The new art season is upon us. Wynwood art dealers, wringing their sweaty palms, are in a sniff over who did or didn't make the cut for Art Basel. The galleries are cranking out dozens of fresh shows like the conveyer belt at Krispy Kreme.
The food trucks will be out in droves this weekend, eager to feed the throngs to the delight of starving culture vultures and the dismay of dealers tired of choking on exhaust fumes, sweeping chicken and rib bones off their stoops, and flushing the drunks from their bathrooms.
Beginning at 6 p.m. this Saturday, Wynwood galleries are back to the full-time business of elevating our city's cultural eminence, and business is booming. Check out our picks for this month's edition of the rollicking affair after the jump.
6. Regular Lovers
Borrowing its title from a Philippe Garrel flick, Sunny Suits's solo transports viewers into the private world of her friends and paramours. Her photographs are cinematic in nature, convey a depth of authenticity, and bring to mind Nan Goldin's visual diaries. And not unlike the work of Garrel, Cassavetes, or even Fassbinder, her intoxicating oeuvre features the same characters making regular appearances. In these works, she levels an unflinching gaze on her subjects, seeming to freeze fleeting moments of shared intimacy before they are lost. Fredric Snitzer Gallery 2247 NW First Pl., Miami. Call 305-448-8976 or visit snitzer.com.
5. Strung Out
Karen Rifas' new solo continues her exploration of geometry. At times appearing not unlike cat's cradles stitched into corners of the gallery walls or cutting through large swaths of space in bold compositions, her daring pieces, created from multi-colored cords, invite viewer interaction while questioning notions of perspective. For the opening, Rifas has invited dancers under the direction of the New World School of the Arts teacher Dale Andree to move within her ethereal structures. Bernice Steinbaum Gallery 3550 N. Miami Ave., Miami. Call 305-573-2700 or visit bernicesteinbaumgallery.com.
4. Crushed Candy
This savory group offering, celebrating the David Castillo Gallery's 6th anniversary in Wynwood, includes work by Jonathan Ehrenberg, Shara Hughes, Meredith James and the TM Sisters (Tasha and Monica Lopez de Victoria). Ehrenberg, a contemporary fabulist, parlays his interests in set design, still life, pantomime, and Noh Theater into videos and works on paper. Reveling in color, texture, and pattern, Hughes's mixed-media-on-canvas works tinker with notions of the Theory of Relativity, in a world where viewers find themselves in an imaginative holodeck. David Castillo Gallery 2234 NW Second Ave., Miami. Call 305-573-8110 or visit davidcastillogallery.com.
3. September
Organized by art collective Pink Bastard, this group exhibit features the work of seven locals and is meant to inform gallery crawlers about the artists' view of day-to-day vagaries of life in the Big Mango. Take a gander at Cory Foote's black-and-white portrait and landscape snaps, which exude undertones of melancholy. David Zalben, who uses metal wire to animate life's simplicities, has created a collection of evocative wire poems. And Adriana Carvalho, the show's curator, transforms items such as metal and cloth products into enticing pieces that represent her dreams and fears and are freighted with social commentary. Alberto Linero Gallery 2294 NW Second Ave., Miami. Call 305-587-0172 or visit albertolinerogallery.com.
2. Understory
Nina Surel's solo at Praxis boasts a suite of arresting portrayals of modern women, rendered in primal forest settings. Surel plunges headlong into the ineffable realm of emotion, employing photographs, lace, buttons, porcelain, jewelry and resin on wood to convey her own childhood fantasies, Romanticism and early feminist literature. Praxis International Art 2219 NW 2nd Avenue, Miami. Call 305-573-2700 or visit praxis-art.com.
1. Metropolis
Yuri Tuma's third at bat at the ever clotted Butter space, presents his psychedelic vision of complex landscapes that tweak the ever-shifting boundaries between reality and perception. Tuma invites one to stop categorizing his work or try to identify recognizable objects. For Tuma, photography lives at the moment between the flat and the deep, between the organic and constructed and between the visual and imagined. Butter Gallery 2301 NW 2nd Ave., Miami. Call 305-303-6254 or visit buttergallery.com.
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