Cultural lineup of installations and exhibitions, debuting for this year's Art Week 2023 in the Miami Design District and beyond.
SAMUEL ROSS BENCHES
Miami Design District will unveil a permanent installation by British Artist and Designer Samuel Ross in November. Under the umbrella of his industrial design studio SR_A, three different bench designs will be installed throughout the neighborhood's public spaces and pedestrian walkways, addressing Ross' interest in ideas around functionality and service in public areas. Displaying anamorphic, chalk forms made of CNC Steel with a powder coating, the sculptures are made specifically for MDD. Ross started the designs as hand sketches and drawings in charcoal, Indian ink and pencil, and then translated them to a workable 3D format.
Location: Miami Design District
DESIGN COMMISSION 2023 BY LARA BOHINC
Miami Design District has awarded designer Lara Bohinc the 2023 Miami Design District Annual Design Commission. 'Utopia' spans four installations featuring irregular, bulbous forms reminiscent of growing cellular organisms. The sculptures are suggestive of living objects, mushrooming across the district. Collectively, they imagine a city where nature thrives peacefully and in harmony with our human presence. Pieces include outdoor seating, tables and oversized light sculptures, as well as a giant centerpiece egg-form, and 900 egg-shaped birdhouses dispersed throughout the trees. Bohinc's pieces are made from cork and painted by hand in vibrant hues paying homage to Miami's architectural color palette. Curated in collaboration with Design Miami/ Curatorial Lab, Utopia's dynamic sculptures will also welcome visitors with a special installation at the entrance of the Design Miami/ fair.
Location: Miami Design District
Dates: November 2023 - March 2024
CRAIG ROBINS COLLECTION "A TRAIN OF THOUGHTS"
The Craig Robins Collection in Miami comprises over 1,300 pieces of contemporary art and innovative design, and exhibited within the Dacra headquarters in the Miami Design District. This year's rehanging of the collection is titled "A Train of Thoughts", focusing on two core subgroups of the collection's holdings: figuration and conceptualism. The exhibition highlights a collecting history that has favored a taste for the abject and hyperbolic figurative image, in tandem with the self-reflexive, institutional critique of art based on ideas - a seemingly incompatible pair that yields unexpected dialogues.
Location: DACRA Headquarters, 3841 NE 2nd Ave., Miami, FL 33137
Dates: December 6–8
GAGOSIAN & JEFFREY DEITCH PRESENT 'FORMS
Forms will be the eighth annual group exhibition presented jointly by Jeffrey Deitch and Gagosian during Miami Art Week and on view in the city's Design District. The dominant narrative of modern art has largely focused on stylistic shifts between binary oppositions: from figuration to abstraction and back again. Playing on this history, the works included in Forms highlight, acknowledge, and challenge the pathway between abstraction and figuration with surrogates for and references to the representational world.
Location: 35 NE 40th St., Miami, FL 33137
Dates: December 5–10
THE ART OF HIP HOP
Alan Ket & Allison Freidin, Founders of The Museum of Graffiti, proudly present Art of Hip Hop, an immersive exhibition spotlighting the visual unsung heroes of Hip Hop culture, including photographers, album cover artists, graffiti visionaries, and logo designers. Following successful showings at SXSW and UrbanBreak in Seoul, this showcase lands in Miami on December 5, 2023, offering a unique exploration of Hip Hop's history and Miami's own cultural contributions to coincide with the 50th Anniversary of Hip Hop.
The inaugural exhibition, entitled From the Bronx to the Beach, will showcase rare vintage ephemera from Hip Hop's first NYC DJ, Kool Herc, to Miami's own pioneer Uncle Luke. Visitors can expect to see the works of famed Hip Hop photographers Janette Beckman, Mike Miller, Henry Chalfant, Matt Doyle, Lisa Leone, Joe Conzo, and Daniel Hastings, alongside Hip Hop album covers designed by Cey Adams, Eric Haze, Slick, Kaws, and more. The exhibition will also shine a special spotlight on Miami's own Hip Hop history, capturing it through the lenses of local historian and photographer Derick G and photographer Esdras T. Thelusma. The exhibition will be open to the public daily 11am - 6pm beginning December 5, 2023. For more information, please visit www.artofhiphop.com and @artofhiphop50.
Location: 299 NW 25th St., Miami, FL 33127
Dates: Permanent
THE CHRONICLES OF MIAMI BY JR
French artist JR debuts his newest mural 'The Chronicles of Miami.' Inspired by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, the piece is part of JR's ambitious Chronicles series that imagines how an entire city can be represented through art. To create the work, JR and his traveling studio visited ten different neighborhoods in Miami, inviting anyone who passed by to be photographed and record a story.
The result is an epic, highly realistic composition that captures the 1,048 people who make up this ever-changing coastal city. The voices and stories of participants are linked to their portraits through the augmented reality app "JR: murals," offering an immersive exploration of Miami's diverse culture and history.
Location: Jungle Plaza, 3801 NE 1st Ave., Miami, FL 33137
STARDUST PAVILION BY FLARE
Stardust is a 10 ft. tall structure spanning 217 sqft. Ideated by design studio, Flare, the structure marks the first of a series of collectible editions of bespoke pavilions inspired by the architectural tradition of XVII Century "Follies." Upon entering, Stardust envelopes those inside into a dance of light and reflection. A mirrored ceiling and glass walls flirt with visitors' bodies, while a marble floor elegantly reflects the sounds of the interior atmosphere. Natural light, diffused by the surrounding landscape, softly penetrates the transparent glass walls, animating the space. Stardust, and its complementing furniture pieces (Amaranta and Ana & Chiara), also designed and created by Flare for the Design District, will go on display and be open to the public in November 2023.
Location: 95 NE 40th St., Miami, FL 33137
Dates: November 2023 - January 2024
SWAMPSPACE GALLERY X SPINELLO PROJECTS "VALLE DE LÁGRIMAS / VALLEY OF TEARS"
Spinello Projects in collaboration with Swampspace Gallery in Miami's Design District proudly presents VALLE DE LÁGRIMAS (1987), a montage of ten lurid canvases. The installation of paintings are a meditation on popular culture and a tribute to Mexican fotonovelas of the 1970's. The monumental work was rendered by Sanchez before succumbing to AIDS in 1990. Swampspace presents this seminal work in partnership with Spinello Projects' series of solo exhibitions and projects entitled GAY ERA.
GAY ERA is a collection of eight solo shows and projects, bringing together a selection of artists whose works embody the rich tapestry of queer experiences, narratives, and artistic expressions. VALLE DE LÁGRIMAS / VALLEY OF TEARS is a special curatorial satellite project by the late artist Adolfo Rene Sanchez at Swampspace in the Miami Design District which will be in conversation with six exhibitions at Spinello Projects, featuring Anthony Goicolea (b. 1971, Atlanta, Georgia), Barnaby Whitfield (b.1970, Miami, Florida), Kris Knight (b.1980, Windsor, Ontario), Giorgio Celin (b.1986, Barranquilla, Colombia), Juan Arango Palacios (b.1997, Pereira, Colombia) and Richie Nath (b.1995, Yangon, Myanmar), and lastly, Esaí Alfredo's (b.1997, Puerto Rico), debut solo booth presentation within the Positions sectors at Art Basel Miami Beach.
Location: 3940 N. Miami Ave., Miami, FL 33127
Dates: December 4–9; 11am-5pm
ERICK & ELLIOT JIMENEZ: RECLINING MERMAID
Reclining Mermaid' is a site-specific billboard by Elliot & Erick Jiménez, first generation Cuban American twin photo duo. The work is a portrait of Yemaya, the deity syncretized with our Lady of Regla in Cuba, and ruler of the seas - her shimmering dress resembling the refraction of the ocean's surface. The figure is mostly obscured with the exception of her eyes; a customary feature within Elliot & Erick's artwork, the eyes remaining present in the image serves as posterity to the history of Cuba's colonialism and blending of Spanish and West African traditions.
Reclining Mermaid is part of "Southern Histories", a series of large-scale works at culturally significant sites to commemorate under-recognized historical narratives connected to Miami's roots in the American South, Latin America, and the Caribbean. This public work underscores the history of migration from the Caribbean and Latin America to Miami, and the myriad ways in which these cultures transformed the city's urban fabric over the decades. Produced in collaboration with Spinello Projects and commissioned by Fringe Projects with support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
Location: Corner of NE 2nd Ave. & 40 St., Miami, FL 33137'
