Dev Hynes and Ryan McNamara
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) has commissioned a collaborative performance between musician Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange) and artist Ryan McNamara to take place on Thursday, December 3, 2015 during Miami Art Week. The performance on PAMM’s terrace will include an original multi-part composition by Hynes, an internationally-acclaimed musician and producer, and sculptural elements and choreography by McNamara, a celebrated performance artist. Presented within the global context of Miami Art Week, the performance is an allegory of Miami’s history as a place of fantasy and fragmentation.
Blending sculpture, sound and choreography, the two artists, assisted by Miami-based musicians and dancers will respond to South Florida sites of displacement and fantasy: High rises at the Ocean’s edge, Opa-locka, a recovering neighborhood with a dense concentration of Moorish architecture inspired by One Thousand and One Nights; Vizcaya, an opulent estate on the shores of Coconut Grove characterized by faux-historic European opulence; and Coral Castle, an otherworldly monument made by a Latvian immigrant in the fits of unrequited love.
Javier Pinon and Mara Hoffman
A series of visits which took them beyond the well-trodden districts of South Beach and Downtown introduced the artists to these sites. The project began a year ago when PAMM invited Hynes and McNamara to participate in its Researcher-in-Residence program. The program was launched in January 2013 in order to provide artists, curators and writers with a new context for research and an opportunity to connect with South Florida’s unique cultural setting, resources and communities. Though Hynes and McNamara have long admired and respected each other’s work, they had not previously connected. The museum selected the artists to participate as a duo because of the resonances in their genre-defying, collaborative spirits. In awareness of their positions as visitors, the two chose to engage Miami’s history as a place of real-estate speculation, utopic visions of future and past, and the physical manifestation of desire, both collective or individual.
Andrea Franchini and Job Piston
“Hynes and McNamara maintain practices defined by a wide spectrum of influences,” said Tobias Ostrander, PAMM chief curator. “Their approach to the Miami landscape brings a sensitivity to the multiple ways that built environments shape our imaginations.”
Bauline Boudry, AK Burns and Katerina Llanes
PAMM Presents: Dimensions, by Devonté Hynes and Ryan McNamara, takes place on Thursday, December 3, 9pm – midnight, during the museum’s signature Miami Art Week/Art Basel Miami Beach celebration. The event is open to exclusively toPAMM Sustaining and above level members as well as Art Basel Miami Beach, Design Miami/ and Art Miami VIP cardholders. For more information, or to join PAMM as a Sustaining or above level member, visit pamm.org/support. PAMM P
Credit Kelly Taub / BFANYC