Reviews: 2014
Lamar Peterson Lances Racial Stereotypes
In Lamar Peterson’s series, Suburbia Sublime, he explores the African-American experience of race, community, upheaval and economic disparity. Through the use of vibrant colors and exaggerated characters, Peterson addresses African-American gullibility, masculinity, religion, family and human interaction. Inspired by simplistic illustrations that are routinely tacked on school bulletin boards or distributed in pamphlets at community events, Peterson creates irrational happy tableaus populated by hints of menacing social stereotypes from the...
read moreBack on Earth, a tragicomedy in two parts
Walking into the Emerson Dorsch gallery in Wynwood Miami, one is faced with two opposing worlds created by artists Brandon Opalka and Hugo Montoya. Brandon Opalka is a Virginia native who was raised in sunny South Florida. He is a self-taught artist who began his career with graffiti and street art . The Emerson Dorsch gallery describes his work as “assemblage and installation, from which emanate discrete sculptures and paintings.” Opalka has exhibited work in Miami, New York, Japan, and France. Hugo Montoya was born in Gainesville, Florida...
read moreCellist Charles Curtis at the New Music Miami Festival
On February 25th, 2015, I attended a new music solo cello recital by Charles Curtis at FIU’s Miami Beach Urban Studios (MBUS). Curtis is an amazing cellist and a contemporary music professor at the University of California San Diego. He performed four pieces: Glacier by Alvin Lucier, Occam V by Eliane Radigue, Rice and Beans for Charles Curtis by Alison Knowles, and Slices for Cello and Pre-Recorded Orchestra by Alvin Lucier. All of the pieces were unaggressive, relatively slow, and very relaxing to my ear. My favorite piece was Rice and...
read moreGeoffrey Farmer: Let’s Make the Water Turn Black
“Go inside it’s really cool in there.” I had been hesitating outside the wooden door to Let’s Make the Water Turn Black at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM). My head was already saturated with wall text and neon lights from the other exhibits; and to be quite frank, I was getting hungry. A woman holding a stroller silently moved her head from left to right, indicating that I should enter the installation by Geoffrey Farmer.[1] Disarrayed and intriguingly charming, a post-apocalyptic scene unfurled in front of me as I walked through the door....
read moreFormulating a Plot at PAMM
Adler Guerrier’s exhibition Formulating a Plot, at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), curated by Diana Nawi, combines pieces in various media that seem to be disconnected at first, but are organized in such a way that a coherent theme or story emerges when examining the artworks more closely. During a curator’s tour with Nawi, it was explained that there was a central theme that unites all of the artwork. The concept of the Baudelarian flâneur was demonstrated through each of Guerrier’s contemporary mediums and Nawi’s curatorial...
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