LUMINOUS Exhibition

Stephanie Cunningham’s work embraces a variety of materials and themes and is unified by contemplative reflections on contemporary life. Each work is borne of a concept in search of form that can record both a personal and universal perspective. The use of text, layered symbolism, audience engagement, and multiples are often common visual themes. Her work has been exhibited widely and recognized by a number of awards and acquisitions. Cunningham received degrees in fine arts from the Kansas City Art Institute and the University of Notre Dame. She teaches in the FAU Department of Visual Arts and Art History-Broward.

Title: The Trinity, printed vinyl, inflated, 7’ diameter each

The Trinity suggests public surveillance through iconography and placement within the environment. The paranoia or comfort we feel about surveillance relates directly to who we believe is watching and for what purpose. This perception affects our behavior. The lens size on each is the same suggesting a unified force. The physical presence of the three balloons is imposing due to their large volume; the scale suggests authority. Yet, they are just balloons—something we usually associate with celebration and fun. The form and iconography raise the question of whether the watcher is protector or punisher or even present.

Michael Dillow is a visual artist born in Philadelphia, PA. He earned a BA in Film and Media Arts from Temple University (2010) and an MFA in Studio Art from Florida Atlantic University. (2019) Dillow’s lens-based work examines the notion of place, highlighting the complex relationship between state of mind and the experience of geographic location. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Currently, Dillow maintains a studio practice in South Florida, where he is a photography instructor in Florida Atlantic University’s Art Department.

Thank You

Video projection, black foil balloons, sand

8 minutes 37 seconds

2018

Thank You (2018) is a video installation that employs common balloons as a visual language to question the sentiments between absence, loss, and transition. The staggering forward motion, tracking spotlight, and overbearing darkness conjure narrative associations, while the work’s meditative pace invites introspection. This work is an homage to those who remain lost; who could never find their way back.

Jenna Efrein was raised in Brooklyn NY, Efrein has lived in many states, but has resided in Miami since 2014. Efrein is a full-time Senior Lecturer in the Art and Art History Department at the University of Miami in the glass and sculpture studios. She has participated at the Vermont Studio Residency and is a resident at Miami’s acclaimed Bakehouse Art Complex. Since moving to Miami, Efrein has contributed to numerous exhibitions, including solos at the University of Miami Gallery in Wynwood and the Mindy Solomon Gallery in Little Haiti. She has sold several sculptures into private collections. Additionally, she is a recipient of a Spring 2019 Miami-Dade County Artist Access grant.

Pedro Wazzan is a Venezuelan photographer, born on December 6, 1980. From a very young age he was exposed to the world of photography following in the footsteps of his mother Violeta Wazzan, who took photographs as a hobby. His photographic education was obtained at “Roberto Mata Photography School” in Caracas. He moved to Argentina where he specialized in commercial photography, fashion, photographic production and advanced flash lighting techniques. Wazzan has participated in numerous exhibitions and photography contests.

Today Wazzan resides in the city of Miami and is an artist at the Bakehouse Art Complex.

Casualty #53,662,337,346

Staged Photograph printed on Georgette Silk

Casualty #53,662,337,346  (Jenna Efrein in phone digit translation) is about how environmental and human devastation are reduced to numbered statistics as a means to dissolve and dehumanize the impact upon nature and society.

Katerina Friderici is a multifaceted artist born in Bogota, Colombia. Her work explores the concept of interconnectedness and the human attachment to the manufactured world. She is mostly known for her mixed media installations using discarded industrial materials and light which have been exhibited in the US and abroad. Previously a resident artist for 5 years at the Art Center of South Florida, now known as Oolite Arts. She has a minor in Communication studies, a BA in Industrial Design from Universidad Javeriana and a BA in Industrial Design from the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale. She currently works from her own studio in Miami.

Coexistence, Mixed media and LED, Size: 48”w x 8’h

Interconnected in a mutualistic symbiotic relationship, trees gather us together: they represent life as social mediators as they have evolved to live, communicate and cooperate in a collective intelligence. They are vital for humans and other life on earth, but when a species believes and acts as though it is dominant, harmony through the ecosystem fails.

Carolyn Henne’s work ranges from large, complex interactive installations to more straightforward, discrete objects that investigate the visceral and the sensual, reveling in the shapes and volumes that echo pressures from within.  Her practice includes a deep interest in the viewer’s role in completing her work.  With her low-tech elements, one quickly gets past figuring things out, leaving time to look and consider the work itself.  Low key interactive elements (like sitting or lying down) slow and extend viewer interaction and allow a time-released experience.  Henne is on the faculty of FSU Art. She is also the co-Director of Comma.

Catching My Drift

9 lamps, dura-lar, aluminum angle, steel cable, power strip tower

Catching My Drift is a low-tech animation employing nine lamps.  From lamp to lamp, images haphazardly move into each other as the viewer wills them into a fluid animation.  A meditation on the sensation of one’s hand surfing the wind driving down the highway, Catching My Drift is an invitation to slow down as the world moves by faster, more aggressively and chaotically.

Alette Simmons-Jiménez received a BFA from Newcomb College, New Orleans, Louisiana. Her studio practice began in the Dominican Republic where, in 1992, she received “1st Prize in Video” at the XVIII Biennial. She is renowned as the first woman exhibiting video-installation there.  After 17 years she relocated to live and work in Miami, Florida.  While exhibiting extensively internationally, the artist has presented twenty-eight solo shows. She has received a Knight Arts Grant, a Florida Fellowship, a Miami-Dade Community Arts Grant, and other awards.  An Upcoming solo show is scheduled for January 2022, at the Museum of Arts & Sciences in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Included work:

Suspended Spiral –  Audience Participatory Installation –  120″ x 144″ x 84″

Walk-In #88, Suspended Spiral

“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.” – Goethe ….

History, human behavior, and societal patterns anchor us to an inevitable cyclical existence.  My observation of small, exquisite objects, specimens of elegant design, found everywhere in nature, led me to focus on spirals.  I discovered there are all sorts of things turning, spinning, and spiraling upon themselves, from hurricanes, DNA, and flushing water, to labyrinths, solar systems, and seashells. Entering one of my “Walk-Ins” the viewer becomes my captive, part of the work, and enveloped in their own personal process of discovery.

Pretty Little Things –  DVD-Video Loop – TRT:  00:03:28 – Edition of 5

Pretty Little Things

Long ago, I played with my dolls and took liberties to alter their appearance – cutting or changing hair color, or performing operations on their plastic bodies. My brother and I once conspired to set Barbie’s head afire.This video is in honor of our schemes to humble these,  beyond perfect, role models.  Synthetic hair crinkles and curls in the heat, noses melt away, flames spark, and the burning heads become mesmerizing.  Watch as the cutie-pies change to beautiful kaleidoscopic patterns, colors, smoke, then ashes, leading to themes of circular time traveling from youth, to decay and rebirth.

Freddy Jouwayed is a multimedia artist and exhibition designer currently heading FJP Design. He previously served as Museum Designer for HistoryMiami. There, he was instrumental to an immersive multi sensory approach for presenting South Florida historical content evident in exhibitions such as “Hurricane Andrew – 25 Years Later” and the award-winning “Operation Pedro Pan, The Cuban Children’s Exodus”.

Jouwayed’s spacial considerations and fascination with light drive an artistic practice that centers on mesmeric settings for collaborative exchanges. These concerns are evident in the installations and performance rituals with the artist collective 3PQ, and more current collaborations with sound artist Gustavo Matamoros produced the sound installation LISTEN, and design of the Audiotheque 2.0, both at Oolite Arts. In 2019, Jouwayed’s multimedia installation works were exhibited at Cornell Art Museum, Palm Beach State College, NSU, and MDC’s Koubek Center.

Included work:

“Beyond the Frenzy” Site Specific Installation

Dimensions variable (approximately 15’ x 20’ x 10’)

Wood, Plexiglass, Dichroic Film, Chiffon, Digital Video, and Projectors. 2020

With Beyond the Frenzy, Jouwayed will explore the contemplative space between the bombardment of human intervention in juxtaposition to the universal patterns that exist beyond human time. Within the collective hipnosis fueled by the hypermedia and political motives of our time, the patterns of nature steadily signal to an order beyond human control. Jouwayed’s installation examines and contrasts the video motions captured from daily observations bringing these together to perhaps reveal a prevailing pattern to the viewer’s eye.

Encoded Objects is a collaboration between artists Jonathan Rockford and Michael Hadley that explores our connection to the environment through the lens of technology. Our investigations start with artifacts or recordings from the environment that then lead to abstractions where the invisible and the visible often swap roles. We combine our varied experiences by merging the physical and digital realms of artmaking into unique forms – from inflatable sculptures to projection mapped video installations.

Included Works:

Title: Endless Horizons

Single Channel Video Projection

Due east of South Florida, NOAA’s data buoy #41047 records hourly measurements of weather and water conditions while taking solitary panoramic photos of the Atlantic Ocean. These staccato snapshots of the buoy’s world seem so distant from our own landlocked lives, yet the two are intimately linked. Endless Horizons invites the viewer to step into 41047’s world and become circumscribed by fluctuating sea and sky. The history of 41047 plays back over the course of minutes, quietly questioning the notions of time, permanence & impermanence, and Florida’s precarious relationship with the ocean.

Christina Pettersson was born in Stockholm, Sweden and lives in Miami, Florida. She is known for her large scale drawings, videos, sculptural installations and group performances, through which she engages her community on the history and environment of her native South Florida.  She is the recipient of the Knight Grant, the Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship, and is a Fulbright Scholar, and has attended residencies such as Everglades National Park, Yaddo and Ucross. She is in the collections of the Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Bass Museum of Art, Margulies Collection and Sagamore Hotel, as well as nationally and internationally.

Included Works:

Video Title: I am my own circus, I am my own legend

Statement: We live in an age of diminishing returns. The great beasts are disappearing and nowhere is the world untouched or unmarred. I am reminded of an earlier era, when our separation from the natural world first became apparent. The era of the circus represents that moment in history when the natural world had diminished to the point that it could be introduced again as an exotic and foreign menagerie. A wild world unrelated to our own human existence. Florida was home to the greatest circuses in the world, at the height of its glory. Nowadays even that seems far away. In this video I circumvent the stage and return the circus to the wild. Now a solitary experience, even in it’s artifice it becomes real to me again.

Barron Sherer is a time-based media artist with a background in moving image archival practice. His work focuses on re-purposing orphaned and appropriated legacy media through formal experimentation. Recently, he received a 2020 Ellies Creators Award for a new 16mm film installation. In 2017, Sherer was recognized with a South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship. Sherer’s work has exhibited widely at venues including the Frost Museum of Art; Perez Art Museum Miami; Deering Estate; and Microscope Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Barron Sherer’s 2018 solo exhibition, MIAMI/MIAMI featured 16mm installations and video projections at Walls Gallery in Miami, Queensland, Goldcoast, Australia.

Included Works:

Anew – taupe set xl, 2019, Single-channel Digital Video, Silent, Dimensions Variable

This video features real-time analog and digital mixing of scanned 16mm motion picture film that film Barron Sherer shot with a hand-wound Bolex Rex-16. It features scenes of Biscayne Bay near Miami, Florida pushed to an abstraction of light and texture.

The film elements were processed and performed live to digital file; recorded in a post-production studio during a residency at Signal Culture, Owego, New York.  It was originally performed to music: a pre-recorded track by South Florida musician Kristen Soller. The digital video is presented silent in this exhibition.