Wendy Wischer, "Open Water" at Locust Projects. (Photo by Pedro Wazzan)
So you say your world is changing at an alarming pace. Staying current is an ongoing challenge as technology, nature, science and art try to find a way to co-exist with hardly a moment to take a breath or start a new paragraph. The ebb and flow of our planet is losing the concept of “ebb.” Tide is always coming in, both figurative and literal.
Jaye Rhee, "Fragile Terrain" at Locust Projects. (Photo by Pedro Wazzan)
Locust Projects, a nonprofit alternative art space located in Miami’s Little River/Little Haiti neighborhood. It never fails to provoke thought and energy leading the viewer to connect the dots on situations and conundrums that often we didn’t even realize were taking up mental real estate. Like a computer, our brains have layers constantly spinning in the background while the most current “program” takes over the foreground noise.
Front and center on the main gallery floor is a thoughtful exhibition by Korean-born artist Jaye Rhee “Fragile Terrain.”
Executive Director Lorie Mertes was kind enough to walk me through the gallery offerings to keep me on track. Mertes knows how to let the artists' creativity off leash while staying on top of the gallery’s relevance and message. The main space has low lighting with highlighted spots keeping attention on focus.
Dahlia Dreszer, "Bringing the Outside In" at Green Space Miami. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
It has a soothing color palette and the vibe of a sanctuary, Jaye Rhee fully utilizes every aspect of the clashing layers of our times. How do we go forward and still allow for nature to flourish as technology zooms by, the (once) solid and proven ideas of scientific truths vie for space with exploding technology, no time to stop and vet each new step. Science gets lost in our expanding screen life. AI has proven that warp speed is now the slow lane.
“My work presents ‘real fakes’ and ‘imageless images’.”
Rhee’s explains her “idealized images of the nostalgic imagination.”
Sit with that phrase as you circumnavigate her words versus what the installation is offering. For this show, Rhee has brought Miami’s imagery to the surface via a series of copious highly pixilated blocks of various sizes, hand cut and folded into perfect 3D squares, bringing both modern printing technology in direct contact with the hands-on artisans' connection with box making.
Rhee and a group of helpers sat on the floor folding box after box after box. By the way, Locust Projects sets the artists up with a team to aid in taking on complex installations.
Walking into the room you know instantly that South Florida is the subject through nothing but color placement and block size.
Locust Projects presents "Fragile Terrain," a multimedia installation by Jaye Rhee. (Photo courtesy of Locust Projects)
Aqua, deep blue, sand and white pixilated boxes have been placed in strips indicating high-rise buildings, beach, shoreline and ocean waters.
Video, photography, and performance fill up wall space beyond the floor installation. It begs the question: Is remembrance real or fake? “My multi-channel video installations depict the landscapes that are the psychological residue of the culture that I have left behind, thus only exist in my memory, but are only tenuously linked to the collective memory. I attempt to reproduce these landscapes by a process that I call ‘faking it.’”
Also showing is Wendy Wischer’s multi-media installation “Open Water” in the next room, a series of videos on screens arranged in a circular placement. Wischer explores the “vulnerability of loving something as it fades away.” She believes if we connect with something we will care more. Aligning nature’s vulnerability with the usage of latest technology appears to be the complicated tools of the modern world zooming into some great unknown where no one can know where it will deposit mankind; there is no precedence.
It was not all that long ago that we were struggling with the buzzing and beeping of the mind-bendingly slow AOL connection. Now AI is making creative decisions for us. I have to be careful to edit what I type or it in can go wildly off-message from original intent, mushing my words into a formulaic flatness. A fear and foreboding that we are losing something forever cherished as the concept of “real” appears to be a topic that is unhinging a large part of the population with no trusted guide.
Hanging above from the center of Wischer’s circular “room” is a sound projector sending a soothing voice downward and into a speaker only heard when standing in the middle of this watery universe projected around us. I’m finding so many exhibitions are visually and audibly soothing as the content is alarming as all get out. A doomsday message delivered with a silky veneer of calmness.
From Locust Projects I moved a few city blocks northeast to Green Space Miami. Somehow on the board game of Miami’s art life I’ve managed to pass by this very pleasing venue up until now. Very glad I rectified that problem.
Current “Green Space Miami” exhibitor Dahlia Dreszer’s “Bringing the Outside In” consolidates the thread of belonging, nostalgia, the melding of remembrance and nature versus actuality with a history that effectively shows her multi-leveled first-hand knowledge of this subject. Once the past is past, does it cease to exist as it was or merely as we imagine . . . does it now become fake or is it as viable as real?
The collective message I’ve accrued from my gallery visits of late is an attempt to ground ourselves. Many are transplants. The subject of belonging is especially acute in big cities populated by people who’ve lived in a variety of locations. Not feeling a true part of any particular home, many grapple with not really fitting into any specific area. There can be reminders of “you don’t belong here,” a message that is unsettling; even if we have been born here. It's difficult to resolve the past comfort of our home turf while the rules change around us.
People that comprise our everyday existence can be unceremoniously transplanted, creating a hole in ones safety net of people to rely on.
Dreszer nails it on all levels with the usage of flowers, textiles from her grandparents and the notion of aging as shown with the heavy usage of flowers in all the states of life and it’s passing. The installation “Bringing the Outside In” takes on the gallery space with large still-life photos taken in her current home in Miami.
Dahlia Dreszer, "Bring the Outside In" at Green Space Miami. (Photo courtesy of the artist)
Dreszer’s complicated background runs from being born in Colombia and raised in Panama, with connections of her Jewish heritage and the Middle East.
Her grandmother, a photographer, is from Colombia and was obsessed with dahlias, ergo her granddaughter’s name and one assumes Dreszer’s usage of a tsunami of flowers in her large photographs. (As an aside I was speaking to the woman filling me in on the show. . . her name was “Flora”. This can’t be for real.)
Later I met the artist, an ebullient and positive force matching the energy in the work. No shrinking violet (sorry, I can't help myself), Dreszer cannot tolerate the idea of tossing out beautiful flowers that get rejected immediately after a large showy event.
She goes on floral rescue missions at midnight to ensure the buckets of beautiful live material does not end it’s days in the back of a dump truck, still vying for the attention beauty expects from the outside world. And so begins a new project.
Panamanian textiles are nestled in her still life “portraits.”
As unsettled as her background may be, the exuberance of the work overrides the potentially dreary message of not fitting in to any one reality. The colors and explosion of information in each jam-packed image shows her love of life and continuous positivity.
Fresh vistas hold no fear of the unknown but push Dreszer forward. One wall in the gallery is daringly painted a vibrant shade of “prune,” Dreszer informed me. It is a wonderful gutsy choice and absolutely works . The center floor area is live wild greenery to incorporate Miami’s Everglades into the mix, She has recently moved here — Miami could not be ignored.
The rescued flowers are part of a central theme, left there for the duration of her art show, indicating the passage of time. At the ceilings edge, there are flowers and plants hanging upside down as Dreszer extends the journey of nature in her drying of the dying floral material . . .extending its use as decorative object in all forms. Many family heirlooms are tucked in amongst the still life images often brought out of frame. . . i.e. one of her grandmother’s scarves is part of the image in a photo, but also extended out past the frame in its actual form. There were several indications of Dreszer’s connecting past from its framed confines to be a part of the “now” of current reality. Green Space is the Green Family Foundation Trust, aiding the arts in Miami-Dade.
I was amazed at how the subject matter of these women artists, Jaye Rhee, and Wendy Wischer, of Locust Projects and Dahlia Dreszer, had at the base of their concerns, the need to make the past current and relevant as the world we know passes from view.
By the way: galleries have very much moved on from the stuffy elitist world that brought about an era that prompted forming of The Guerrilla Girls protest movement in 1985.
Galleries and museums have fully embraced courting of a younger, more vibrant and diverse art community. Make sure to visit websites for copious programming that open doors to a much more inclusive audience in the form of lectures, discussions, hands-on workshops, family activities, gallery walks to engage the younger of our population to feel part of the citizenry of the art world.
WHAT: Jaye Rhee, ”Fragile Terrain" and Wendy Wischer, “Open Water”
WHEN: Hours: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday. Through Saturday, April 5
WHERE: Locust Projects, 297 NE 67 St., Miami
INFO: locustprojects.org/WHAT: Dahlia Dreszer,“Bringing the Outside In”
WHEN: Hours: noon to 6 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday. Through Saturday, May 17
WHERE: Green Space Miami, 7200 Biscayne Blvd, Unit 1 and 2, Miami
INFO: greenspacemiami.org/
