Is there a tectonic shift underway in the Wynwood gallery scene? This past Thursday nearly 30 local spaces banded together for the new preview art walk organized to attract collectors wary of the rowdy crowds they say have turned Second Saturdays into a circus. It's a story we have covered the past two years when many of the same gallery owners first adjusted their hours to make the rapidly changing neighborhood's wildly popular Second Saturdays more appealing to the average art lover, only to see the effort fail to gain traction.
But for the folks over at El Autobus, a creative design team housed in the Wynwood Building, the distinction between the competing art walks is not about controversy but more of an opportunity to see how local culture is impacting the public drawn to the area.
"We are launching 'Wynwood Talks' and exhibiting four separate shows in our studio this Saturday, and featuring an interactive video event where people can see art or be art," says Juan Ciro, an art director at El Autobus. "The idea behind the project is to bring Second Saturdays back to the ground level and hear from the people who are just as interested in coming here for the art as the party."
The event, beginning at 6 p.m., is one of our top picks for this weekend's culture crawl, which offers something for everyone and welcomes a new gallery to the artsy nabe.
Wynwood Talks
Billed as an "exhibition/video experience," this ongoing project will offer Second Saturday crawlers a chance to express their views on each of the four gallery exhibits by local artists with the filmed footage posted monthly on a website documenting the response of the public. Opening shows feature work by Diana Paz, Good Manya, One Zero & Threz, and boasts work exploring typography, passion, patterns and the rewards of making the world better say organizers.
Studio Wynwood, 2750 NW Third Avenue, Suite #9, Miami. Call 305-804-4081 or visit wynwoodtalks.com.
Clang Boom Steam
Girl-conceived and boy-powered, this brawny group show flexes muscular works produced by male artists who are current University of Miami students, alums or professors. On view you'll discover works in diverse media including video, installation, silk screen, painting, and sculpture by Remy Bordas, Ryan Farrell, Eddy A. López, Ralph Provisero, Colin Sherrell and Kyle Trowbridge. Curated by Milly Cardoso, who worked for the Miami Art Museum before taking the reins of the University of Miami Art Gallery in The Wynwood Building, the show focuses on the state of masculinity in the contemporary art world, she says.
University of Miami Gallery at the Wynwood Building, 2750 NW Third Ave., Suite 4, Miami.
Memory of Linear and Broken Boundaries
Geometric abstraction and an exploration of line and texture is the engine powering this group exhibit featuring works by Cristina Barroso, Andres Ferrandis, Gian Garofalo, Gregory Johnston, Erik Sommer and Lisa C. Soto. Fluctuating keenly in style and approach, the works on view at the fresh-squeezed Tub Gallery space have been crafted from media as disparate as automotive enamel, Mylar, and aluminum panels, says Miguel Fernandez, the gallery director. Fernandez adds that participating talent each display a mastery of luminous color and polished finish in their pieces. Tub Gallery, by the way, was inspired by the death of Jean-Paul Marat, a political theorist and writer during the French Revolution who was murdered in his bathtub.
Tub Gallery, 171, NW 23rd Street, Miami. Call 305-573-0610 or visit tubgallerymiami.com.
All Inclusive
Melvin Martinez's solo at David Castillo upends notions of traditional painting by combining a hodgepodge of media varying dizzyingly from oil, acrylic, yarn, plastic gemstones, glitter and what the gallery aptly describes as "the detritus of a post-apocalyptic Hobby Lobby," to create works that are sensory-jarring. He tinkers with notions of sculpture, collage, decoration and performance in paintings that oscillate with dynamic materiality, are innately open-ended and distinctly imaginative.
David Castillo Gallery, 2234 NW Second Avenue, Miami. Call 305-573-8110 or visit davidcastillogallery.com.
Los Culpables
For their solo breakout show, Miami collective 2ALAS finds inspiration from the business tycoons and inventors behind the Second Industrial Revolution to create canvases splashed with the mugs of folks such as J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller and others who whipped 19th Century America into the age of technology while lining their pockets with untold riches. Works on view depict both a rogue's gallery of some of the "Gilded Age's" robber barons and their inventions while questioning whether the moneybags portrayed were power mongers, public benefactors or a combination of the both the good and bad of the era that hatched them.
Gregg Shienbaum Fine Art, 2239 NW Second Ave., Miami Call 305-205-9089 or visit gsfineart.com.
Follow Cultist on Facebook and Twitter @CultistMiami.
