University Of Miami Wynwood Project Space Presents Ralph Provisero “Trinacria”
January 8, 2011
2200A NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL

The Department of Art and Art History, in the College of Arts and Sciences at UM presents a solo exhibition by Ralph Provisero on view beginning January 8, 2011. The exhibition features three large scale works with drawings and models. The project space is located at 2200A NW 2nd Avenue, Miami, FL.

Using the patches in damaged welding curtains from the school as drawings, Provisero references time and memory, reality and the past. Distilled from these concepts are the models and large scale works in the exhibit. They represent the formal counterpart, the spatial experience, the present. Together these nine works unify as an installation of concept and form.

Provisero has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally at such venues as the Martin Z. Margulies Collection, the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Ateneo de Yucatan, the Bass Museum, and Chicago’s Navy Pier. Part of the Lowe Art Museum’s permanent collection, Provisero’s large-scale work Pietra Veloce, resides on the UM campus.
For more information regarding the artist: www.provisero.com. A full schedule of exhibitions can be viewed at www.as.miami.edu/art . For more information about the exhibition or Wynwood Project Space, call (305) 284-2543 or email m.cardoso1@miami.edu .

The University of Miami’s mission is to educate and nurture students, to create knowledge, and to provide service to our community and beyond. Committed to excellence and proud of our diversity of our University family, we strive to develop future leaders of our nation and the world. www.miami.edu.

This Time in America: Part I
Wynwood Gallery Night Saturday, Dec 11th 7:30–11pm
2531 NW 2nd Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Curators Giselle DeVera and Brenda Ann Kenneally
Juliana Beasley
Nina Berman
Sean Hemmerle
Tim Hetherington
Brenda Ann Kenneally
Gillian Laub
Randal Levenson
Emily Schiffer
December 2 – January 15

Gallery I/D is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, This Time in America: Part 1. The two-part series, co-curated by renowned photographer Brenda Ann Kenneally, highlights photographers who have turned their lenses on America. Part 1, which runs concurrently with Art Basel from December 2nd to January 15th, features award-winning photographers and photojournalists who captured diverse segments of American society. What they saw – a New York community of impoverished social outcasts, cowboys and urbanites, segregation alive and well in America, U.S. soldiers in slumber between wartime activities, the colorful frenzy of stock market charts and more – remind us not only of the unique nature of America, but of our fluctuating and transformative place in the civilized world.

Juliana Beasley’s The Last Stop: Rockaway Park is a series of photos taken over a four-year period in an area of Queens, New York named Rockaway Park. The last stop on the subway’s A train, Rockaway Park is home to lonely elderly people and folks on the verge of homelessness – a community living on the edge. Beasley has spent time with her subjects in the bars, diners and bedrooms of these troubled individuals. The effects of the proverbial hard life of confinement, years spent as barflies, and countless hours lived inside their heads are apparent in the lines on their faces, jagged teeth, and dire surroundings. Lapdancer, published in 2003, takes a look inside the world of professional nude dancing, which Beasley documented for eight years. Sete 10, her most recent photo essay is the product of a month long residency in the south of France. Beasley began her career as a printer for Annie Leibovitz. She was a nominee for the International Center for Photography Infinity Award and she was recently awarded an Aaron Siskind Fellowship Award.

Some photos in Nina Berman’s Hedge look like abstract jumbles of casino slot machines or ornate Japanese food packages at first glance. They are actually graphs and charts from desktop screens at a New York investment firm. One photograph is shot from the rear of a fund manager’s desk. You see a mirror-like image; four monitors that look like two. Dead center between them, a human eye peers out, a glaring reminder that there is no technology, no hedging, no losses or gains, without man himself. Berman is a documentary photographer with a primary interest in the American political and social landscape. She is the author of two monographs Purple Hearts – Back from Iraq and Homeland, both dealing with war and militarism. Berman’s work has been recognized with awards in art and journalism by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the World Press Photo Foundation and the Open Society Institute Documentary Fund. Her work has most recently been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art 2010 Biennial and the 2010 Milano Triennale.

Photographer Sean Hemmerle, best known for his award-winning photos of post-industrial American wastelands, political hot-buttons like the U.S./Mexican border, and scenes from the 2002 sniper attacks in Washington, gives us Some Americans, his first foray into portrait photography. Hemmerle travels frequently for work and became curious about the power of the ordinary American. One photo, Cowboy, shows a well-dressed, pressed and confident-looking older cowboy type. He’s wearing a gold watch, a gold ring on each hand, and a white hat. His boots are clean and brown. In one shirt pocket he has a pen, in the other a cell phone (or maybe a pack of cigarettes). He looks like the new cowboys should look: proud, self-assured and in dark denim. This photo and others in Some Americans call to the mind the American can-do spirit and our strong sense of selves, no matter what situation we are in. Sean Hemmerle is a New York based photographer who bought his first camera with his signing bonus from the U.S. Army in 1988. He has been widely exhibited in places like the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, the Houston Museum of Fine Art and the Pingyao Photography Festival in Pingyao, China among others. His photography has graced the covers and pages of many publications, including TIME, Metropolis, WIRED, New York Magazine, The New York Times, and the Columbia Journalism Review.

Documentary photographer Tim Hetherington’s photos take us to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan where he spent time documenting the lives, combat and non-combat, of U.S. soldiers. The photo essay Sleeping Soldiers shows military men during sleep, a far cry from their battleground activities. One young soldier, Dockelso, sports a clearly visible tattoo of the word “combat.” His fetal position reminds you more of an infant than of a man trained in the art of war. Hetherington, a Vanity Fair contributor, spent 15 months in Afghanistan. His images, coupled with Sebastian Junger’s writing, were the basis of the documentary Restrepo, which showed war as the brutal but human-fueled entity that it is. Infidel, a book based on the duo’s experiences in Afghanistan, features Hetherington’s photos and was released in October. The Liverpool-born Hetherington is the recipient of numerous awards including a Fellowship from the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, a Hasselblad Foundation grant, four World Press Photo prizes including the World Press Photo of the Year 2007, the Rory Peck Award for Features, and an Alfred I. duPont award.

Brenda Ann Kenneally has for many years brought to light the situation of poverty in America. Her latest installation which is part the Upstate Girls project, America: Love it or Else, features two multimedia pieces that play simultaneously. Each features images that Kenneally has captured during an eight-year period in Troy, New York. Troy, once an epicenter of industrialization, has fallen on hard times. And so have its residents, which is evident in the photographs and videos seen in the show. Part 1: I Love America, focuses on the inherent idealism of love of country that transcends the challenges of being an American. We see an annual celebration of the birthday of Uncle Sam, a folk character said to be based on a real-life resident of Troy. But this is America, and through Kenneally’s lens we discover that the citizens of Troy may just need a celebration, whether Uncle Sam really existed or not. Part 2: I Love You shows us love as a day-to-day coping tool. For the women in the City of Troy, “…romance is the best medicine if only in small doses of unrealized fantasy.” Many images in the video are of the female heads of household that make up much of Troy’s population. We see them kissing their babies, kissing their baby-daddies, some kissing their girlfriends. As Kenneally puts it, “The feminization of poverty in America has been commercially legitimized and its emotional deficit filled at the Dollar Store.” Judging from these photographs, you cannot help but agree with Kenneally. Brenda Ann Kenneally is a documentarian and interdisciplinary artist living in Brooklyn. Her long-term projects are intimate portraits of social issues that intersect where the personal is political. Her book and web publication MONEY, POWER, RESPECT; Pictures of My Neighborhood received numerous awards: The W. Eugene Smith Award for Humanistic Photography, a Soros Criminal Justice Fellowship and The Mother Jones Award. In 2004, Kenneally began photographing in Upstate New York, where she was born. The ongoing project, Upstate Girls is a look at the lower working class America that, despite sweeping technological advances, remains unchanged since Kenneally herself was a child there. Brenda Ann Kenneally is the co-curator of Gallery I/D’s This Time in America.

Gillian Laub’s photo essay, Southern Rites, takes us to prom night in Georgia. There’s a “tradition” in certain Georgia high schools that dictates that there be segregated proms – one for white students, one for black students. For years the students have protested about the separate affairs, but their complaints were no match for the residual customs of the past. During the school year the graduates attend classes together, play on the same sports teams, and date each other. One image shows a sullen prom queen – the black prom queen. She wears a pink gown and a crown. Across her torso is a homemade-looking sash denoting her title. Her cell phone rests on her lap. We never see the white prom queen; Laub wasn’t allowed inside. The 2010 prom, held this past May, was the first-ever integrated prom at Montgomery County High School. Gillian Laub graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in comparative literature before studying photography at the International Center of Photography, New York. She was selected for the World Press Photo’s Joop Swart Masterclass in 2003 and was the winner of Nikon’s Storyteller Award for her work in the Middle East. With the support of the Jerome Foundation, Laub’s first monograph, Testimony, was published by Aperture in 2007 to critical acclaim.

Photographer Randal Levenson focused his lens on the people and places of Tennessee in American Tennessee Valley. Levenson’s photographs show rugged and unapologetic Americans in remote work sites, smoking cigarettes down to the filter, shooting squirrels, and living in dwellings most of us would consider unfit for human habitation. One look at George, with his indoor fire pit, companion dogs and strewn-about garbage makes you wonder if this is the America our forefathers envisioned. But it’s America today, like it or not. Levenson has been exhibited in many galleries and museums in the United States and Canada. A book of his work, done while following carnivals and sideshows, In Search of the Monkey Girl, was published by Aperture in 1982, with a text by Spalding Gray. A master printer, he has worked with artists such as Richard Avedon, Josef Karsh, and Robert Frank. Randal has taught photography at the University of Ottawa in Canada and has lectured widely, most recently at his alma mater, Brown University.

The black and white photos in Emily Schiffer’s award-winning portfolio Youth on the Cheyenne River Reservation depict the ethereal notion of play. Children in the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe were photographed hiding in gigantic rubber tires, jumping from tree limbs, practicing playground politics, and wading in ponds. They’re textured photographs that when seen up close invite you to almost touch them. In Blanket, you want to feel for yourself if the woolen throw in which the little girl rests is of the itchy kind. In 2005 Schiffer founded a photography program for these kids. That sense of closeness is evident in the way that although not shot up close, the photos embody a oneness, an understanding of their subjects. Schiffer was the recipient of a 2006-2007 Fulbright Fellowship in Photography, the 2009 Inge Morath Award, presented by Magnum Photos, and the Inge Morath Foundation, and was the 2010 winner of the PDN Photo Annual Personal Project Category.

Gallery I/D’s This Time in America: Part I opens on December 2nd and runs through January 15th, 2011. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, December 2nd. A closing reception will be held on Saturday, January 15th.

Dina Mitrani Gallery Exposures II
Wynwood Gallery Walk
Saturday, December 11, 7-10pm

November 13 – December 24, 2010
Mario Algaze
Pablo Cabado
Marina Font
Pompi Gutnisky
Roberto Huarcaya
Carlos Irijalba
Luis Lazo
Peggy Levison Nolan
Colleen Plumb
Alexandra Rowley
Kanako Sasaki
Guillermo Srodek-Hart

to view images of the exhibit
www.dinamitranigallery.com

Local Artist Miguel Paredes To Celebrate Art Basel Success During Wynwood Arts District’s 2nd Saturdays’ Art Walk
Saturday, December 11, 2010 from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Paredes Fine Arts Studio
2311 NW 2nd Ave. Miami, FL. 33127

Urban realist to host cocktail reception at Paredes Fine Art Gallery following a series of hit Art Basel exhibits and events

On the heels of a successful run during Art Basel Miami Beach 2010, local pop and multi-media artist, sculptor and urban realist Miguel Paredes will host a cocktail reception at Paredes Fine Art Gallery on Saturday, December 11, 2010 from 7:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. during the “2nd Saturdays Art Walk” in the Wynwood Arts District.

In celebration of Paredes’ hit exhibitions and events during the famed Art Basel festivities – including two at the Wynwood studio that attracted more than three thousand visitors in total – Saturday’s reception will offer guests the opportunity to view pieces Paredes debuted only a week ago, such as those from his popular Los Ninos, Boroughs and Pulgha & Birds series, a sculpture version of Miguel’s painting “In the Name of America” and his all-new series, Elements of an Artist. Also still available for viewing are works by Graffiti Artists SKI and 2ESAE of UR New York and celebrated pop/rock photographer Danny Clinch. In addition to mingling with Paredes in his post-Art Basel glow, guests will enjoy complimentary a signature cocktail, The Sapphire Dhiva, sponsored by Bombay Sapphire.

Paredes was born in New York and is of a Latin American descent. He is an artist who combines the exhilarating sense of New York City’s graffiti art with the skill and perceptiveness of a true exceptional artist. Growing up on 72nd Street in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Paredes exuded early signs of artistic ability and accepted an invitation to New York City’s prestigious Fiorello La Guardia High School of Music and Art – immortalized in the musical and movie Fame – in the early 1980s. His studies at Fiorello coincided with the explosion of street culture in the city. Paredes drew inspiration from notorious pop artists like Andy Warhol and Keith Haring and plunged into the world of graffiti and pop art taking the name “Mist” as his moniker.

Another influential figure in Paredes’ artistic career is his mentor Ronnie Cutrone. Cutrone was Andy Warhol’s immediate assistant at the Factory during the notorious pop artist’s most productive and prestigious years. To Paredes, his mentor’s paintings are the essence of pop: colorful, lively and highly accessible. Cutrone’s constant use of bright and fluorescent colors not only influenced Warhol’s return to such hues, but shaped Paredes’ color palette choices as well. Paredes’ piece “Ronnie is that you?” pays homage to Cutrone and features one of Paredes’ sons painted on a vintage Mickey Mouse bed cover. The child represents the artist looking for Ronnie.

In the late 80s, Paredes left New York to come to then burgeoning Miami Beach, FL. in search of new inspiration. He fell in love with the city and immediately submerged himself in its thriving art community. Almost 20 years later, Paredes remains a Miami resident and has established himself as a respected artist. In addition, he is owner and CEO of one of the most successful printing companies in the U.S., PK Graphics, and is happily married with three children which are his most current muses.

At Paredes Fine Arts Studio, the artist will also exhibit select pieces and sculptures from collections such as Los Niños, Urban Dreams and Pulgha & Birds.

With Los Niños Paredes has taken what he calls “the best masterpieces I have ever created in my life,” his children, and made them the subjects for his revealing drama about the timeless hopes of all parents and the resolutions needed to face the unknown battles of the future. The entire experience of these paintings is shockingly honest, risky and flies in the face of three decades of neo-Pop and post-modern ideas that no image is truer or deeper than the next.

In the artist’s Urban Dreams series, Paredes explores the parallel spectrums of color and tone and modifies the urban landscape, while combining photographic realism with the rich graphic elements of floating vines, flowers and leaves. Paredes animates New York’s brownstone crayons by darkening the darkest corners, layering one vanishing point across the other, squeezing streets and alleys into exaggerated vertical tunnels, and balancing brick, grit and white space into an ambiguous and deceptive surface.

Paredes’ Pulgha & Birds Digital Art Series showcases his most recent invention, Pulgha, and its colorful world of Birds, Geishas and puckish, child-like tricksters. Paredes’ admiration of Japanese anime is apparent in this collection, however, the artist’s imaginative hands re-create this specific language and re-enchant the original concerns – all through his Latin and urban sense of digital mysticism and narration. Pulgha means flea in Spanish, but there is nothing small or itchy about this rebellious character. Instead, Pulgha and Co. are creative emissaries, seeding innovation, luring younger generations of anonymous house-bound gamers and online exiles out into a public world of human interaction and community. Paredes donated one of his latest pieces “Pulgha World” and created a mural in the Wynwood Arts District near his new gallery.

Paredes Fine Arts Studio is located at 2311 NW 2nd Ave. Miami, FL. 33127. An additional holiday 2010 Pop-Up Gallery is located at 412 Lincoln Road. For more information, please visit www.miguelparedes.com.

Opening Night Reception: December 11th, 7-11pm
THE PANELISTS
Harold Golen Gallery
2294 North West 2nd Ave.
Miami, Fl. 33127

THE PANELISTS, is a group show featuring 16 artists who each created a continuing comic book story. Artists include KRK Ryden, Mitch O Connell (whose work has appeared in Newsweek and the New York Times as well as advertising campaigns for McDonalds and Rolling Stones), Anthony Ausgang (who recently designed the cover of MGMTs Congratulations record). Other artists showing work include Niagara, The Pizz, Spain, Mats?!, Mark George, Zoey Stevens, Luster Kaboom, Janelle Hessing, Rus Pope, Robin Footitt, Jon Haddock and Joshua Ellingson.