From the time she first planted her flag in Wynwood, when Bernice Steinbaum spoke people listened.Shortly after opening her two-story space on the corner of 36th Street and North Miami Avenue a decade ago, she hosted an open house for the local arts community attracting about 100 curious visitors. They…
We’re in the dog days of summer, and on Second Saturdays, that means the arrival of the ubiquitous group exhibits that pay the rent during the slow, rainy season.Every June, many local galleries shift away from solo shows showcasing their top stable ponies, toward offerings more like this Saturday’s Belmont…
Gye Hoon Park is a budding conceptualist whose down-to-earth vision germinates from the simple form of a bean sprout. The Korean artist is known for layering organic sheets of rice paper to create a sort of a seed bed, from which he intricately cuts innumerable curved shoots that spring forth…
Every five years, Ragnar Kjartansson unites with his mother to enact a weird ritual involving saliva.At the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Kjartansson’s video trilogy Me and My Mother, 2000-2010, depicts the artist standing next to his mother in her book-lined parlor. In them, his mother, an actress,…
Jose Bedia: Transcultural Pilgrim at MAM
The news that Miami artists FriendsWithYou, Jen Stark, Alvaro Ilizarbe, and others are relocating to Los Angeles has ignited a debate about whether Miami’s art scene can or does support its artists financially. It’s left many wondering whether more homegrown talent will follow them west.It has also inspired debates about…
Stand before one of José Bedia’s enigmatic paintings and you can almost hear the ancestors beating on the resurrection drums centuries ago. “José Bedia’s work has a distinct anthropological quality and is imbued with his rich experience of diverse cultures, religions, and histories,” says Tobias Ostrander, chief curator at Miami…
Lao Tzu famously wrote that “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” But then again, the Chinese scholar wasn’t crossing the Colorado Rockies in a beat-up jalopy or fixing flat tires. For Ed Ruscha, a cross-country jaunt from his native Oklahoma to California along Route 66 back…
FriendsWithYou and Other Top Miami Artists Flee to Los Angeles Over Flagging Sales
“La Bestia: Photography by Isabel Munoz” at CCE Miami Through August 30
In 2006, hundreds of Miami Beach sunbathers stared in awe as a bizarre procession paraded down the South Beach sand. Eighteen giant helium balloons — shaped like vampire rabbits, volcanoes, and eerily smiling black spheres — floated along while the Hialeah Senior High School marching band blasted a jazz tune.It…
When we first encountered the work of Ragnar Kjartansson in 2010 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (770 NE 125th St., North Miami ), he struck us as an unusual talent and left us humming the same lyric continuously for days. His work, titled God, was a 30-minute video in…
Biscayne Blvd Photos Show Immigrants and Freedom Fighters
Art Walk is heating up in Wynwood again, and with it comes a contrasting clash of imagery. You’ll see protestors. You’ll see riot police. And you’ll see an addled Britney Spears pummeling a Disney legend with her umbrella. This Saturday, starting at 6 p.m., culture vultures can swoop into a…
Lynne Golob Gelfman is one of those rare artists whose paintings transport viewers to a place far beyond the world of appearances. Gelfman creates abstract works rife with serialized geometric patterns and forms that undulate like ripples created by a stone tossed into water. At times, her canvases seem to…
For artist Kate Kretz, motherhood has been both a source of inspiration and a reminder of life’s delicate nature. After the birth of her daughter, she became agoraphobic, believing if she never left home with her child, nothing would harm the girl. The experience led to a body of work…
Wynwood Art Walk: Clandestine Culture Takes Center Stage
Pablo Cano’s Puppet Burlesque
Charles LeDray’s mixed-media opus Men’s Suits is the type of installation that leaves viewers dumfounded and begging for more. From the dust-covered drop ceiling with harsh fluorescent lights to the grimy linoleum floor covered with racks and bins of Lilliputian clothing, the scene resembles a Detroit down-at-the-heels thrift store rather…
Ursula von Rydingsvard’s Sculptures at the Frost Art Museum Through August 5
For the past several days, Antonio Manfredi, the director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum near Naples, Italy, has been burning artworks to protest the lack of government funds for his institution. That’s just uncivilized. Rather than setting any more paintings aflame, what the cash-addled Manfredi needs to do is…
As a child living through the turmoil of post-World War II Europe, Ursula von Rydingsvard, along with her family, was among the dispossessed who sought shelter in the sprawling barracks haphazardly built to house the masses driven from their homes by the Nazis. Born in Germany in 1942, she grew…
