarian origins. Hand-wrought crafts such as lace and ironwork are reverently appropriated. Bathroom mirrors printed with photographic portraits are nostalgic and precious. Overall the gentle observations offered by these artists are confined to a narrow range from the whimsical to the elegiac, nothing too flamboyant, but rather pensive, self-contained, even dour. Visit the gallery, located in Concourse E, just past the security checkpoint, and remember to phone ahead to obtain a pass. -- Michelle Weinberg Through May 8. mia Gallery, Miami International Airport, Concourse E; 305-876-0749.
Vernacular Secrets: In this new space for photo exhibitions, curator Julian Navarro presents California artist Dana Landau, whose work explores identity stereotypes and female self-perception. Landau's self-aware young female characters go out of their way to make us look at them. And so we assume they're posing, even when they pretend not to. These women go about their daily domestic chores inside claustrophobic spaces while coping with their obsessions of cellulite and a few extra pounds. Since this is about bodies, Landau could have dispensed with cropping part of the figures' heads and feet in order to show her models' faces. -- Alfredo Triff Through May 14. Camera Obscura at Fabrikarte, 1165 SW Sixth St., Miami; 786-262-7853.
