Each year, in celebration of Art Basel Miami Beach, The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University hosts an official Art Basel sponsored event, Breakfast in the Park and participates in fairs across town. This year’s Breakfast in the Park will take place on Sunday, December 5, 2010 from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m. and is free and open to the public. Also taking place during this event will be a small celebration for The Frost Art Museum’s second anniversary in its new space, which opened to the public in 2008.
Over the years, Breakfast in the Park has grown to draw hundreds of art enthusiasts, patrons, collectors, gallery owners and artists from around the world, many of whom are visiting Miami Beach for the most prestigious art show in the United States, Art Basel. Each year a noted sculptor is invited to speak. Guests enjoy a complimentary outdoor breakfast, informal lecture and guided tours of The Sculpture Park as well as the exhibitions in The Frost Art Museum.
Now in its eighth year, Breakfast in the Park will feature an informal lecture by Enrique Martínez Celaya, whose works consists of paintings, sculpture, photography, poetry, and prose. Martínez Celaya’s work directly reflects his personal experience with a diversity of fields. His work is often characterized by solitary and autobiographical figures seemingly displaced in surreal and symbolic landscapes. Through his background in science, Martínez Celaya investigates the interaction between modern science and the subconscious is his work.
In addition to its participation with Art Basel, The Frost Art Museum has partnered with Art Miami, Red Dot, Art Asia, Pulse Art Fair, Aqua Art Fair, SCOPE and the Sagamore for its annual brunch.
On view during the week of Art Basel Miami Beach are:
Embracing Modernity: Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction that runs through January 2, 2011
This exhibition presents a historical overview of the origins of the country’s abstract movement, focusing on its early development dating from the late 1940’s to the 1970’s. The selection of works from private collections and foundations included in the exhibit document an important period of Venezuela’s art history which was instrumental in the development of Modern Art in the Americas. Paintings, sculptures, and installations, illustrate the development of Venezuelan Geometric Abstraction and Kinetic Art, and introduce many artists who contributed to the development of movement in Venezuela, unknown to the American public. The show curated by Francine Birbragher-Rozencwaig and Maria Carlota Perez features works by Carlos Cruz-Diez, Gertrude Goldschmidt (GEGO), Mateo Manaure, Alejandro Otero and Jesús Rafael Soto, among others.
Also on view is La Habana Moderna in The Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at The Frost Art Museum. Havana is the focus of a new exhibition in the Wolfsonian Teaching Gallery at the Frost Art Museum on view in the fall of 2010. By presenting a variety of materials from the collection of The Wolfsonian-Florida International University (magazines, photography, architectural drawings, tourist ephemera, and other media), it explores how international commercial and cultural links contributed to the emergence of a modern identity for the city in the decades before the Cuban Revolution. The exhibition is made possible by financial support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This exhibition runs through January 9, 2011
Sequentia, Xavier Cortada’s solo exhibit at the Frost Art Museum explores the sequence of events that make up life on the planet from the molecular to the monumental. The title of the exhibit also references a series of actions Cortada will set in motion to create a unique strand of DNA. The artist will work with a molecular biologist to synthesize an actual DNA strand made from a sequence generated by museum visitors using Cortada’s art. This exhibition runs through January 2, 2011
Rablaci: Metáforas del Hombre Contemporáneo in The Sculpture Park at FIU
Nature forms a substantial part in the representation of this series of works of sculpture which show the character of Rablaci’s artistic universe. These large-scale, bronze orange tree sculptures concentrate on the importance of recognizable signs and myths of natural landscapes, using an artistic language which allows for the complementarity of the figurative and the abstract, the formal and the informal, and where folds and lines can be compatible concepts in their convulsive sculptural development. This exhibition is on view December 1, 2010 through January 26, 2010.
From Old to New is an intriguing exhibition that features works attributed to Masters such as Ferdinand Bol, and large-scale works attributed to Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens opposite contemporary works by Lydia Rubio, Frances Trombly & Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova and Carlos Estevez. The juxtaposition of new and old objects work seemlessly in the visual aesthetics of masterpieces. This exhibtion is ongoing.
Florida Artists Series: Selections from ANOMIE 1492-2006 by Arnold Mesches
Throughout his 65-year career as an artist and professor, Arnold Mesches has woven many narratives into lush and virtuosic paintings. The ANOMIE series, paintings and collages that included overt and subtle references to the overlapping histories and multi-cultural aspects of life, encompassed postmodern concepts with old master techniques and structures. In these works, large canvases of cinematic proportions, nothing is overt, images move and mingle freely through time, find their place conceptually, independent of actualities. In a broader sense, they are the conceptual admixtures of reality and the surreal Mesches has been striving for over these many years of painting and activism. This series incorporated pertinent, often disparate,historical and personal images. It seems to be a summation of Mesches’ collected views on the world’s madness and inconsistencies, on beauty and ugliness, evil and justice, on life over death. Mesches has exhibited extensively throughout the United States and abroad, most recently at PS1 Contemporary, the Museum of Modern Art affiliate. His works are included in the collections of such distinguished institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, the Whitney Museum and the Hirshhorn Museum. Mr. Mesches has recently been awarded an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Florida in Gainesville. On view through December 5, 2010