The Silent Shout: Voices in Cuban Abstraction 1950-2013

By Richard Speer
ARTnews March 2014

Historically significant and visually rich, this exhibition showcases paintings and sculpture by three generations of Cuban artists. The “Silent Shout” of the show’s title refers to the 1997 exhibition “Pinturas del Silencio” (Paintings from the Silence), mounted during the sixth Havana Biennial to illuminate the lineage of Cuban abstract painting, long repressed under the Castro regime, and to bring to light the work of painters whose voices had effectively been silenced since the 1950s. As this current exhibition demonstrates, what was once a muffled cry has since grown into a hearty esthetic shout.

Curators Janet Batet, Rafael DiazCasas, and Jose Angel Vincench guide viewers through 63 years of work made by four historic artists— Hugo Consuegra, Raul Martinez, Lolo Soldevilla, and Sandu Darie—and five living artists. The paintings from the ’50s and ’60s are notable for their compositional finesse and the abundance of amber and earth tones, lending the canvases a chromatic gravitas, most strikingly in Consuegra’s paean to organic forms, Privilegio (1960).

But it bodes well for the current state of Cuban abstraction that the show’s strongest and most vital pieces were painted only last year. Luis Enrique Lopez’s Pupilas de Santo V is a sumptuous triptych of circular forms that contrasts vibrantly with Jose Rosabal’s untitled suite of brightly hued architectonic planes. Pedro de Oraa’s virtuosic Divertimento 1 and Divertimento 2 depict a compelling interplay of nested shadows, while Vincench’s own paintings and sculptures employ gold leaf to transform the letters of the politically charged word exilio (exile) into abstracted forms.

Viewed together, the works in this rigorous yet buoyant exhibition affirm Cuba’s importance within the evolution of post-World War II abstraction. The show itself signifies the passing of the torch to a generation of Cuban artists for whom abstraction is no longer taboo but one among many modes of artistic expression.

By Dennys Matos
Especial – El Nuevo Herald

The Silent Shout: Voices in Cuban Abstraction 1950-2013

El grito silencioso: voces en la abstracción en Cuba (1950-2013) es una muestra colectiva que contempla nueve artistas cubanos, cuya obra se ha desenvuelto por los cauces de la abstracción. Está formada por más de una veintena de obras entre pinturas y esculturas y abarca a tres generaciones de arte cubano, que cubren tanto el periodo prerrevolucionario como posrrevolucionario. Estos artistas son: Loló Soldevilla, Pedro de Oraá, Sandú Darié, Hugo Consuegra, Raúl Martínez, José Rosabal, Carlos García, Luis Enrique López y José Angel Vincench.

Esta exposición comisariada por Janet Batet, José Angel Vincench y Rafael Díaz-Cazas, constituye una excelente oportunidad para acercarnos a una de las tendencias artísticas menos conocidas del arte tardomoderno cubano. Entre otras cosas, porque practica una revisión historiográfica (y también estética) de aquellas exposiciones y autores que a finales de los años 1940 y 1950, abrieron el espectro de las artes visuales cubanas a la poética de la abstracción. Es así como, por medio de los autores presentes en El grito silencioso: voces en la abstracción en Cuba (1950-2013), esta cita intencionalmente aquellas muestras anteriores en las que muchos de ellos participaron, y que ahora son un hito en la historiografía de la modernidad artística cubana y una referencia esencial para su comprensión. Ejemplo de ello son Quince pintores y escultores en 1953 y, en ese mismo año, Once pintores y escultores. Pero también aparece citada Diez pintores concretos, de 1958, con artistas como Soldevilla, Oraá, Darié y Rosabal. De paso El grito silencioso…”, 2013, en su alcance historiográfico reivindica la figura de Darie como artista pionero de la abstracción cubana.

Hasta aquí podría hablarse de exposiciones vinculadas a la abstracción antes del triunfo revolucionario citadas en El grito silencioso…, pero la muestra no se queda ahí y también cita exposiciones relacionadas con la abstracción en el periodo revolucionario, en el que queda al descubierto una desidia sistemática por parte de la política cultural revolucionaria hacia las manifestaciones del arte abstracto. Y en ello enfatiza el texto curatorial del catálogo de la muestra firmado por Batet y Díaz-Cazas, cuando refieren la exposición Expresionismo abstracto, de 1963, como inicio de un periodo de invisibilidad o silenciamiento de esta poética durante un largo periodo. Porque tendrán que pasar más de tres décadas para que, en 1997, durante la VI Bienal de La Habana se inaugurara en Galería Acacia, la exposición Pinturas del silencio, comisariada por Rafael Serrano y Vincench con 18 artistas.

El grito silencioso: voces en la abstracción en Cuba ahora relaciona autores, con particularidades inéditas en la selección de obras, de la primera hornada de la abstracción como Darié, Soldevilla, Consuegra y Raúl Martínez con otros más jóvenes como, por ejemplo, Carlos García y Vincench. Y en esa articulación descubrimos que la abstracción, como una tradición dentro del campo de producción artístico cubano, no es algo homogéneo ni en su visualidad ni tampoco en su estilo, por decirlo de alguna manera. Que hay acentos poéticos que se desplazan desde recursos de lenguaje más abstractos con soluciones geométricas, hacia otros más figurativos, en los que lo narrativo emerge con fuerza ante el simbolismo. En el primer caso tenemos, por ejemplo, las obras de Darié ( Untitled), Soldevilla ( Untitled), Vincench, Oraá y Rosabal. Aquí los elementos abstractos geométricos son enfatizados, aunque Darié y Soldevilla arman más el espacio pictórico a la manera constructivista. Mientras que en obras como, por ejemplo, de Consuegra ( El recuerdo golpeado), García ( Cuatro árboles golpeados) y Martínez, los elementos abstractos dan paso a un informalismo, (abstracción pero no geométrica) por el que se cuela tanto la figuración como la pintura matérica en su versión más lírica por la presencia de trazos expresionistas.

Resulta muy interesante y, también, muy oportuno esta especie de itinerario histórico y estético que plantea El grito silencioso porque, como exposición, habilita vasos comunicantes entre esas generaciones que, en su expresión espacio temporal parecían separadas, permanecían como escindidas una de otra, para encajarlas de lleno en la tradición de vanguardia artística tardo moderna cubana. Las rescata de la oscuridad a la que sistemáticamente las condenó la burocracia y los extremismos de las instituciones culturales revolucionarias. Arroja sin duda nuevas luces sobre el proceso histórico y estético de la abstracción, como lenguaje renovador e importante patrimonio artístico de las artes visuales isleñas del siglo XX. •

Dennys Matos es crítico de arte y curador independiente. Reside y trabaja entre Madrid y Miami.

“El grito silencioso: voces en la abstracción en Cuba (1950-2013), ArtSpace Virginia Miller Gallery. 169 Madeira Avenue. Coral Gables, www.viriginiamiller.com. Hasta el 31 de marzo.

Read article here.

The Silent Shout: Voices in Cuban Abstraction 1950-2013

Visual Art Source
Editors’ Roundtable
by Richard Speer

“The Silent Shout: Voices in Cuban Abstraction 1950-2013,” installation view at ArtSpace Virginia Miller Galleries, Coral Gables, Florida.

Recently I took in an exhibition in Miami that documented an era when abstract art was thought so radical and dangerous that it incited censorship. “The Silent Shout: Voices in Cuban Abstraction 1950-2013″, currently at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, features paintings and sculpture by three generations of Cuban artists. The eldest of these, now in their 80s, were driven into underground art movements during the regime of Fidel Castro.

As the exhibition’s co-curator, Janet Batet, explained in a lecture about the show, there was a 34-year void from 1963 to 1997 when no exhibitions showcasing abstract work were officially sanctioned anywhere on the island nation. Abstraction, Batet holds, was deemed threatening by government arbiters, who instead were bent on promulgating figuration, narrative, “and the predominance of a sweetened, folkloric view of being Cuban.” Artists working in the veins of geometric abstraction and Abstract Expressionism, it was determined, “were turning their backs on Cuban reality: They were evasive, and furthermore, their art was elitist and favored imperialism.” These artists’ sentiments, essentially, were internationalist rather than nationalist. Disastrously, by silencing aesthetic innovation, Castro the revolutionary-cum-dictator promoted a conception of Cuba that was anything but revolutionary, indeed which was in fact reactionary. Indeed, the Havana of the late 1950s and early 60s was far from a sleepy, colonialist outpost of tiled roofs, colonnades, and fountain-dotted courtyards; it was a bustling modern city in which traditional influences mixed with Art Deco and modernist architecture. Thus, the leaders of a radical political movement wound up cutting off their potentially equally-radical artistic compatriots at their knees.

This shouldn’t surprise. Censors always wind up on the wrong side of history. The Nazis persecuted erstwhile Weimarian avant-gardes who’d dared create what Hitler’s minions termed entartete Kunst (“degenerate art”), yet that very work has become part of the modernist canon. Under Stalin, everything other than socialist realism was quashed — and what turned out to have the longer legs? As recently as the late 1980s in the United States, government, religious, and special-interest factions variously censored artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Sally Mann, and Jock Sturges. Chinese authorities continue to tamp down artistic expression, most infamously in the recent case of Ai Weiwei. And last June, the Russian Ministry of Culture shut down Vasily Slonov’s darkly satirical exhibit “Welcome Sochi! 2014,” at the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art, and fired the show’s curator. But in today’s paradigm of instantaneous global communication, the flow of information cannot be controlled.

Meanwhile, even as explicitly political work continues to draw fire, we in the West seem to have finally gotten over our longstanding preoccupation with prosecuting “obscenity” and have become inured to what was once thought transgressive. This is thanks largely to artists such as Paul McCarthy, who not only found the line where intrigue ends and shock value begins, but have taken that line and, to invoke John Donne, have trampled it “like gold to airy thinness beat.” The idea of the art object as dangerous simply because it is non-representational seems quaint and unthinkable today. No contemporary artist with a straight face would dare suggest anything so preposterous as Piet Mondrian did in his Natural Reality and Abstract Reality: that his ideal of a “purely equilibrated relationship” between horizontal and vertical, if absorbed by the culture-at-large, would result in no less than “a new stage of the human life-force: the new man, a combination of worker, bourgeois, and aristocrat.” Those were fighting words when Mondrian’s treatise was published in 1919, just two years after the Bolshevik Revolution and one year after the armistice that ended the Great War.

After the bloom of De Stijl faded — and later, after Abstract Expressionism gave way to “lyrical abstraction” and, in the eyes of many art historians, swan-dived into the pabulum-pit of decorative blandness — nonobjective painting found itself defanged. Today, a saunter through even the most insipid beach-town “decorator gallery” yields no shortage of hard-edged or gestural compositions, dutifully traversing the color wheel. The once-revolutionary has turned ho-hum. When an abstract painting makes headlines today, it’s because of how much cash it fetched at auction. A case study is Gerhard Richter’s “Abstraktes Bild (809-4),” which in 2012 sold at Sotheby’s for $34.2 million, a record sum for a painting by a living artist. And so we have traveled from an era when abstract works threatened the ruling classes to one in which they have become the trophies of the super-rich. The only way to restore the sexily sinister edge abstraction once embodied would be a tactic no one would wish for: to suppress it once again.

See article here.

Leslie Lew: American Memories
ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries – Miami
By Margery Gordon
ARTPulse
(May 3 – October 25, 2013)

Entering Virginia Miller’s survey of Leslie Lew’s paintings is like traveling back to a simpler time to reunite with childhood companions. These are not just personal memories, but universal icons that have illustrated American life for decades and evoke nostalgia in mature audiences while sparking recognition in younger viewers.

Colorful characters burst from the walls with an infectious exuberance. The superhero trinity of Batman, Spiderman and Superman swoop in to rescue us from the banality of their big-screen counter-parts, reminding us why they continue to be reincarnated for each successive generation, yet lose a little luster in the slick technological translation. “I’m not painting Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, but the original comic book character,” Lew points out.

The stars of classic Sunday funnies also contrast with today’s Saturday morning cartoons primed for product placement. Mickey and Minnie swoon; Nancy and Sluggo banter playfully; Blondie nags Dagwood. “A lot of these cartoons are really disappearing,” says Lew. “My art is all about grabbing stuff from pop culture history.” Some of the comic book covers animate vintage editions, while others are her invented variations on common themes, like the pulp fiction “Dear Abby Romance” entitled My Personal Problem, in which a tearful woman’s thought bubble reveals the relatable refrain, “Everybody has a love story except me!”

Leslie Lew, Personal Problems–Dear Abby, 2012, sculpted oil on canvas, 20” x 16”. Courtesy of ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries.

What distinguishes Lew from other artists who use vernacular imagery is her raised paint application, an original technique she coined “sculpted oil,” a fitting description for the dramatic relief she creates by building up and carving into layers of oil paint. The exaggeratedly embossed effect has a tactile quality that gives high definition a hand- wrought twist hard to capture in one-dimensional reproductions.

Lew’s subject matter and vibrant palette share the pop preoccupations of her compatriots in the 1980s East Village art scene, where her friend Jean-Michel Basquiat introduced her to Andy Warhol, who negotiated to trade work but died before the exchange could take place. Her spirited aesthetic also reflects her studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago under Ray Yoshida, who had previously taught members of the city’s Hairy Who, a 1960s exhibiting group with a similarly cartoonish style and playful sensibility.

But her earliest influence was the branding imagery of her father, a well-known advertising director who designed the campaigns for Kellogg’s cereal that she pays tribute to with her Snack Pack of Sugar Smacks, Rice Krispies and Frosted Flakes. He also introduced her to Norman Rockwell, whose sentimental celebration of Americana still resonates with Lew. The sincere tone of her homages resists the cynicism and irony of much appropriation for a cultural commentary without the consumer critique.

She reprises some of her inspirations – like the Barnum’s Animals cracker boxes that she periodically paints and recently replicated in wood, enlarged to 16 x 12 inches complete with the fine print and packaging details on all sides and the trademark string initially attached to hang from Christmas trees. The pigment is thicker on the newer canvases, the grooves deepening with her skill and maturity, yet she retains a youthful verve at age 60 that still infuses her compositions with a bubbly optimism that makes it hard to resist smiling in their presence.

Margery Gordon is a freelance arts journalist and regular contributor to ARTnews, Art+Auction, ArtInfo.com and the official Art Basel Miami Beach Magazine, among other publications. She is a professor at Barry University in Miami.

by Janet Batet
Especial / El Nuevo Herald

La primera reacción que provocan las pinturas de Leslie Lew es la misma tentación que experimentan los niños frente a una torta de cumpleaños: quieres, subrepticiamente, meterle el dedo y arrasar con el merengue en un santiamén, mientras los demás están entretenidos en el jolgorio de la fiesta.

Y sí, no creo que haya mejor calificativo: la pintura de Lew es un cake.

Leslie Lew, Wonder Woman Making a Splash, Sculpted Oil on Canvas, 60 x 36 inches, 2012

Los gruesos empastes que como merengue van dibujando temas afines con la alegría de la infancia se sobreponen a una prominente capa de acrílico blanco mezclado con titanio que sirve de base a la obra. A técnica tan singular, la artista la ha bautizado como “sculpted oil”. El resultado son suculentos alto-relieves cargados de colores vivísimos y un manejo del detalle que es tratado sin jerarquías –lo cual es reafirmado por el uso de la perspectiva plana compulsando constantemente nuestra mirada excitada que saltar de un confín al otro del cuadro.

Desde el punto de vista temático, la obra de Leslie Lew (Nueva York, 1953) es un pasaje de regreso a la infancia. Inspirada en la distintiva iconografía del mass culture americano entre 1930 y 1970, Lew se apropia de personajes de Walt Disney, DC Comics, cajas de cereal de Kellogg, las archiconocidas Animal Crackers, supermercados, parques de diversiones, entre otros, para deleitarnos con mundo fantasioso a medio camino entre nostalgia e idilio. En enrevesado pastiche, coexisten en la galería superhéroes como Superman, Superwoman, Spiderman, Dick Tracy, el gato Félix, Blondie, Popeye, la pequeña Lulú y Barney Google, entre otros.

Lew, la mayor de cuatro hermanas, creció entre Nueva Jersey y Chicago. Su padre, Les Hopkins, famoso artista de Chicago que devino el ejecutivo de publicidad de la compañía J. Walter Thompson y fue responsable de muchas de las campañas de publicidad bajo las que creció la generación de los baby boomers como son los casos de Sugar Smacks, Alka Seltzer, Smackin’ Brothers y The Marlboro Man.

“Estoy atrapando recuerdos”, explica Lew. “Algunos de ellos están empezando a desaparecer”.

American Memories es el título de la muestra personal de Leslie Lew, abierta ahora al público en ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Art Galleries, en Coral Gables. La exposición que comprende una vasta selección de obras de la trayectoria de Lew es una oportunidad para acercarnos al universo de esta conocida artista del neo-pop y, a través de su obra, a la revalorización de toda esa época de oro de la cultura americana.

Lew reconoce tres influencias mayores en su obra: Andy Warhol, Peter Max y Norman Rockwell. La influencia del primero puede ser fácilmente retrasada desde las famosas Cajas de Brillo de Warhol a las cajas de cereal de Lew. Sin embargo, la motivación que subyace en estas apropiaciones es enteramente diferente. Para Lew no hay crítica sino nostalgia. No hay tampoco una intención de confrontación entre alta y baja cultura, sino todo lo contrario. En este sentido, es que la artista se siente afín a la figura de Peter Max, ícono por excelencia de los “Comic Sixties” , como se refería el mismo Max al peculiarísimo mundo de coloridas imágenes psicodélicas creado por él y que marcó toda una década. La conexión con Norman Rockwell está dada por el sustrato optimista y edulcorado con el que ambos retratan escenas típicas del estilo de vida americano.

Sin embargo, si en el universo retratado por Rockwell todavía domina el humano y la familia como centro de la propuesta, en el universo de Lew, el elemento humano ha sido sustituido por la imagen publicitaria y el mundo del supermercado. No es casual. Entre 1930 y 1950, conjuntamente con el crecimiento de medios como la radio, el cine y, más tarde, la televisión, el mundo de la publicidad generó un apetito nunca antes visto por el consumo de marcas de productos que devienen necesidad impostergable en todo hogar norteamericano. Durante estas décadas, las tiendas de víveres americanas comienzan a experimentar un giro fundamental: asistimos al nacimiento del “supermarket” y los “supercenters”. Como consecuencia, las tiendas crecen de 5 a 10 veces su tamaño, pasan del servicio al auto-servicio y aparece el “shopping cart” que junto al refrigerador cambiará los hábitos de consumos nacionales.

Leslie Lew, Sugar Smacks, Sculpted Oil on Canvas, 48 x 36 inches, 2007

Las obras de Rockwell parecen intemporales. Justo porque lo que importa es el tiempo y el intercambio social, ya sea en torno a la mesa familiar durante la cena hecha en casa, el viaje de vacaciones o la pesca. Sin embargo, en el universo de Lew, el protagonista ha cambiado. No asistimos a la familia en torno a la cena, sino al producto en sí, suficiente, el cual, por demás, es sólo perceptible a través de su envoltorio: relamidas cajas de atractivos colores que nos prometen la satisfacción instantánea.

Y es que hay algo de agridulce detrás de la apologética nostalgia por estos suculentos cakes que a la vista nos hacen la boca agua, al tacto nos decepcionan y, por sobre todo, nos hacen reflexionar dos veces antes de abrir la próxima caja de cereales.•

Janet Batet es escritora, curadora y crítica de arte. Escribe de arte para diferentes publicaciones, galerías y museos.

‘American Memories’, en ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Art Galleries, 169 Madeira Ave, Coral Gables, Fl, 33134. www.virginiamiller.com

Published by Key Biscayne Magazine – May 2013 P32

Key Biscayne Magazine

With Coral Gables Gallery Night, gallery owner Virginia Miller helps get people out of the house and into some of the city’s hottest art spaces.

Love art? Then head to Coral Gables on the first Friday of every month for the city’s Gallery Night. During this regular free event, Coral Gables’ galleries open their doors for art lovers walking or taking a free trolley as they explore, meet new and old friends, and get stimulated by new and exciting artwork. The event is the brainchild of Virginia Miller, owner of the ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, who saw it as a chance to give Coral Gables nightlife a boost and celebrate the area’s thriving art scene. It’s also a great opportunity to make new connections. In fact, Miller knows of at least 3 couples who had their first meetings in her gallery. “The human imagination is limitless, and contemporary art offers us a wonderful opportunity to expand the horizons of our creativity,”
she says; 169 Madeira Ave., Coral Gables; 305.444.4493; VirginiaMiller.com.

Casper Brindle, Stratum 10, Acrylic, Wood, Resin, 29 x 49 x 2.5 inches, 2010, CBR5

ArtPulse Reviews
California Dreamin’ in Miami
By Elisa Turner

The exhibit “IMPACT: Emotions of Color” at ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries in Coral Gables does indeed pack a stunning, colorful impression. Expertly hung and lit, with plenty of room for the 32 paintings by five artists to breathe so that viewers are not bombarded with a surfeit of visual stimuli, it presents the California infused work of Lisa Bartleson, Casper Brindle, Ned Evans, Andy Moses and Suzan Woodruff.

These artists are clearly heir to the ground-breaking accomplishments of California artists showcased in the much discussed recent series of exhibitions collectively titled “Pacific Standard Time: Art in Los Angeles 1945-1980.” This was a major collaboration of more than 60 cultural institutions throughout Southern California. Together, they told the story of how the Los Angeles art scene came of age, eventually to pack its own sizable impression on the art world. These exhibitions took place from October 2011 to April 2012 and were initiated by the Getty Foundation and Getty Research Institute, with programs totaling more than $11 million.

So yes, we all know now, even if we did not quite get it before, that numerous California artists have made history, including those whose names we might not have encountered in standard art books. Veteran Coral Gables dealer Virginia Miller has brought to South Florida a savory taste of the Getty initiated West Coast art extravaganza by presenting work by artists too young to be part of “Pacific Standard Time.”

And what a taste this is. You can practically taste and smell the salt in the air, bask in golden sunlight morphing into lavender sunsets, hear waves pounding, see the excellent cresting surf that has seduced at least two generations of surfer artists in Southern California. Dazzling paintings by Andy Moses, which evoke swirling ocean currents glinting with light, particularly exemplify this link between being born to surf and born to make art. Real California guys, it would seem, can do both with dashing savoir faire, thank you very much.

Born in Los Angeles in 1962, Moses grew up surfing in places such as Santa Monica and Malibu while also hanging out in the artcentric milieu of his father, Ed Moses, now celebrated as one of the pioneering California artists of the postwar generation along with Larry Bell, Billy Al Bengston, Robert Irwin, James Turrell and Ed Ruscha.

Many artists active in that time and place are grouped in the “Finish Fetish” and “Light and Space” movements unique to Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s. These movements helped put Los Angeles on the map in the art world, recasting Pop Art and Minimalism with an L.A. love for gleaming cars and motorcycles, impeccably crafted surfboards, and Hollywood’s dream-and-fantasy factory. While manifested in different ways in the work of various artists, generally these movements cultivated a focus on immaculately produced surfaces and conceptual works exploring the process of visual perception. Art of this time and place also reflected a rebellious defiance of Southern California’s military industrial complex. Additionally, a sense of California’s brilliant and quicksilver light suffused many of these artworks, as it does today in the “IMPACT” show at Art Space Virginia Miller Galleries, so clearly in synch with the Los Angeles aesthetic.

Consider, for example, Morphology 601 (2012) by Moses. It’s a riveting abstraction that brings to mind swirling ocean currents as well as a dusky cloudscape blurring gracefully into twilight, yet all the while it is clearly an immaculately smooth surface shimmering with subtle gradations of color. His Akaringa (2009), also in this exhibit, demonstrates the delicious optical illusion of physically shifting color, which he creates by ingeniously working with a concave canvas.

The luminous interchange of light and color also fascinates Suzan Woodruff, although her approach to abstraction yields a greater sense of depth than found in works by Moses. Her paintings, never betraying the expressionist messiness of brushstrokes, often give viewers the bizarre illusion that they are looking through vaporous clouds or gazing down through deepening “layers” of water in the ocean, in which the color of the water becomes darker the further it is from sunlight above sea level. Her Water Dreams (2007) evokes a compelling confluence of light, air and water. At the top of the painting, there are pale silvery green patches, catching the eye with their luxurious opalescence. These contrast with the deeper shades of blue, evoking ocean depths or indigo twilights, converging near the lower portions of the painting.

Casper Brindle, Lisa Bartleson, and Ned Evans convey a keen, if not obsessive, sense of craftsmanship in their richly colored abstractions. This craftsmanship is clearly in line with the “Finish Fetish” aesthetic of earlier California artists, yet these later artists make this sensibility their own. In Stratum 4 (2010), Brindle achieves the impressive trick of making a gleaming rectangle of saturated yellow appear both resolutely flat and somehow evocative of indeterminate depth, as if one could gaze into the mysterious recesses of golden sunlight bathing the concrete wall of a nondescript apartment building or an unearthly calm ocean at midday. A simple maple strip of wood cleanly divides this painting in half, suggesting the horizon line separating sea and sky, a horizon line ever visible to coastal dwellers enamored with sun and surf.

Lisa Bartleson, Sphere XVI, Mixed Media and Resin on Panel, 48 x 48 x 3 inches, 2011, BAR4

Bartleson’s works of mixed media and resin on panel are created with innumerable tiny rectangles of plastic positioned to form expanding concentric circles in subtle gradations of color. These rectangles form a roseate shape at the center of her work. Some suggest misty aureoles of light surrounding the moon on a cloudy night or mandalas. Scale XXXX Sphere X (2011), with silvery gray shapes blending into subtle shades of violet and blue, may even bring to mind the overwhelming spirituality conveyed by “The Rose,” a massively legendary work composed mainly of one ton of white and gray paint by San Francisco Beat painter Jay DeFeo, obsessively created during the years 1959 to 1966.

Surely the “Senior Surfer” in this bunch, Evans moved to Venice, California, in the early 1960s and fell in thrall to the area’s twin siren calls to surf and make art. He not only surfed throughout Baja California but worked with abstract painter Billy Al Bengston, whose legacy was one of many recognized by the recent spate of exhibits in “Pacific Standard Time.” At Virginia Miller are numerous examples of Evans’ gently geometric abstract paintings, perhaps recalling vertical shafts of light as they intersect and pierce mammoth cresting waves or forested mountains of the Golden State. The paintings can, at times, seem as if the artist has overworked a familiar composition. Particularly interesting in this selection is the most recent painting on panel with the intriguing shape of an elongated oval. This is Otto (2010). (Three other smaller paintings on panel from 2010
are circular-shaped.) A dynamic variation on earlier work in this exhibit, it thickly but oh-so-gracefully layers muscular striations in fleshy shades of red and orange, almost like a cross-section of sinewy muscles needed to power through both waves and paint.

A gallery exhibit showcasing California imports in the Greater Miami area inevitably leads to this question: Why don’t art venues here collaborate to tell the story of the expanding Miami art scene? Such a collaboration in Miami, says Bill DuPriest of ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, “is a logical extension of what this is all about.” Given the presence in Miami of the Knight Foundation, a major national foundation with increasing interest in the arts, it would seem that perhaps such a concept is indeed possible and could attract other significant funders. Surely no one can expect the journalism focused Knight Foundation to do all the heavy lifting that the Getty Foundation and the Getty Research Institute were recently able to accomplish with “Pacific Standard Time.”

Then again, Miami may not be quite ready or mature enough for such a bold, collaborative move. It is no doubt typical of southern California’s mighty cultural resources that the superb show “Transcultural Pilgrim: Three Decades of Work by José Bedia” at the Miami Art Museum was organized by the Fowler Museum at UCLA. This outstanding exhibit, highlighting perhaps Miami’s best known artist, runs from May 24 through September 2, 2012, at MAM, which is set to reopen in the fall of 2013 in downtown Miami’s Museum Park as the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

When the name and location of the city’s central art museum are still evolving, it looks as though the chance to make history will have to wait.
(March 2 – July 31, 2012)

Elisa Turner teaches at Miami Dade College and is Miami correspondent for ARTnews. She has written for Arte Al Día, Art+Auction, ArtReview and The Miami Herald.

By Margery Gordon
Posted on Art Districts

Jose Angel Vincench’s first solo show in the United States is a contradiction in terms-literally. Beneath a surface concern with the semantics of dissent, the paintings and sculptures installed at ArtSpace Virginia Miller Galleries defy simple definitions. Outlining charged epithets atop abstract compositions, he creates canvases that are at once bold and ethereal, direct and elusive.

Jose Angel Vincench, Dissident (Serbia): Compromise or Fiction of the Painting Series, 2009-2010, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 48” All images are courtesy of ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries, Coral Gables (Miami), Florida.
A series of large square paintings, executed between 2009 and 2010 but never before exhibited, is subtitled Compromiso o Ficcion de la Pintura-which translates as “Commitment or Fiction of the Painting”-questioning the intentions and perceptions of an intermittently offensive and defensive posture. By transcribing the dictionary entries for “dissident” in 15 different dialects, the Havana-based artist raises doubts about whether any culture truly comprehends what that classification signifies or labels transgressors fairly. Whether the word is wielded as a weapon or a curse, ascribed or claimed with fear or with pride, its ramifications can be all too real.

With this multilingual approach, Vincench, who has been exhibiting his work throughout the Caribbean, South America and Europe for two decades, expands the debate about dissent from its damning implications in his home country to encompass the latest wave of protests sweeping the globe. From the ongoing agitation of the Occupy movement to the transformative violence of the Arab Spring, the political permutations span a continuum, from peaceful resistance to deadly confrontation.

Militant connotations coexist with more benign meanings, such as the secondary English synonym of “nonconformist,” which could apply to a wider range of misfits who rebel against expectations and skirt societal norms, including some who find acceptance in the art world. Expressions of individuality aren’t often well-received, not just by Communist regimes that demand uniformity, but even in a country like the United States that, at least nominally, elevates personal determinism to a national ideal.

6 “Vincench vs Vincench: A Dissident Dialogue from Cuba”, Installation view: Exile, 2011, Kraft Paper and Twine, 17” x 60” / Destierro, 2011, Kraft Paper and Twine, 19 ½” x 100” x 5 ½” / Reconciliation Tree, 2011, Incised Cedar and Steel, 50 ½” x 38 3/8” x 38 5/8”
While challenging authority takes courage, defining one’s identity by what one denounces can be just another constraint. Vincench limns this negative space by placing letters upon a base of abstraction, applying a white wash, and then removing the capitals so that only their contours remain uncovered. A sort of stencil in reverse, this process of imposing linear order on chaotic foundations, yet exposing an irrepressible interior, becomes itself a revealing metaphor. Tantalizing traces of the original colors often peer through the pure topcoat, rendering the terminology transparent and encouraging viewers to visually and conceptually see through such stereotypes. The ghostly echoes could evoke a lingering resilience, an inherited heroism or a tentative détente.

This precarious balance also applies to formal considerations. Although tethered to a denotative context, the arrangements of letters take on the quality of concrete poetry. The partially obscured preliminary paintings are exquisitely executed in an impressive range of abstract expressionist styles that include: vigorous, broad swaths of bright hues in the Serbian tongue; vibrant rivulets running through the smaller Swedish type; and dreamy marbling of the paler Polish pattern. Jackson Pollock-esque delicate trails appear appropriately calligraphic for the Chinese characters, while a denser spattering of splotchy droplets somehow seems better suited to the French flair. The Cyrillic alphabet is a stark exception in the trademark Russian solid red, a shade that also stands out among the crosshatched brushstrokes of a complementary canvas in Spanish hanging alongside.

Destierro, 2011, Cuban flag as canvas shopping bags shaped into letters of D. E. S. T. I. E. R. R. O., 19 ½” x 100” x 5 ½”, Ed. 5, and a painting of the installation.
The same Spanish message is shrunk to diminutive dimensions and draped in black paint, befitting the series title Cuba y La Noche. The name is inspired by a line from revolutionary poet José Martí, the quintessential dissident and iconic exile of 19th-century Cuba: “Two fatherlands I have, Cuba and the night.” The dark overtones impart a mysterious aura to 100 unique variations arranged in a tight grid.

That constellation of disidentes contrasts with another grouping of 20 slightly larger explorations of “exilio” stamped out of white paint. A neutral English definition-”somebody living outside own country”-alternates with a Spanish list that references expatriation, deportation and banishment. The latter, which takes the form of “destierro,” raises the harshest associations with enforced removal to a distant, solitary place-a reminder that donning the mantle of the exile can signal acceptance of an eternal curse.

Both exile and destierro are spelled out in petite paper shopping bags custom-fabricated to form block letters. The fragile capitals hang below harsh spotlights that cast long shadows like haunting memories. These are among several editions, molded last year in different materials, which allude to the rule that restricted emigrants to taking only one bag with them when leaving Cuba. In an ironic gesture toward exporting patriotism, Vincench had a set of canvas tote bags printed with blue-and-white stripes extending from the white star set in a red triangle on the initials E and D to bear allegiance to the Cuban flag.

Dissident (English): Compromise or Fiction of the Painting Series, 2009-2010, acrylic on canvas, 48” x 48”
Black Cordura nylon, most commonly used in luggage, is stitched into five carry-ons that, together, dispatch “exile,” but separately, cease to make sense. The tough fabric is also tailored into a duffel shaped like Cuba’s natural borders, complete with cylindrical companion case to represent the offshore territory Isle of Youth. Another clever version in clear plastic is packed with Cuban soil, a wistful memento of lost ground. This earthy token is but a futile attempt to stay connected to one’s origins after release into the Cuban diaspora.

Despite the sardonic tone that dominates Vincench’s internal dialogue, he does sound a hopeful note with a submission to Florida International University’s 25th-annual Festival of the Trees in Coral Gables. Displayed in the gallery, the artist’s seasonal Reconciliation Tree comprises a star-tipped pyramid of cedar bars inscribed on either side with the Spanish and English definitions of reconciliation. Fanning out from a central spoke like directional arrows on a signpost, this tree is a testament to the holiday spirit of fraternal forgiveness, suggesting the possibility of forging new pathways toward future unity.

Andy Moses, Departure at Dawn, 20 x 30 inches, 2007, Acrylic on Concave Canvas

By Margery Gordon
Published in ARTnews

The quintet of abstract painters sharing this space use distinct techniques that complement one another’s work and ultimately amplify the impact of each individually.

The compositions of Andy Moses and Linda Touby share a motif of horizontal bands of color. Touby’s thick swaths of primary and earthy hues come together in rough edges that reveal distressed layers. This ongoing series, titled “Homage to Giotto,” evokes the texture of eroding frescoes. In contrast, Moses (son of Los Angeles painter Ed Moses) applies aerospace paints in thin strokes to create subtle gradations of color that achieve a shade-shifting effect, especially on the concave surfaces of Departure at Dawn (2007) and Nocturne Latitude 20 30 03 (2008).

While those works hint at aeronautical views, this subject is treated more literally in the fluorescent-tinged paintings of Florian Depenthal, a German glider pilot. Some of his paintings’ vertiginous angles and mysterious forms are inspired by his airborne perspectives of the earth’s planes and by everyday shapes distorted by distance. His recent bright canvases give way to the dark, moody 1995 gem Fellow Conspirator, which is tucked into a back corner to allow for solitary contemplation.

Michelle Concepción paints mysterious dreamscapes resembling blood platelets enlarged under a microscope. A video documents how she delicately drips semitranslucent acrylic pigments onto canvas, letting the biomorphic blobs change color as they drift across one another in ever more layers. This engagement with the accidental contrasts with Aaron Karp’s optical illusions, exuberant works featuring celestial shapes overlaid with painted screens that look like raised rectangles. The resulting wavy grids make the saucers and stars in Cuchara Dancer (2004) and Dry Smokey (2004) appear three-dimensional.

This smartly curated show lets each artist shine individually while highlighting the subtle connections linking their diverse styles.