The Gates of Paradise
- MIAMI, Florida
- /
- October 20, 2016
The Gates of Paradise
Curated Group Show
Art Basel Miami Week 2016
Art Basel Miami Beach is one of the world's most successful art fairs, which takes place at the same time as numerous satellite art fairs in the first week of December. In the heart of Miami Downtown, just a few Metromover stops away from the new Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), Miami River Art Fair reflects the urban landscape of Miami and responds to the city's rapid growth as a cultural destination.
One of the exhibitors at Miami River Art Fair, Dr. Barbara Aust-Wegemund, Director at Art Consultancy AHC (art history consulting) and gallery AHC Projects (booth B1), is invited to curate the group show “The Gates of Paradise”. About her concept and intention, the curator and art historian explains:
"In 1425 Lorenzo Ghiberti was commissioned to design a pair of bronze doors for Florence’s Baptistery. He labored on the task for 27 years, fashioning a masterpiece that Michelangelo called “truly worthy to be the Gates of Paradise” for its remarkable beauty and grandeur.
What about THE GATES OF PARADISE today?
The word paradise conveys the meaning of a beautiful garden, where living creatures are at peace and harmony with one another. Today a massive worldwide flow of people is in search for a peaceful place to live. The curated group show poses the question what is the paradise today and how can we live authentically and being part of a globalised world today. "
Celebrating international emerging and established artists in Miami, selected artists created theme specific artworks for the show “The Gates of Paradise”, regarding the role of the meaning of paradise today, among them:
Tracy L. Barwick, Stefania Bertini Cavelti, Eckhard Besuden, Dorene Ginzler, Yuriko Hirose, Ai-Wen Wu Kratz, Barbara Krupp, Karen Mulder, Anja Sieber and Inna Timokhina.
Tracy L. Barwick‘s work dissects light into its prismatic components. The Baltimore/ DC based artist experimented with so many mediums until a few years ago she found joy with using beads. Even if the art lover feels a reminiscence of Bauhaus Color Studies, Tracy L. Barwick is able to compose geometric color fields of her own provenance. Every artwork has its own temperature based on the color palette. These „thermic pictures“ affects us on a deep subconscious level by directly influencing body and the soul.
In Stefania Bertini Cavelti’s life, Lorenzo Ghiberti‘s bronze doors are not just an abstract historian artefactum, but a part of her neighbourhood, her daily life, as she was born and raised in Florence. The visual artist and philosopher, who is currently living in Switzerland, holds a Diploma in Fine Art and Anthroposophy. Her abstract color field but also filigree, sophisticated work figures out, that every color has its own temperature, which causes a thermic effect on our mind and sub-consciousness.
Eckhard Besuden specializes in the confusion, as his child flying on a silver plate. This German artist is a cross between a slob-provocateur and a brutish aesthete. His oil paintings are evoking a magic similar to old and modern masters, playing with metaphors and surreal symbols, dealing with a kind of boundless melancholy.
Dorene Ginzler, born in Detroit, Michigan, is currently working from her studio in Boca Raton, Florida creating watercolor and oil paintings. She earned a BFA from Eastern Michigan University, graduated with honors, with adjunct studio work in Florence, Italy. Dorene Ginzler: “My recent oil paintings are influenced by a myriad of music and dance and are an accumulative expression of my passion for the sea and the richness that is inherent in nature. The bold and euphoric colors elicit universal truth and infinite illusion while paying homage to the robust color and beauty that surrounds us.”
The Japanese sculptor and installation artist Yuriko Hirose is working like a scientist to recollect forgotten memories. Yuriko Hirose:“The concept behind my work is a blend of futuristic elements that reflect evolving science and machinery, and elements such as life force and passion (energy) that reflect the more fundamental aspects of modern humans.“
Barbara Krupp, who has studied Painting with Graham Nickson and Lowell Ellsworth Smith explores the human body and anatomy. In her paintings, so called Abstract Nature, she is searching for the hidden energies and secrets of our cells, using a semi abstract visual language. Her compositions refer to coronary blood vessels when contact regions between a protein and its binding partners are creating interaction. Everything remains in flow.
Ai-Wen Wu Kratz, a visual artist, philosopher and philantrop with academic degrees in Painting, Printmaking and Mathematics, has created a brand new series for the exhibition. Ai-Wen Wu Kratz: “It is the spiritual and intellectual qualities that I am aiming at with colors, lines, shapes, forms and movements. My work is titled “Transformation” because in Paradise ALL are being transformed into a more elevated level.“ This work emphasizes the cycle of life, often represented by a process of decomposition and reconstruction.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Karen Mulder studied Journalism and Sociology. Today she lives in Arizona and works with preschoolers with special needs, much loved teaching them art. The Hawaiian Islands are truly Isles of Paradise, rich with vivid beauty, infinite color, amazing nature, a melting pot of people, rooted culture and deep history. This most incredible diversity, like a flourishing garden, gave her freedom, creativity and independence to open the doors and run through the gates with her desire to paint “Palekaiko” her paradise.
The Conceptual Artist Anja Sieber is transmitting art and scientific discourses, world literature, but also everyday communication in a "writing process". The artist, publisher, writer, who holds academic diplomas in Painting, Literatur, Multimedia Sciences, works with watercolor, ball pen, wire and spills latex, ink and glue as scripture on paper, canvas and foil.
To remember to the Italian Renaissance scientist and astronomer Galileo Galilei, Anja Sieber was thinking about the original concept of the series consisted of the idea of "starry sky" (in Latin sidereus nuncius), since Galileo directed his telescope to numerous other heavenly bodies besides the moon. So she realized an installation of "heavenly bodies". The position of these "stars", to which she has taken out every "glimmer of light" and provided them with artistic surface structures, mountains, valleys and craters, is in itself not bound by a "natural" reconstruction of any stars.
Inna Timokhina is an artist-scientist who holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology at Cornell University, New York City. Her fascination for microscopic images and techniques for revealing the hidden energies and secrets of living cells, are on major influence on her artistic ideas and visual language. The artist, who is currently living in Switzerland, is speaking about her Light Sculpture: „I love to explore microcosmic images and forms, when I design a unique shape, using 3D modelling and printing. There are many steps from the idea to the realization. But finally the result is something like a silk cloud.
Invitations to Preview and VIP Party on Thursday, December, 1, 2016 at 6-11 pm, upon request.
Please contact:
gallery@arthistoryconsulting.de
L O C A T I O N
Miami Convention Center
Miami Downtown
at James L. Knight International Center
400 SE 2nd Ave, Miami, FL 33131, USA
VIP Collector’s Preview (VIP Ticket Holders & Press)| December 1, 6 - 11 PM
Fair Hours | Fri-Sat, December 2-3, 1 - 7 PM | Sunday, December 4, 1 - 6 PM
G A L L E R Y | AHC Projects | Booth B1
_Infinity_by_Santiago_Medina_PhotoCr100x100_c.jpg "Santiago Medina’s “Infinity” is made with highly polished Italian stainless steel and displays in its organic sculptoric form, the infinite symbol. The sculpture measures 24 inches in height by 12 x 10 inches. Infinity is pictured in front of the Colombian landscape where it was cast in stainless steel at Medina’s studio in Medellin, Colombia and will be shipped to its permanent home at the Tisch Library, Tufts University, Boston, MA.")
