Events: Visual Arts

Miami-based, Venezuelan artist Carola Bravo’s work includes architectural public art and immersive site-specific video and art installations. Through her practice she explores the geometry of our spaces and how they intersect with history, memory and time. Touching on themes such as change, home, exile and hope, Bravo examines our sense of belonging through the ordering of space. Her interest in landscape, places and territories form the basis of her examination of the conceptual and emotional implications of our relationships with space and time.

With Between Absence and Presence, Bravo challenges traditional commemoration and the use of public monuments by inverting a pedestal and covering it in a mirrored surface, reflecting spectators and the surrounding environment. The reflective presence of the spectator integrated into the absence of where a commemorative object is expected to be is meant to highlight society’s inverted values by directing the viewers’ gaze towards themselves, initiating questions about this legitimizing form of the monument, long recognized as means for assigning value to people, events and things.

The Bass is situated in Collins Park, a public park in Miami Beach, where there are presently four monuments that were commissioned by different groups at various times. Sitting atop stone plinths in the south side of the park, these existing monuments pay homage to Cuban epidemiologist Dr. Carlos Finlay, Venezuelan political leader Simón Bolívar, Nicaraguan scientist Dr. Luis Henry Debayle and Cuban writer Jose Martí. Amid an international debate on monuments and their legitimacy, New Monuments seeks to provide artists the opportunity to produce a new, temporary fifth monument.

“The Bass conceived of New Monuments as a way to elevate artistic voices in Miami,” said Silvia Karman Cubiñá, Executive Director and Chief Curator of The Bass. “In its third year, we’re excited to continue to provide a forum where local artists engage in the national conversation redefining monuments and who or what they honor and represent.”

Building upon the question of “what is a monument” and engaging in current conversations, Between Absence and Presence is the third work in the New Monuments open artist call.

CoBrA is an acronym for Copenhagen, Brussels and Amsterdam, the capital cities from which the group’s founders originated. CoBrA was established on November 8, 1948 by six artists: Karel Appel (b. 1921, Amsterdam, Netherlands; d. 2006, Zürich, Switzerland), Asger Jorn (b. 1914, Jutland, Denmark; d. 1973 Aarhus, Denmark), Constant Nieuwenhuys (b. 1920, Amsterdam, Netherlands; d. 2005, Utrecht, Netherlands), Corneille (b. 1922, LieÌ€ge, Belgium; d. 2010, Auvers-sur-Oise, France), Christian Dotremont (b.1922, Terburen, Belgium; d. 1979, Buizingen, Belgium) and Joseph Noiret (b. 1927, Brussels, Belgium; d. 2012, Brussels, Belgium). These artists were brought together by their mutual disagreement with the rigorous concepts of Surrealism, the leading avant-garde movement of the day. Instead, they believed that the trauma of World War Two called for a new form of expression, inspired by pure, childlike spontaneity, “an organic, experimental collaboration that avoids all sterile, dogmatic theory.” The artists declared their shared cause by signing a manifesto titled La cause eÌtait entendue (The Matter Was Settled), penned by Christian Dotremont.

Over the course of three years, the group amassed over thirty participants, who collaboratively organized 10 issues and four supplements of an eponymous magazine and mounted multiple exhibitions throughout Europe. Through these engagements, the artists demonstrated their belief in the importance of experimentation, community, and creative freedom.

The language of CoBrA lead to the creation of improvisatory paintings, poems, prose, sculptures, films, prints and drawings. Visually, the work combines abstraction and figuration, with faces, animals and words emerging from spontaneous mark making.

While the group disbanded in 1951 primarily due to the hospitalization of artists Asger Jorn and Christian Dotremont from tuberculosis the spirit of CoBrA continued to define the creative approaches of many of its participants. The majority remained in contact throughout their lives and continued to collaborate. Many also reunited through their participation in pivotal avant-garde movements that followed CoBrA, such as the Situationist International, Gruppe Spur, Arte Nucleare and the Imaginist Bauhaus, all of which shared ideals of a free society which celebrated unbridled creativity.

ArtServe's Annual Members and Resident Artists' Exhibit Springboards Aspiring Talent "Sole Perception" to Run Friday, Oct. 6 Through Saturday, Dec. 30;Free, Opening Night Reception Oct.

Marking a successful year featuring all kinds of artists from South Florida and beyond, ArtServe turns its final exhibit of 2023 exclusively over to its members and resident artists with a focus on the inherent interconnectivity of their individual creativity.

Titled "Sole Perception," the exhibit opens with a free, public reception from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.on Friday, Oct. 6.

Thanks to a grant from Broward Cultural Division and Florida Arts & Culture, the exhibit itself is also free to attend and runs through Saturday, December 30, 2023. ArtServe is located at 1350 E. Sunrise Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale and open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

ArtServe's members and resident artists eagerly await this annual exhibit, which is known in South Florida's art community as a place to connect with art scouts looking for up-and-coming talent. Some ArtServe artists go on to exhibit their work at Art Basel after being discovered.

Echoing ArtServe's fundamental mission to connect local artists with the community, "Sole Perception" will invite visitors to contemplate how artists' reinterpretations of others' ideas create an endless stream of consciousness to connect the viewer with the original artistic inspiration.

"It was Mark Twain who said 'There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible.'" ArtServe Executive Director Jason Hughes remarked. "But we're pretty sure when you see our artists' works at 'Sole Perception,' you'll likely get some fresh ideas of your own!"

"Sole Perception" will showcase a variety of disciplines in the visual arts.

"It's also an opportunity for guests to support local artists by purchasing their work and, with the holidays right around the corner, we can't think of a better, more unique present than the gift of art," Hughes added.

ArtServe inspires, supports and advances its diverse members, artists and community by promoting artistic development, education and prosperity through the exploration and presentation of the visual and performing arts.

About ArtServe

Named a "2020 Top-Rated Nonprofit" by GreatNonprofits, the leading provider of user reviews of charities and nonprofits, Fort Lauderdale-based ArtServe is an award-winning arts incubator that is advancing the arts for social good as a creative laboratory and hub for experimental artists committed to diversity, equity and inclusion. Now in its 35th year, ArtServe has won several awards for innovation in the arts and is supported in part by the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council and Florida's Department of State and the Division of Cultural Affairs. Each year, ArtServe programs contribute tangibly to the region's economy, helping 2,000+ artists sell their work, build businesses and engage the community. To do that, ArtServe secures financial support through donations, sponsorships and memberships.

Recognized as a pioneer of conceptual art, Gaines has been at the forefront of introducing language and systems into artistic production for decades. He is widely known for his use of translating mechanisms to convert images and documents into numerical structures, musical notation, and other sign systems. The ICA Miami exhibition highlights a pivotal shift in Gaines’s practice during the second half of his career, in which his work takes on even greater political and social dimension, incorporating materials abundant with preexisting cultural meaning. Among these are the Black Panthers’ manifesto as well as texts by Franz Kafka and Frantz Fanon, which have been channeled by the artist into complex formal and conceptual works. This radical approach has allowed Gaines to address the issues of race and identity politics in innovative ways that extend beyond representation. Simultaneously, Gaines began to combine different media, including video and sound, into his works.

The ICA Miami exhibition brings together for the first time a number of monumental works and series that demonstrate the evolution of Gaines’s approach to combining an array of materials–electronics, wood, acrylic, photographs–and transforming them into a distinct visual language. Among these is a monumental piece that is being recreated by Gaines for the first time in twenty years: Greenhouse (2003–2023) is a massive 12 by 16-foot sculptural enclosure wherein simulated atmospheric conditions identified with climate change are conflated with data visualizations of recorded temperature changes across the globe from the 15th century to the present. Another large-scale work, Falling Rock (2000–2023) is a sculpture in which a 65-lb chunk of granite drops in a randomized and sudden fashion, creating unexpected outcomes for the viewer each time. The artist is recreating these major works specifically for the ICA Miami exhibition.

The deeply complex and meticulous work of Charles Gaines (b., 1944, Charleston, South Carolina) has been included in significant exhibitions, including a survey of his early work, “Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974–1989,” organized by The Studio Museum in Harlem (New York), which later traveled to the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles). Most recently, his work has been presented in solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco) and Dia Beacon (New York). Gaines’s work is included in prominent public collections such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), and Tate (London), among others. In 2022, Gaines launched his most ambitious public art project yet, ‘The American Manifest’, presented by Creative Time, Governors Island Arts, and Times Square Arts.

"As both an Artist and Architect my work is shifting the narrative of cultural identities’ importance within the built environment by exploring how space shapes cultural identity and how cultural identity cultivates landscapes. In this architectural installation I wanted to bring visibility to many underrepresented stories and lived experiences of communities just blocks away from Locust Projects. Miami’s Black communities are at a very vulnerable stage within history, and as an artist I want to use my creative voice to amplify the many unheard voices within our city.

I plan to activate this space with an interdisciplinary performance depicting the lived experience of the porch space as integral vernacular for social development, placemaking, and cultural identity. I am glad to partner with a forward thinking space like Locust projects that is allowing me to not only push the narrative and scales of my work, but also the media and mediums I work with as an interdisciplinary artist. “Poetics of Place” is an homage to the Miami we once knew, and a plea to protect the future of its vulnerable Black and Caribbean communities."

Since the late 1980s Simmons has played a key role in situating questions of race, class, and gender identity at the center of contemporary art discourse. Notable for his early application of conceptual artistic strategies, Simmons exposes and analyzes histories of racism inscribed in US visual culture. Over the course of his career, Simmons has revealed traces of these histories in the fields of sports, cinema, literature, music, and architecture and urbanism, while drawing heavily on popular genres such as hip-hop, horror, and science fiction. Guided by an internal logic, his approach is cool, analytical, and unflinching in its interrogation of intense historical narratives, yet the results consistently deliver a strong emotional charge.

In this timely exhibition accompanied by a major exhibition catalogue and slate of related programs visitors will gain a holistic understanding of the complex and profoundly moving work of this groundbreaking and influential artist.