Artlab33 | Art Space » art exhibitions

Re/producing Complexity

Onajide Shabaka — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:50:04 +0000

“RE/PRODUCING COMPLEXITY”

Exhibition Dates: 11 June – 10 July, 2010

RE/PRODUCING COMPLEXITY at Artlab33 | Art Space features artists Raúl Perdomo and Liz Atzberger. Both artist’s paintings and drawings take a similar route to reach their goals in a field of rich textures and enveloped in swirls of color.

“Re/producing Complexity” refers to Complexity Theory and Chaos Theory, systems that are too complex to accurately predict their future, but nevertheless exhibit underlying patterns that can help us cope in an increasingly complex world. Obviously, visual representations are not the same as working with mathematical computations. However, both artists continue a longstanding tradition of exploration and experimentation with abstract phenomena as the route to their ends.

Downloadable Press Release / Images – click to view

Raúl Perdomo
Casualty
Watercolor, gouache, ink, acrylic and pencil on paper
30 x 22.5 in.

Raúl Perdomo
Vortises (detail)
Ink on paper
10 x 7 in.

Liz Atzberger
“Xo”
mixed media on d’arches paper
84 x 42 in.

Common Ground

Onajide Shabaka — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:34:33 +0000

“Common Ground”

Exhibition Dates: 13 – 30 March, 2010

Opening: 7 – 10:30 pm, Saturday 13 March

Our upcoming exhibition features drawing contrasting the relationships between figuration and abstraction.

“Encroaching” © 2010
Ink & Varnish on Board
16 x 20 inches
Toyin Odutola

The space that our artists inhabit, between figuration and abstraction, is in the associative realm between the conscious and unconscious mind. This space is enigma, a seductive entity, suggestive of childhood memories and fantasies where we once scrawled with broken crayons. It sometimes bordering on the violent, sometimes on the sublime. We imagine it to be a malleable, liquid material that can be bent and molded at will.

Exhibiting will be Christopher Skura, Toyin Odutola, Franklin Sinanan, David Rohn, and Onajide Shabaka.

Toyin Odutola drawings are new to Miami. She says, “I am a draftswoman who deals in portraiture. Working with rudimentary tools, I desperately try to create complex entities.” Toyin Odutola’s massively strong, yet graceful figures, lyrically haunt and preoccupy our thoughts. Although still very young, Ms. Odutola invokes historical references that follow her like ghosts. They may be creations out of her imagination, but they continually creep up and out into our world with force.

There is a chilling patience in the drawings of Christopher Skura that reminds us to take note of his work. His works appear as slices, as sections in a sequence of interlocking objects. While we may be able to become lost in the smallest of spaces, between two dots on a field of yellow, we know the elastic band of reality will prevent us from falling in and free falling into infinity. Christopher Skura’s complex worlds are both organic and manufactured in a similar way as architectural building blocks and frameworks. Skura’s drawing takes us to an alternate reality enveloped in a high key golden aura.

“Untitled” © 2008
graphite, ink, colored pencil on paper.
Christopher Skura

David Rohn steps away from his performative work to show a few drawings that are both instructive and sensitive. David Rohn’s drawings have a variety of characters in different situation and different dramatic circumstances. His drawings, as blueprints, form guidelines and a map to instructive platforms of activity. They continually try to balance and push us toward a kind of accuracy and precision that is more about us than them.

Franklin Sininan’s raw vision, filled to the edges with tribal mask forms, textures, figures, loads of color, and graffiti, are what make up his painting and drawing. His Caribbean background certainly is an influence on his imagery and motifs. This tribal, motif filled art has a sense of immediacy and agency that envelopes each work in the contemporary art making process. There is a riotous abundance of color and a tendency toward optical overload that infuses his work.

Gagged
Nupastel, carbon smoke on paper
36 x 24 in.
© Onajide Shabaka

Using a fully engage working process, Onajide Shabaka’s various drawings use somewhat violent techniques in their creation by burning, erasing, rubbing, and smoking his surfaces. Not only are their emotional content highly charged, they creative process in brought about through a fully charged engagement with both the subject and medium. The burning and smoking of the drawing, though not destroying the paper’s surface, it creates a texture that mutes and highlights the line drawings, both at the same time leaving it with a translucence and aura.

Proof: South Florida Printmakers

Onajide Shabaka — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:32:40 +0000

“Proof”

29 January to March 7, 2010

Opening Reception: Friday, 29 January, 2010 – 7:30 p.m.-to-10 p.m.

Gallery Walk Reception: Saturday, 13 February, 2010 – 7:30 p.m.-to-10:30 p.m.

Artists:

Kari Synder
Kathleen Hudspeth
Tom Virgin
Diane Arrieta
Jonathan Thomas
John Cutrone
Seth Thompson
Andrew Binder
Brian Reedy

“Proof”

“Proof” teams writers and artists to create editions of literary broadsides and artist’s prints. In some cases the artist responded to words provided by the writer; some writers produced new work after conversations with the artist; and still other pairs worked closely together to produce new collaborative works. This intersection of word, image and the process of creative dialogue are at the heart of “Proof.”

[Below: Preview Opening, 29 January, 2009]

Splash! – Closing Reception

Onajide Shabaka — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:16:32 +0000

Miami Art Exchange at Artlab33 Art Space

*Splash!* – International Exhibition

Closing reception: 9 Jan., 7-10:30 p.m.

2051 NW 2nd Av.
Miami, Florida 33127

Artists: Paul Aho (Florida), Mark Dixon (Canada), Till Könneker (Switzerland), TJ Norris (Oregon),
Bill Puzstai (Canada), Sara Stites (Florida), featuring painting, works-on-paper, and photography.

Special projects: Gary Moore (Florida), Onajide Shabaka (Florida)

Weekly Regular Hours: Tue.-Sat. 11-5 p.m.

Open Every Second Saturday’s Wynwood Art Walk – Sat., 12 Dec., 7 – 10:30 p.m.

2051 NW 2nd Avenue
Miami, Florida 33127

Splash! – International Exhibition

Onajide Shabaka — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 05:36:22 +0000

Miami Art Exchange at Artlab33 | Art Space

*Splash!* – International Exhibition

Vernissage – Opening: 3 Dec., 6-8 p.m.

2051 NW 2nd Av. Miami, Florida 33127

Exhibition Dates: 3 Dec., 2009 to 9 Jan., 2010

Artists: Paul Aho (Florida), Mark Dixon (Canada), Till Könneker (Switzerland), TJ Norris (Oregon), Bill Puzstai (Canada), Sara Stites (Florida), featuring painting, works-on-paper, and photography.

Special projects: Gary Moore (Florida), Onajide Shabaka (Florida)

*SPLASH!*: a sudden disturbance to the otherwise quiescent free surface of a liquid (usually water). The disturbance is typically caused by a solid object suddenly hitting the surface. Think of a splash from a water droplet, it rises into a beautiful crown of sparkling water that also envelopes us in a fluid cocoon of freshness and energy.

Paul Aho (Florida), Mark Dixon (Canada), TJ Norris (Oregon), and Sara Stites (Florida) are all exploring various abstract forms, from the man-made to those produced in nature. In each instance the artist has created a unique vision through personal creativity. Dixon and Norris have created richly patterned works-on-paper, while Aho and Stites have worked along similar paths on paintings. In all, they provide a highly unique selection from which to view.

Till Könneker (Switzerland) has a well-known practice of creating silhouette drawings, here done on hand-made Japanese paper. These delicate works are powerful in both imagery and presentation. He develops his work in an explorative and playful manner, always ready to trust chance.

Bill Pusztai’s (Canada) poetic photographs reveal his interpretation of the four muses. “Embodying the allusive muses, this quartet of classically composed nudes is a statement about statements, art about sex, soft-core porn about literature, and homage to one of the unsung heroes of culture and gender theory.” (Photographic images include nudity.)

Bill Pusztai
Four Allegories of Photography (for Northrop Frye) [series]
West: Erotesis, © 2008
photography
18 x 12 in.