Cut, Tear, Rupture and Overlay
An exhibition of collage work
Kevin Arrow
Kevin Arrow is a multifaceted artist and cultural producer living and working in Miami, Florida. His work has been exhibited in South Florida since the mid-1980s and his work in in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami (MOCA), the Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), and the Bass Museum of Art. Arrow's work takes on various forms including, drawing, collage, painting, film, and audio-based projects, merging his interest in obsolete media, archival tendencies, sacred geometry, the ephemeral object, and humor. Through his art projects he is continually seeking to find the sublime within the mundane, and the mundane within the sublime experience, in addition to investigating the interchangeability of both.
Natalia Garcia-Lee
Natalia Garcia-Lee (b. 1971, Madrid, Spain) received her BFA in Sculpture from the Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) in 1995, yet has focused on her two-dimensional practice in recent years. From collage to canvas, Garcia-Lee displays her fascination with the science behind our seemingly logical thoughts and the communities that manifest themselves resulting from such logic. Her life experiences fuel her interest in us as a species and inform her practice as she seeks to decode distinctive zones of universal human behavior.
Roxana Barba
Roxana Barba, born and raised in Lima, Peru is a Miami-based artist, whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of performance, video art, installation and mixed media. Her interest in cross-disciplinary work has received support from
The Knight Foundation and South Florida PBS, as well as commissions from Miami Light Project, PAXy and Alianza Francesa Cultural de Lima, Peru. Roxana has also developed site-specific performances at Perez Art Museum Miami and Miami
Performance Festival and screened and toured her films internationally. Roxana pursued undergraduate visual arts studies in her native Perú prior to receiving her BFA in Dance from New World School of the Arts (Miami, Florida). She has been in residency at Cucalorus Film Festival (North Carolina, US), Correlacion Contemporanea (Peru) and is currently a resident artist at Laundromat Art Space in Little Haiti, Miami.
Rafael Vargas Bernard
Rafael Vargas Bernard is an interdisciplinary visual artist, cultural worker, noise/experimental musician, and performer with post-digital art and new media tendencies. Formerly Education Department Manager/Coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico, in 2018, Vargas Bernard moved to Miami, FL. He became Community Manager and Co-Directed the Mana Contemporary Miami / 777 Mall art complex and community until 2021. He worked as the Director of Programs and Operations for FilmGate Miami. Rafael currently works as the Assistant Director for Blu Sky Gallery. Vargas Bernard studied Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Studio Art at the Recinto Universitario de Mayagüez Puerto Rico, Sculpture and Imagen y movimiento at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas y Diseño de Puerto Rico, and La Práctica at Beta-Local (San Juan, PR).
Robert Chambers
Born in Miami, Robert Chambers earned his MA (1990) from New York University and his BFA from University of Miami (1983). He ran the sculpture departments at NYU for a number of years and then continued his teaching career at the University of Miami.
Robert Chambers has recently completed several large scale public Art commissions; "Light Field", an interactive 87’ tall LED wall of light and "Orbital 1+2", 20.000 lbs marble elliptical sculptures for Miami-Dade Art in Public Places (completed March 2011).
Recent exhibitions include ”2011 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts” at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in NYC.
Awards include the Nancy Graves Award and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. He was granted a residency at the Fabric Workshop Museum in Philadelphia, PA in 2009 and has work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, Miami Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Miami, FL.
Dimitry Saïd Chamy
Dimitry Saïd Chamy is a transdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator. He has exhibited from Miami to Beijing, including Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, New York, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and Locust Projects in Miami. Chamy received an Oolite Arts Ellies Creator award in 2021. He has worked on multiple scales in diverse sectors, including art, education, fashion, technology, and non-profit cultural institutions. Chamy holds an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University.
Chamy has taught at six universities and served as an Erasmus+ Scholar and Honorary Chair at the Art Academy in Latvia. Chamy is a Research Associate Professor and Resident Artist at the Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator at Florida International University in Miami, where he bases his studio.
Ivonne Ferrer
Ivonne Ferrer born in Havana, Cuba and now lives and works in Miami, FL. She graduated from San Alejandro Academy, and René Portocarrero National Silk Screen Print Shop, Havana, Cuba. Atribuciones in Fidelio Ponce Gallery (1990) was her first solo exhibition, which led her to leave the Cuban art scene for the Spanish circuit where she participated in: Expo Universal Sevilla 92, Arts Pavillion, La temperatura de Dios (1993), Fisiología decorativa (1994) and La isla mágica in Copenhagen, together with two masters, Julio Girona and the Spaniard Fernando Somosa, etc. Ivonne migrated to the United States.
Carol Jazzar
Carol Jazzar is a self-taught interdisciplinary artist who lives and works in El Portal, Florida. Her work is centered on Nature, be it her own, or that of Mother Nature. To realize her artist goals, she sustains two practices, one in the studio, which revolves around collages, drawings and writing; the other outdoors, using photography and site-specific projects.
Before fully dedicating her time to her current practices, Jazzar ran a contemporary art gallery out of the garage on her property in Miami's El Portal neighborhood. She showed many local and national artists - including Jen Stark, Farley Aguilar, Shoshanna Weinberger and Ronny Quevedo, among others.
Regina Jestrow
Regina Durante Jestrow (1978) is a New York-born, Miami-based visual artist, of Italian- American heritage. Her mother taught her how to sew when she was a child, and she has utilized these skills throughout her practice. When she moved to Miami, she taught herself how to quilt and crochet to cope with homesickness. Jestrow’s artwork explores her ongoing interests in women's history and American quilt pattern traditions. Jestrow’s research has led her to develop a body of work that includes painting,drawings, textiles, fibers, and sculptural installations.
Dina Knapp
Dina Knapp was an accomplished visual artist, known for her fiber work and wearable art, shown during her early career at Julie’s Artisan Gallery in New York. Celebrities, including, Cher, Elton John, Donovan, Phyllis Diller, Julie Christie and Bob Mackie, own her intricate crocheted works. The legendary Bob Marley is buried in the beloved tam Dina crocheted for him.
Upon relocation to Miami Beach from New York in 1977, Dina’s work evolved from wearable art and crochet using heavy wool and yarn, she then moved to more lightweight fabrics and then into mixed media collages. These works were inspired by the cultural influences and tropical environment of South Florida. Dina’s work has shown in numerous galleries and exhibitions. She created continuously throughout her life. Her collages transport you to another era, lush in color, texture and imagery. Her wearable work is surreal, sublime and sexy.
Natalya Kochak
Natalya Kochak was born in New York and has since spent time in many different places, from Alabama to Chicago, Berlin to Beijing. She graduated with her BFA and MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and now resides in Miami.
Natalya is currently an adjunct professor at Miami International University in the visual arts department. She was an artist-in-residence in 2018-2019 with ProjectArt, teaching displaced teenagers and students from underserved school districts twice a week at the Model City branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library System. Recently, she finished doing a mural for the non- profit Raw Project that places artists in under-served schools across the United States to brighten the walls and promote student engagement.
Kandy G Lopez
Kandy G Lopez was born in Bayonne, New Jersey and currently lives in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She received her BFA and BS from the University of South Florida concentrating in Painting and in Marketing and Management. She received her MFA with a concentration in Painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2014. As a multi-media Afro-Caribbean American portrait artist, Lopez explores identity through marginalized individuals who represent her community. She is currently working on large scaled portrait created out of yarn and thread. Selected Solo exhibitions include, Phenomenal Woman, 2023, Miramar Cultural Center, Miramar, FL., Intersectionality, 2023, Coral Spring Museum of Art, (in)visible: Code-Switching, 2022, Girls Club Warehouse, Fort Lauderdale, FL., (in)visibility: Yup-Pity, 2022, Frank C Ortis Gallery (Third Space), Pembroke Pines, FL., Selected group exhibitions include, Pink, 2023, Armory Art Center, Delray Beach, FL., Fiber Art Now: Fiber/Rope/String, 2022, New Bedford Art Museum, New Bedford, MA.,
Hugo Martinez
Honduran born American artist, Hugo Martinez, embraced sculpture as a means of expression. He was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras in 1976. He immigrated with his family to Miami in 1994, where he has resided since.
"My work comes to life through my experiences of suffering and nostalgia, the remedy to ease the pain was to create." Hence his creations led to his sculptures, which if you look closely you will see that they are all interlinked. They are all birthed from the same mother, but different fathers. Each father representing a different pain, an uneasy experience, a crucial struggle in life.
Jee Park was born in Seoul, Korea. She holds a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and an MA from New York University in New York City. Park’s practice deals with memory, loss and decay. Fabrics are stitched, combined with collage and mark making. These works allude to human flesh and wounds, the ephemeral, and the body in nature.
Sue Miller & Emilio Martinez
Emilio and Susan are immigrants to America. They are of different generations and different histories but late arrivals to America in the broad sense.
Emilio came from Honduras at a very young age, brought with his brothers by his mother. His experience as a poor, non-English speaking child was personified by his cheap shoes, which were the subject of taunts by his classmates. Shoes were a source of shame and an incredible yearning to be part of his new country by having beautiful shoes, shiny and red.
This young immigrant carried within him a mind filled with fears of a new land and fables and stories of the Honduran history of his childhood. His undeniable yearning to become an artist allowed him to materialize his thoughts into all manner of creatures onto the shoes, into frames, and on and off the walls.
Susan is the child of immigrant parents that came to America in the early 1920s from Germany. She grew up channeling her parents’ desire to blend into their new country. Her vivid memories are that the accepted peers all had new shoes that were without scuffs.
Her young years experienced the strains of a house with extended family living through WWII in Germany. She has used her experiences as subject matter throughout her artistic career as a sculptor. The red shoes, as she presents them in collaboration with Emelio, are created using her clothing which carries her history and her reverence for shoes.
This collaboration is considered, by both artists, to carry the conceptual concepts of the struggle of integration into the American culture. The shoe is worn by the traveler to a strange destination. It is a symbol of affluence, fashion, and acceptance. The soles of shoes carry the stories of the traveler. The red color is vibrancy, life, and blood.
Brandon Opalka
Brandon Opalka paints by day, he paints by night. He paints on walls, canvas, installations, invariably creating something new. He moves from one medium to another with the same fervor, the same excitement, the same speed of execution.
It's the color that interests Brandon Opalka, whether posed by a brush or a spray can, applied with an air compressor or in coats of hot wax. Objects are soaked in it, covered, dematerialized, producing a novel interpretation.
He is building a body of work between assemblage and installation from which, on occasion, a canvas or a sculpture emerges. Recently, he is even inhabiting his environments, embodying figures from US popular culture and Florida in particular. Always the trash alongside the reverie. And the excessive world of Miami, the artist's home since childhood, is never far away.
Brandon Opalka talks about what he knows, what surrounds him. He draws the raw material for his art from daily life, without neglecting current events. Unpretentious, his work is an experience of life. It was in the streets, that the artist was first confronted by life (as well as death, with the loss of young graffiti artists from his crew) and by art.
Charo Oquet
Charo Oquet (Dominican Republic 1952), based in Miami, FL is an inter-disciplinary artist and art organizer her wide-reaching practice includes performance, installation, painting, video, printmaking, ceramic and photography. Her work has been exhibited at international venues including the Pavilion of Contemporary Art (PAC), ICA, Miami, Fl; Italy; Bass Museum of Art, Miami; FL, 1st. Asuncion Biennial, Salazar Museum, Asuncion, Paraguay; Ft. Lauderdale Museum, The Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C; The XIII Havana Biennial; The Frost Museum; MoCA N. Miami, Bass Museum, New Zealand National Gallery, Govet-Brewster Art Gallery, NZ, Museo de Arte Moderno, D.R. , Casal Solleric, Spain, Nikolaj Kunsthal, Copenhagen, Denmark, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin, Germany, Kunstnerne Hus, Oslo, Norway, UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural; UNESCO, Paris, Away, Edsvik Konsthall, Sollentuna, Sweden. Her awards include The Ellies, Miami's Visual Arts Awards 20; Knight Foundation Grant, 2019; The Perez Create; NALAC ’19; MAP Fund.
Jee Park
Jee Park was born in Seoul, Korea. She holds a BFA in painting from the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY and an MA from New York University in New York City. Park’s practice deals with memory, loss and decay. Fabrics are stitched, combined with collage and mark making. These works allude to human flesh and wounds, the ephemeral, and the body in nature.
Recent exhibitions include “Everything that Remains” at Spinello Projects in Miami, Florida-where the artist lives and works.
Kerry Philips
Kerry Phillips is an installation artist whose artwork borders on performance and social practice. Phillips’ work with found objects is intuitive, often site-specific, and steeped in remembrance and storytelling. She uses common objects in unexpected ways, working collaboratively with viewer-participants to reveal an exchange of value, the importance and limitations of memory, and the vitality of play.
Phillips earned an MFA from University of Arizona and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including at the Orlando Museum of Art, Locust Projects, Pérez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Boca Raton Museum of Art, and Bridge Red Projects. She has exhibited and completed residencies in Ohio, Vermont, New York, North Carolina, and internationally in Berlin, Krakow, Mexico, and France. Her work is held in the collections of the Orlando Museum of Art, The Girls’ Club, and Mosquera Collections. Originally from Texas, Phillips works in Miami and, contrary to her family’s wishes, doesn’t paint pretty pictures.
Denise Treizman
Denise Treizman is a Chilean-Israeli artist, currently based in Miami. Her work has been exhibited at PROTO GOMEZ Gallery, New York, New York; Wave Hill, Bronx, New York; Hybrid Art Fair, Madrid, Spain; Penn State University, Pennsylvania; Latino Arts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; LVL3 Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, New York; and Cuchifritos Gallery/Artist’s Alliance, New York, New York, Soho20 Gallery, New York, New York, PROTO Gallery, Hoboken, New Jersey, among others. Treizman has completed artist residencies at Mass MOCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; NARS Foundation International Artists Residency, Brooklyn, New York; Triangle Workshop, Salem, New York; ACRE Residency, Steuben, Michigan; Ox-Bow Residency, Saugatuck, Michigan; and Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, Vermont, among others.
In 2015, she was fellow at the Bronax’s Museum Artist in the Marketplace program, culminating with “The Bronx Calling”, a biennial exhibition at the museum. That same year, Treizman was awarded a studio residency at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Studio Program in New York City, where she developed her work until 2019. In 2016, Treizman created an interactive public artwork at Randall’s Island Park in New York, commission awarded by the NYC Parks Alliance and the Bronx Museum for the Arts.
Treizman earned an MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, and is currently a studio resident at Laundromat Art Space in Miami, Florida. Having lived in many densely populated cities over the years—Santiago, London, San Francisco, New York City, Haifa, and now Miami—her practice has stemmed from and benefited from throwaway culture.
Tristen Trivett
Tristen Trivett, born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2001), will graduate with their B.A. in Graphic Design and Studio Art from Nova Southeastern University in May 2023. Trivett uses a wide variety of mediums, exploring the materiality of sculpture, digital work, painting, collage, and ceramics to express the human condition in the context of modernity.