Miami has long been a multicultural city. With the arrival of Art Basel, it has quickly become the center of the Art Scene. This shift has attracted the attention of emerging and established artists alike. Curiosity, drawing in artists like a moth to the flame, has motivated artists from all around the world to relocate to Miami. Inturn, generating a diverse environment where people of many cultural backgrounds are living, interacting, and inspiring one another. With differing languages and cultures, the Artists share the goal of expressing their uniqueness and similarities through their art. The Art Place Wynwood’s “Miami Mix” will bring together a group of nine Miami artists whose differing nationalities and cultural backgrounds are united by their expert use of a universal language that speaks for itself.
ADA BALCACER
Ada Balcácer left her native country, Dominican Republic in 1951, after four years of academic training at the National Fine Art School of Santo Domingo from European teachers who migrated from Spain and Germany during World War Two. She then studied and worked in New York City for twelve years. After Balcácer’s return home, her work became well known and is present in art collections of: Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, USA, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Italy. In the year 2000 she returned to the USA, and settled into her new studio in Miami, Florida, to broaden her international performance.
MARCO BERIA
Marco Beria is a multidisciplinary artist who has worked as an actor, producer and director in theater, film and video in the USA and Venezuela. As a visual artist and curator, he has had a number of individual and group exhibitions in New York City, New Jersey and Madrid. He has recently relocated to Miami, Florida.
MOLLY BO
Born in Germany on an Air Force base, Molly Bo has had the privilege of living in many places. Although she has experienced many of America’s landscapes she considers herself a Northwest Floridian. Molly Bo graduated from the University of West Florida with her Bachelor’s of Fine Arts degree in 2008. Her emergent career has already earned many merits ranging from highly competitive juried exhibitions such as the 60th Annual All Florida Exhibition, Boca Raton Museum of Art, Florida, to the private office of House Representative Dave Murzin, in Tallahassee, FL. In addition, her paintings have been selected for public commission such as Taminco Chemical Intermediates Facility, Pace, Florida with works entitled “Gestalt Studies” & “Interactions”. Currently, Molly is represented by The Art Place Wynwood in Miami, Florida where she acts as Assistant Director. She continues to be endlessly fascinated by oil paint as a substance and it’s ability to mimic the patterns and surface qualities of nature.
MÁXIMO CAMINERO
Maximo Caminero was born in Dominican Republic in 1962. His work is supported in the ancestral Taino culture, (first settlers of Antilles) its forms has a resonance in the present with a modern view. The versatility of his paintings goes through the Caribbean horizon, touching without hiding the African legacy. His work does not have the spiritual and religious support that other renounced artist like Wilfredo Lam had studied. He only captures the physical essence of far away desires. His work in the same way he defines it: it’s a reflection of the thought were he wonders through a more real universe, further away of what was created by men. Everything is philosophy, he tells us, and adds, nothing is proven, men creates his dreams and unrealities and supports himself in fictional worlds, I do not escape from it, I create my own world, my language. Even though my history is recreated in the day by day, in the struggle of the human being, in his faults and effects, I express the subconscious as this one shows sovereignty and unknown, my religion, concludes, is the uncertainty, because I also know that I know nothing. Supported by a number of critics of great prestige, his works have been auctioned in prestigious houses of America and some have been acquired by North American museums.
CHARLOTTE FRANCHISEY
Charlotte Franchisey was born in Paris, France. She earned a masters degree in art at the renown Olivier de Serres. Charlotte embraced at the age of twelve sculpture as her means of expression. She spends most of her time between studios in Miami and in Paris. Noted for her sculptures in steel and plexiglass. “The fusion between steel and plexiglass, roughness v.s. Softness”. Using a sub-tropic palette with European linear abstract designs. Her work has been exhibited and bought into important collections around the world. Charlotte has won several awards and has had numerous publications. The artist has collaborated in several theatres, ballets and performances linking drawing with music and dance.
CAROL FRYD
Carol Fryd hails from the Hans Hofmann tradition, having studied extensively with his New York School star pupils Jame Billmyer and Nieves M. Billmyer. A native Floridian, the vivid hues of the Miami sun inform her palette. Twentieth Century artistic influences include Stuart Davis, Picasso and Matisse, but her voice is distinctly her own. Hugely prolific, her current style shift is from geometric abstractions to the figurative imagery of her own personal feminine mythology. A pioneer in the Miami Beach art scene, Fryd was one of the founders of the first women’s co-op art center in Miami Beach in the mid sixties, the Continuum Gallery. Created to foster an intellectual and artistic dialogue between like-minded women artists, it brought such New York luminaries as sculptor John Chamberlain, art dealer Betty Parsons, Matisse scholar Jack Flam and Holocaust photographer Roman Vishniac to lecture and chair shows.Today, Fryd works extensively with collage on canvas, watercolors, and mixed media on paper. She continues to push the envelope by exploring the use of digitally realized art via her computer-generated drawings, that lately find their way into her large works on canvas. Fryd is represented in the permanent collection of Miami Beach’s Bass Museum. Her work is also in the permanent collections of the Museo de la Galeria de las Casas Reales and the Museo de Arte Moderno in the Dominican Republic. She recently had a solo exhibit, “Miami Salsa” in the Museo de las Casas Reales and will have one person shows in 2013 in the Museo del Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo and in the Jewish Museum of South Florida in Miami Beach.
DANILO GONZALEZ
Danilo Gonzalez began his life and education in the Dominican Republic. He lived in Paris, New York, Caracas, and Mexico working with artists such as Cruz Diez and Robert Blackburn. He has worked in many mediums over his 30 year career, including performance art, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and painting, focusing mainly in the industrial and recyclable materials. His work has been awarded and honored in numerous Biennials and Art contests. He participated in the ‘Ninety Sculptors of the Twentieth Century’ at the Housatonic Museum of Connecticut. His work belongs to several private, government and corporate collections around the world, including the permanent collections of the Housatonic Museum of Connecticut, Musèe du Colombie in France, Museum of Modern Art in the D R, el Centro Leon, Museo del Hombre Dominicano, Museo de Historia y Geografia, Lasa Consistorial de Santiago, El Centro de Arte de la Victoria in Venezuela, Museo Soto, and Museo del Dibujo DR, among others.
EMILIO ADAN MARTINEZ
Emilio Adan Martinez was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1954. In 1961 at the age of six he immigrated to Miami with his family. He earned his BFA from Florida International University in 1995. As a child, Martinez was always making art– creating toys, sculptures and other pieces from the humblest of found objects. With the Cuban revolution came strife, separation and finally flight. Martinez, who has but few memories of that time, recalls very distinctly his grandfather preparing a bomb shelter adjacent to the family property in Las Villas. Images of trenches, tunnels, and caves – with the one spot of daylight coming from above – find expression in his work even today. Though originally known for his heavy sculptural pieces that pair the warmest of wood with the coldest of metal, Martinez is currently exploring other media including paper, string, paint and pine branches. These light, floating pieces bring to mind kites and boats and travel – from the earthbound to the unbound, from the ephemeral to the eternal. An installation of these pieces, titled “Andan Volando,” is currently on view at Miami International Airport, Concourse D, in Miami, Florida.
SERGIO PAYARES
Miami artist Sergio Payares was born in Havana, Cuba, 1962. He studied at National School of Art (ENA), and at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). He perfected his training at the Rene Portocarrero Serigraph workshop. In 1990 he travels to Venezuela where he resided for a short time, then moved to the states in 1992 where he since resides and works. His work evokes the solitary reflections of the human condition. Graphite markings, minimal lines, abstract motifs, words and shapes appear to emerge into a world of play. Airy spaces form Zen voids. Disembodied heads hover into empty spaces combined with natures predicaments symbolized by leaf or flower forms. “With signs to guide the way and the brush to bring it to reality, it is also a passage to his very soul”. Dr. Carol Damian, Director & Curator, The Frost Museum, Florida Int. University, Miami, Fl. His work is in museum, corporate and private collections in the U.S. and abroad. He received several awards and honors and has been the subject of numerous articles and major publications.
The Art Place Wynwood, presents Visual Dialogue, a showcase of 12 artists during ART BASEL WEEK 2012. Exhibitions runs from December 1 – 17th, 2012. The gallery is hosting an Opening Reception on Wednesday, December 5th, 6-9 PM.
THE ART PLACE WYNWOOD 