Bent Pool, 2019
Artist: Elmgreen & DragsetTitle: Bent Pool, 2019Medium: Steel, stainless steel, aluminum, concrete, lacquer, lightsLocation: Pride ParkDescription:Bent Pool is shaped like an inverted “U” and stands upright on a two-tier plinth. The pool seems to have somehow been lifted out of the ground and stretched into a curved form. With a turquoise blue interior, one of Elmgreen & Dragset’s signature colors, and a matte white exterior, the work both stands out against the greenery of Pride Park at the Miami Beach Convention Center and creates a synoptic connection to the park as a leisure area. The work draws on the Minimalist reductive tradition and use of geometric forms, as much as it does on Pop-art and Conceptualism’s use of ready-made objects and imagery. Yet, on closer inspection one will discover that this is not an altered ready-made, but a carefully crafted object. Identified by details such as its ladder, its diving board and pool lamps, the abstracted object can easily be recognized as a swimming pool even though its bowed shape prevents it from carrying water.Due to Miami Beach’s climate and status as a beloved holiday destination, swimming pools are a natural part of the city’s fabric. The distorted shape of the Bent Pool, however, makes us more aware of how objects are perceived relative to different contexts. Miami Beach is an area that has seen a rise in extreme weather and flooding; its landscape is in flux. Bent Pool encourages us to think about how we normally interact with our surroundings: how accessible or inaccessible they appear.With Bent Pool, the artist duo also challenges the conventions of outdoor sculpture and monumentality. The sculpture is an arch—a form adopted in monuments of the distant and recent past to commemorate historical battles or mark the ceremonial entrance to a city (e.g., the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile, Paris, France; the Gateway Arch, St. Louis, Missouri, United States). However, just wide enough for one individual to pass at a time, Bent Pool is not designed to accommodate the heavy traffic of Paris or masses of people marching through its narrow opening. Instead, Bent Pool seems to celebrate the less grandiose like ‘having a good time by the pool’, and reminds us, as we enter the convention center for an event such as Art Basel Miami Beach, that enjoyment can be found in so many experiences, beyond glamorous event culture; oftentimes in the everyday.
Bent Pool by Elmgreen & Dragset
Cobalt Blue Earring, 2019
Artist: Amoako BoafoTitle: Cobalt Blue Earring, 2019Medium: Oil on CanvasLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center, East LobbyMiami Beach Legacy Art Purchase (2019)Description:As announced on November 4, 2019, the City of Miami Beach launched the Legacy Purchase Program, a collaboration with Art Basel Miami Beach, and under the direction of the City’s Art in Public Places (“AiPP”) committee whereby the City would set out to purchase a work of art from contingency funds from the AiPP collection within the Miami Beach Convention Center campus. The goal of the program is to strengthen the connection between the City of Miami Beach, the residents and Art Basel Miami Beach by allowing the residents to be a part of the curatorial process of our public art collection, while broadening our dedication to acquiring meaningful public art and expanding our relationship with Art Basel by enhancing our community engagement in the annual event.Amoako Boafo is a contemporary painter, born in Accra, Ghana, and based in Vienna, Austria. Boafo’s portrait paintings are enticing in their lucidity, accentuating the figures in each work, who are regularly isolated on single color backgrounds, their gaze the focal point of each work. The brushstrokes are thick and gestural, the contours of the body’s almost soften into abstraction. The most well-known of his series, the Black Diaspora portraits serve as a means of celebration of his identity and blackness.Boafo emphasizes, “The primary idea of my practice is representation, documenting, celebrating and showing new ways to approach blackness.” Much of his work is inspired by his upbringing, commenting on how males are raised to be aggressive and masculine, which he challenges in his works. Although the artists underlying messages are quite intense, there is a certain softness to the works, the poses are serene and the skin luminous.Boafo studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna. In 2017 was awarded with the jury prize, Walter Koschatzky Art Prize. Widely collected by private and public collectors and institutions, most recently by CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art and The Albertina Museum Vienna and has been named as the first artists in residence at the Rubell Museum.
Cobalt Blue Earring by Amoako Boafo
Sonic Dreamscapes, 2018
Artist: Bill FontanaTitle: Sonic Dreamscapes, 2018Medium: Sound and videoLocation: SoundScape ParkDescription:Sonic Dreamscapes presents a sound and video installation created for both daytime and evening viewing via SoundScape Park’s sophisticated 72-channel Meyer sound and projection systems. “It is the perfect instrument to create sound choreography inspired by the marine and natural environments of South Florida,” says Fontana. “These accompanying videos will be of an abstract nature and will explore the idea of an image that a sound makes and the sound that an image makes, which I call ‘Acoustic Visions.’”The installation cycle begins during the day with individually recurring auditory recordings answering each other from different spatial points in SoundScape Park. By afternoon, the “musical vocabulary” will grow as additional sounds are added to the repertoire. As the evening approaches, environmentally inspired abstract videos will emerge on the video wall, allowing visitors to experience a myriad of floating sounds and meditative images.Sonic Dreamscapes is the inaugural piece in a yearlong initiative by the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places program, which will be introducing permanent site-specific works of public art by internationally recognized artists throughout the newly renovated and expanded Miami Beach Convention Center area.“Bill Fontana’s Sonic Dreamscapes exemplifies Miami Beach’s commitment to commissioning world-class public art. This work will enhance Miami Beach’s public art landscape, home to an already outstanding collection of Art in Public Places projects, including permanent work by Dan Graham, Roy Lichtenstein and Tobias Rehberger, among others,” says Miami Beach Mayor Dan Gelber.Sonic Dreamscapes is the culmination of intensive research and a lengthy series of field recordings. Two years of exploration, supported by Art in Public Places and the New World Symphony, has yielded multiple versions of the artwork, allowing visitors at SoundScape Park a different experience with each visit. Trained as a composer, this work marks Fontana’s first collaboration on a public commission with a music institution. Sonic Dreamscapes is Fontana’s third major public art commission in the United States, following Soaring Echoes for the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Millennium Park and Acoustical Visions for the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th anniversary in San Francisco. His works abroad have been publicly installed at the Tate Britain and Tate Modern, The Venice Biennale and MAXXI in Rome.
Sonic Dreamscape by Bill Fontana
Morris’, 2010
Artist: Dan GrahamTitle: Morris’, 2010Medium: Steel and glassLocation: Lincoln Road between Alton Road and Lenox AvenueDescription: Dan Graham’s project for the new pedestrian part of Lincoln Road recalls the ‘kidney’ shape of the 1950’s Miami Beach hotel swimming pools. Both concave and convex lenses, the pavilion’s surfaces create mirroring an anamorphic ‘fun-house’ reflection of people inside perceiving themselves and other superimposed of people outside. The surfaces are simultaneously reflective and transparent. The pavilion’s form is more baroque than minimal – as people move, their bodies are distended and in motion. The work is child-friendly, as well as providing photo opportunities for parents and children.
Morris' by Dan Graham
…as the garden secrets a swarm of monarchs feast, 2019
Artist: Ebony G. PattersonTitle: …as the garden secrets a swarm of monarchs feast. ..a john crow awaits a carcass’ fall while scavengers gather to feast below, as we dig between the cuts…below the leaves…beneath the soil, 2019Medium: Digital print on archival watercolor paper with hand-cut and torn elements, fabric, poster board, acrylic gel mediumLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center, East LobbyMiami Beach Legacy Art Purchase (2019)Description:As announced on November 4, 2019, the City of Miami Beach launched the Legacy Purchase Program, a collaboration with Art Basel Miami Beach, and under the direction of the City’s Art in Public Places (“AiPP”) committee whereby the City would set out to purchase a work of art from contingency funds from the AiPP collection within the Miami Beach Convention Center campus. The goal of the program is to strengthen the connection between the City of Miami Beach, the residents and Art Basel Miami Beach by allowing the residents to be a part of the curatorial process of our public art collection, while broadening our dedication to acquiring meaningful public art and expanding our relationship with Art Basel by enhancing our community engagement in the annual event.Winner of the inaugural Miami Beach Legacy Purchase Program, Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican visual artist and is represented by the Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from Sam Fox College of Design and Visual Arts. Her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Jamaica, the United States, and abroad including the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, Nuit Blanche Toronto, and the Hales Gallery in New York City to name a few.Known for her drawings, tapestries, videos, sculptures and installations that involve surfaces layered with flowers, glitter, lace and beads, Ms. Patterson’s works investigate forms of embellishment as they relate to youth culture within disenfranchised communities. Her neo-baroque works address violence, masculinity, “bling,” visibility and invisibility within the post-colonial context of her native Jamaica and within black youth culture globally. The references to Carnival in Patterson’s use of beads, plastic ornaments, and reflective materials reflect her interest in mining international aesthetics in a practice that is a race against time, as Patterson captures, mourns, and glorifies the passing of too many lives.
Garden Secrets by Ebony G. Patterson
Atlantis, 2019
Artist: Ellen HarveyTitle: Atlantis, 2019Medium: Etched mirror glassLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center Grand Ballroom LobbyDescription:Based on a full-size hand-painted design, Atlantis is directly inspired by Miami Beach’s unique connection to the many bodies of water that constitute the larger Florida ecosystem. Visitors to the Miami Beach Convention Center see themselves reflected in a dark watery 1,000 sq. ft. hand-painted design sand-blasted into mouth-blown glass, filled with ceramic melting color, laminated to glass mirror with a white painting of a diagonal satellite view of Florida reaching from the Atlantic Ocean through the great watershed of the Everglades to the Gulf of Mexico. As the light changes, the image appears to float above and then be subsumed by the watery reflections, mimicking the intimate relationship between the city and the water table. The mirror is divided into two sections so that visitors enter the new Grand Ballroom at the intersection between the man-made and the natural landscape — at the border between the Everglades National Park and the outskirts of Miami. Originally inspired by a visit to the Everglades with the Everglades Foundation and Creative Time, Atlantis allows visitors to situate themselves within the larger landscape, providing a poignant and thought-provoking overview of the natural beauties that make Miami Beach such a seductive destination.
Atlantis
About Sand, 2018
Artist: Franz AckermannTitle: About Sand, 2018Medium: PaintLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center, 1901 Convention Center Drive, South East Corner Exterior WallsDescription:Franz Ackermann makes vibrant paintings and installations centered on themes of travel, tourism, globalization and urbanism. Ackermann has created large-scale dynamic installations that are built up from individual components comprising paintings, drawings, photographs, wall drawings and sculptural, billboard-like constructions. The places he depicts have a generic quality, and yet they look strangely familiar: non-places where the traveler’s desire replaces the local culture.About Sand extends from Ackermann’s long-running “Mental Maps” series. The “Mental Maps” series combines the factual precision of traditional street maps with the artists’ own interpretation of the local environment. Rendered in vibrant colors and abstracted forms of sand, hourglasses and roadways, About Sand is his impressions of the city’s tourism industry, commerce, urbanism and daily life.
About Sand by Franz Ackerman
Humanoids, 2018
Artist: Joep van LieshoutTitle: Humanoids, 2018Medium: AluminumLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center Collins Canal ParkDescription:The Concept of HumanoidsThe Humanoids in the Collins Canal Park are a classic representation of the work of Joep Van Lieshout. Van Lieshout is a Dutch artist who is internationally recognized for his sculptures, large-scale installations and public artworks. These works, which reflect on society, usually become destinations and serve as place makers in their environment. In addition, his art tends to go viral; examples include Funky Bones, The Mini Capsule Hotel and most recently Domestikator.The Humanoids are part of his recent fascination with man and nature. They appear as abstract figures, which use the park and the natural environment as their habitat, formulating a subtle statement about our relationship to nature and our origins. The sculptures are placed throughout the park, along the canal and amidst landscaping. The Humanoids invite visitors to engage, whether it be to use them as rendezvous spots, places to remember, sketch, write, think or talk, and they encourage social interaction and contemplation.
Humanoids
Located World, 2019
Artist: Joseph KosuthTitle: Located World, 2019Medium: NeonLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center West LobbyDescription:Located World, Miami Beach, is part of a series of works that Joseph Kosuth has also made in Europe and Japan that signify a sense of place through the abstractions of quantified meaning and query the impulse of the ‘will to know’ specifically where we are. In a sense the work is about how a community defines itself both within and without borders.The work is configured in its geographic relation to the rest of the world. Its specific location determines the size of the lettering of the place names represented in the work, whose graphic configuration is scaled in direct proportion to their distance from this global location; the closer a location is-in this case to Miami Beach-the larger it is graphically.This ‘map of the world’, consisting of signposts of cities and towns both arbitrarily chosen and purposefully included, becomes an alternative global network, reordering geopolitical privilege and prominence by flattening all difference to a matter of proximity versus distance, which is itself an unsatisfactory way of making meaning but one that reveals the constructed nature of our sense of place and belonging, all the more so due to the arbitrary basis of its inclusive procedure.
Located World by Joseph Kosuth
Mermaid, 1979
Artist: Roy LichtensteinTitle: Mermaid, 1979Medium: Steel, concrete and paintLocation: Fillmore Theater, South Lawn, Washington Avenue and 17th StreetDescription:Roy Lichtenstein, born in New York City, received his BFA and MFA from Ohio State University. He taught art during the 1940s and 1950s before returning to New York as an independent artist made possible by the phenomenal success of emerging Pop Art in the early 1960s. He was always interested in the interchange of the images, signs and symbols of our global media-life mixed with European and American art history. Fascinated by the beauty of pure abstraction, he created a highly individualistic style using common visual elements but with a sly and witty sense of multiple meaning. Exhibited widely and extensively published upon, and as the recipient of numerous honors, Roy Lichtenstein, along with Andy Warhol, helped redefine the way we see art today.Mermaid adopts the concrete of Art Deco Miami Beach for a surrealist Henry Moore/ Barbara Hepworth-type perforated reclining nude sculpture floating weightlessly on concrete waves leaping from a little pool. Its own light rays oddly hold up the steel bright sun. Materials are transformed by color and pattern in celebration of sea, sand and sun plus a mythical temptress of the deep blue sea shaded by a living palm.
Mermaid by Roy Lichtenstein
Somethin’ Close to Nothin’, 2019
Artist: Sanford BiggersTitle: Somethin’ Close to Nothin’, 2019Medium: Paint on Antique QuiltLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center, East LobbyMiami Beach Legacy Art Purchase (2020)Description:As announced on November 4, 2019, the City of Miami Beach launched the Legacy Purchase Program, a collaboration with Art Basel Miami Beach, and under the direction of the City’s Art in Public Places (“AiPP”) committee whereby the City would set out to purchase a work of art from contingency funds from the AiPP collection within the Miami Beach Convention Center campus. The goal of the program is to strengthen the connection between the City of Miami Beach, the residents and Art Basel Miami Beach by allowing the residents to be a part of the curatorial process of our public art collection, while broadening our dedication to acquiring meaningful public art and expanding our relationship with Art Basel by enhancing our community engagement in the annual event.Sanford Biggers’ works integrate film/video, installation, sculpture, drawing, original music and performance. He intentionally complicates issues such as hip hop, Buddhism, politics, identity and art history in order to offer new perspectives and associations for established symbols. Through a multi-disciplinary formal process, and an equally syncretic creative approach, he makes works or “vignettes” that are as aesthetically pleasing as they are conceptual.Sanford Biggers was born in Los Angeles, CA and lives and works in New York, NY. Recent solo exhibitions include the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA; the Brooklyn Museum; Sculpture Center, NY; and Ringling Museum, Sarasota, FL, among numerous others. His work has been exhibited in institutions including Tate Britain and Tate Modern in London; Whitney Museum of American Art; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, as well as institutions in China, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland and Russia. The artist’s works have been included in several notable exhibitions including: Prospect 1/ New Orleans Biennial; Illuminations at the Tate Modern; Performa 07 in NY; The Whitney Biennial; and Freestyle at the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others. Biggers’ awards include The Rome Prize; The Creative Time Travel Grant; Creative Capital Project Grant; New York Percent for the Arts Commission; Art Matters Grant; New York Foundation for the Arts Award; the Lambent Fellowship in the Arts; the Pennies From Heaven/ New York Community Trust Award; Tanne Foundation Award; Rema Hort Mann Foundation Award Grant; James Nelson Raymond Fellowship from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and a Camille Hanks-Cosby Fellowship. He has participated in prestigious residencies and fellowships including: Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, Germany; Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland; Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, California; ARCUS Project Foundation, Ibaraki, Japan; and the Art in General/ Trafo Gallery Eastern European Exchange in Budapest, Hungary. He has been a fellow of the Socrates Sculpture Park Residency; the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council World Views AIR Program; the Eyebeam Atelier Teaching Residency; the Studio Museum AIR Program; the P.S. 1 International Studio Program; and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency.
Somthin' Close to Nothin' by Sanford Biggers
Morris Lapidus, 2018
Artist: Sarah MorrisTitle: Morris Lapidus, 2018Medium: Custom fabricated porcelain tilesLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center Northeast Corner Exterior WallsMorris Lapidus by Sarah Morris is an expansive, site-specific artwork commissioned by the City of Miami Beach. Executed in custom fabricated porcelain tile and covering over 6,000 square feet of exterior wall space, Morris Lapidus is one of the artist’s largest permanent installations to date.Morris’ dynamic visual language invites the viewer to reflect upon the concepts of motion, scale, light and social space through the use of vectors, points, color and geometric forms. Much like Morris’ paintings and films, site-specific installations such as Morris Lapidus seek to decode and initiate new dialogues with the structures and concepts that define the built environment.Morris’ practice is rooted in the formulation of never-ending, all-encompassing networks of interlinked grids, forms, and colors that constantly expand beyond the immediate field of vision.
Morris Lapidus by Sarah Morris
eloquent south pointe park pier gate, 2014
Artist: Tobias RehbergerTitle: eloquent south pointe park pier gate, 2014Medium: Aluminum, steel, marine grade paintLocation: South Pointe Park, 1 Washington AvenueDescription:Tobias Rehberger is a resident of Frankfurt, Germany and an internationally recognized artist whose career began in 1990 and has had over 100 solo art shows in major museums and galleries throughout the world. Rehberger’s Artist Statement states, “My concept for the South Pointe Park Pier gate is to make it into a ‘speech bubble’, which triggers the design of the gate itself. The ‘speech bubble’ is a visual element that has repeatedly appeared in several of my works in order to make inanimate objects speak and have almost become a hallmark for my work. In this case, it is used to have the pier introduce itself to its visitors.”“When the gate is open, the ‘speech bubble’ playfully sits on top of the archway of the gate, which is painted in the same bright colors that have developed as my signature palette and will allow the “obstinate lighthouse” to establish a visual dialog with the pier and thereby linking the two projects. The graphic pattern of the gate symbolize sound waves spreading from the ‘speech bubble’ and can also be read as a reference not only to optical art in general but, are references to previous projects of mine such as my installation the “Cafeteria” of the Venice Biennale, 2009, and the cafeteria for Turku (European Cultural Capital), Finland, 2010. Additionally, the pattern is also an abstraction of the way the wooden boards are laid on the pier.”
South Pointe Park
Obstinate lighthouse, 2011
Artist: Tobias RehbergerTitle: obstinate lighthouse, 2011Medium: Aluminum, frosted glass, LED lightsLocation: South Pointe Park, 1 Washington AvenueDescription:Tobias Rehberger is a resident of Frankfurt, Germany and is an internationally recognized artist whose career began in 1990 and has had over 100 solo art shows in major museums and galleries throughout the world.Rehberger’s Artist Statement states “For my art proposal within South Pointe Park I would like to give this very special gateway to the City of Miami Beach a symbol that not only marks the area and greets all the visitors that pass through Government cut every day by boat but also brings together some of the key attributes the city stands for: a vital zest for life; art and design; a sculpture, which is designed as a modern playful interpretation of a beacon; including the moving lights at the top. However, the function of the light is not to guide the ships but to greet all the visitors to the City with cheerful, multi colored lighting that underlines the lively spirit of Miami Beach.”The lighthouse has a total height of 55 feet and is an iconic; gateway; colorful and accessible art project that will continue to further the City’s Vision Statement as “a Cultural Capital and an International Center for Innovation in Culture.”
Obstinate Lighthouse by Tobias Rehberger
Liquid Measures, 2010
Artist: Wendy WischerTitle: Liquid Measures, 2010Medium: Hand cut blue mirror water glass tilesLocation: Washington Avenue and Third StreetDescription:Wendy Wisher’s work is influenced by the natural environment and linked to the human inhabitance of that environment. Ms. Wischer seeks the connecting threads that exist between the phenomenon of the natural forces and contemporary urban advancements.Liquid Measures includes hand-cut, blue mirror, water glass tiles that cover three, 4’x4’x4′ electrical boxes and their 4′ pedestals. Inspired by the pattern of the Golden Mean, the eight-foot high, 360′ square foot installation makes reference to the wind and water currents that pass through the area while reflecting the surroundings of the environment and those within it. The tiles have a watery effect and shimmer as viewers walk by, and the lights in the city at night.
Liquid Measures by Wendy Wischer
Save Our Reefs, 2004
Artist: Carlos AlvesTitle: Save Our Reefs, 2004Medium: Ceramic tilesLocation: Lincoln Road and Lenox AvenueDescription:Architect Morris Lapidus originally designed the fountain in the 60’s, when Lincoln Road was closed to vehicular traffic. The artist, Carlos Alves whose studio was on Lincoln Road across from the fountain, was contacted by the City of Miami Beach and asked to do an art intervention on the fountain.Carlos chose the theme of “Save our Reefs” as the theme of the artwork. He has always been inspired by the beautiful oceans of South Florida and wanted the public to become aware of the splendor the reefs have to offer. The fish and corals on the fountain were hand-made. After Carlos sculpted some of the fish, he then used press molds to make multiples of the fish, shells, and the starfish. The corals and sponges and many other of the fish were all individually hand-made, painted and glazed. Most of the background tiles are hand glazed to resemble moving water, then broken and installed onto the fountain. It took a team of eight artists to install the tiles onto the fountain. The outcome is awe-inspiring, provides the viewer, and up close look at one of our great natural treasures the coral reef.
Save Our Reefs by Carlos Alves
Untitled, 1977
Artist: Charles O. PerryTitle: Untitled, 1977Medium: SteelLocation: Scott Rakow Youth Center, 2700 Sheridan AvenueDescription:Charles O. Perry is a creator of large scale and monumental sculptures that celebrate and question the laws of nature. Believing that sculpture must stand on its own merit without need of explanation, Perry’s works have an elegance of form that masks the mathematical and scientific complexity of its genesis. After graduating from Yale, Perry practiced architecture with the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. At that time, he won the Prix de Rome, a prestigious award granted by the American Academy in Rome for two years of study in Italy. “The basic difference in the discipline of architecture and sculpture is that I cannot fore a solution in sculpture, where in architecture, one can arrive at an apparent ‘rational’ solution through continual work.” For Perry, the appropriateness of the form is the final goal or criteria.Since 1994, Perry concentrated on large-scale public sculpture, the most prestigious of which stands in front of the Natural Air and Space Museum, in Washington, D.C. Perry’s sculptures are also located in public spaces at Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH; Harvard University, Boston, MA; the University of Connecticut at Storrs, CT; Zeimu University Tokyo Japan; Indianan University Museum of Art, Bloomington, IND; General Electric headquarters, Fairfield, CT; IBM Headquarters, Charlotte, NC; Shell Oil, Melbourne, Australia and Singapore. There are about ninety major commissions throughout the world.
Untitled by Charles O. Perry
Circle, 2004
Artist: Connie LloverasTitle: Circle, 2004Medium: Clay tilesLocation: North Shore Youth Center, 501 72nd StreetDescription:Connie Lloveras was born in Cuba and resides in Miami. She received her BFA degree from FIU. Monographic exhibitions of her work include galleries in Chicago, Cambridge, Puerto Rico and Nicaragua. Her works are included in the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, the Museum of Art in Ft. Lauderdale and Boca Raton. She has completed public art commission in Miami-Dade County and a federal building in Dallas, Texas.The artwork is comprised of 368 slab rolled squares (12″ x 12″) each containing an etched ball. The artist held workshops in North Beach for community participants to carve outlines into the tiles of the different balls that are used in the park as a source of recreation – a source for bringing people together. The process of creating the “Circle” documented the coming together of a very diverse community.
Circle by Connie Lloveras
Urban Deco, 2007
Artist: Garren OwensTitle: Urban Deco, 2007Medium: Cast ironLocation: CitywideDescription:Garren Owens is a resident of Miami Beach. Some of his projects include the Art Deco Historic sidewalk medallions and the Pennsylvania Plaza paving design.Garren Owens took inspiration from the design of the Manhole Covers from the surroundings and Miami Beach as his inspiration. The approach of the design of the Miami Beach manhole covers combines the three most unique and loved aspects of our beautiful city the sunrises, the ocean and Art Deco. The sunrise is that moment of tranquility at the beginning of each day. The ocean in Miami Beach has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world. Art Deco is perhaps what Miami Beach is most famous for, these exotic Art Deco motifs can be found throughout the Art Deco Historic District.
Urban Deco by Garren Owens
Farah Al Qasimi Plant Market/Stray Flowers in Swimming Pool/Still Life with Sample Text and Piña Coladas, 2022
Artist: Farah Al QasimiTitle: Plant Market/Stray Flowers in Swimming Pool/Still Life with Sample Text and Piña Coladas, 2021Medium: Photography and Vinyl Wall WrapLocation: Miami Beach Convention Center, East LobbyMiami Beach Legacy Art Purchase (2021)The City of Miami Beach purchased visual artist Farah Al Qasimi’s Plant Market/Stray Flowers in Swimming Pool/Still Life with Sample Text and Pina Coladas at Art Basel Miami Beach. The piece garnered the greatest number of public votes as part of the city’s annual Legacy Purchase Program. The piece was presented by Helena Anrather Gallery at the 2021 art fair.“Miami Beach is proud of our robust Art in Public Places program, and we are excited to add Farah’s incredible piece to our collection as this year’s Legacy Purchase,” said Mayor Dan Gelber. “We look forward to displaying it for visitors from around the world to enjoy as they explore our amazing community.”Al Qasimi’s latest project explores the earthly fabrication of Paradise. Her photographs often explore the language of adornment and its relationship to identity, probing the ways in which we construct self-image through our surroundings, and in this new body of work she turns a sharp, caustic eye on commercial fantasies of paradise, examining how they lure us into stores and showrooms and proliferate through commodities, advertising images, and pre-packaged experiences. Above all, Al Qasimi asks how these powerful myths and alluring visions shape our ideas about how we should behave and even who we are. These days, the artist suggests, paradise is no longer just a thing you can buy, but a backdrop for the life you’re supposed to have.Farah Al Qasimi (b.1991, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; lives and works in Brooklyn and Dubai) works in photography, video, and performance. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai; the San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco; the CCS Bard Galleries at the Hessel Museum of Art, New York; Helena Anrather, New York; The Third Line, Dubai; The List Visual Arts Center at MIT, Cambridge; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Toronto; and the Houston Center for Photography, Houston. Al Qasimi received her MFA from the Yale School of Art. She has participated in residencies at the Delfina Foundation, London; the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine; and is a recipient of the New York NADA Artadia Prize and the Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; and NYU’s Grey Art Gallery, New York.
Plant Market by Farah Al Qasimi
Colored Bone China Rags, 2022
Artist: Juana ValdésTitle: Colored Bone China Rags, 2022Medium: Bone China ClayLocation: Miami Beach Convention CenterLegacy Purchase Program SelectionThe City of Miami Beach is pleased to announce that Juana Valdés, represented by Spinello Projects, Miami, has been selected as its 2022 Legacy Purchase Program acquisition. The annual program tasks the city’s Art in Public Places Committee to select three world-class pieces of artwork from the emerging artists of the Art Basel Miami Beach Positions and Nova Sections with an $80,000 budget. Valdés was among three finalists selected by the city’s Art in Public Places Committee alongside Elizabeth Atterbury (presented by DOCUMENT, Chicago) and Ana Prata (presented by Isla Flotante, Buenos Aires).In her work, Colored Bone China Rags, Valdés examines Afro-Cuban migration through the lens of material culture and personal experience. The artist links bodies to the physical constitution of bone china clay and its extraction and displacement as raw material, commodity and commercial goods presented through an installation of 12, earth-toned rags cast in porcelain and mounted horizontally across a wall.We are committed to providing excellent public service and safety to all who live, work and play in our vibrant, tropical, historic community.Born in Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Valdes came to the United States in 1971. She received her BFA in sculpture from the Parsons School of Design (1991), her MFA in fine arts from the School of Visual Arts (1993) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture (1995). She is an associate professor in the Art Department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Recent solo exhibitions include: Terrestrial Bodies, Cuban Legacy Gallery, Miami Dade College Special Collections, Freedom Tower (2019-2020); An Inherent View of the World, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami (2017); From Island to Ocean: Caribbean and Pacific Dialogues, Center for Cultural Analysis, Rutgers University, NJ (2015), and Remnants-What Remains, Thomas Hunter Project Space, Hunter College, CUNY (2014).Her work has also been included in group exhibitions in such museums and university galleries such as: Site Santa Fe, Perez Art Museum, El Museo del Barrio, NYC; P.S. 1 MOMA, NYC;MOCA, North Miami; Galerie Verein Berliner Künstler, Berlin; the Mason Gross Galleries at Rutgers University, New Jersey; Newark Museum, New Jersey; Galerie Binnen, Amsterdam and FreeSpace, Sydney
Colored Bone China Rag by Juana Valdés
Minna, 2022
Artist: Jaume PlensaTitle: MinnaMedium: Steel MeshLocation: Miami Beach’s Pride ParkThe steel mesh portrait, located in Miami Beach’s Pride Park, explores the concept of the invisible in everyday life. Minna was commissioned as a gift to the City of Miami Beach by philanthropist and businessman Norman Braman, one of the visionaries who helped bring Art Basel to the convention center two decades ago.“For me, the most important things in life are invisible” Plensa states; such as love, compassion, and hope. Paying homage to that concept, he distances himself from rendering specific individuals and instead lingers upon a sense of humanity made up of steel mesh, drawn in space. This 16-foot-tall portrait evokes a sense of stillness and serenity, despite being situated amidst the bustling urban landscape of Miami Beach. The ethereal sculpture appears to shift in form from every angle, reaching almost total invisibility when the portrait seems to disappear amongst its surroundings. The stainless steel lines delineate the topography of the skin, illustrating the sublimity of the external human form. What remains amidst the subject’s delicate mesh, suggests the intricacies of the obscure aspects of the human body. Plensa evades the need for complete figuration by compelling viewers to use inference to discern facility from the material lines that define the final border between space and emptiness. Minna is the essence of this intervention – the unfinished face traversed by light, reminding viewers that we are all beautiful outside, but even more beautiful inside.Internationally celebrated Spanish artist Jaume Plensa (b. 1955) is one of the world’s foremost sculptors in the public realm with celebrated projects spanning the globe in such cities as Calgary, Chicago, San Diego, Montréal, London, Paris, Dubai, Bangkok, Shanghai, and Tokyo. Over the past 35 years, the artist has produced a multifaceted body of work creating sculpture that speaks to the capacity and beauty of humanity, often bringing people together through the activation of public spaces. Conventional sculptural materials like glass, steel, and bronze blend with unconventional media such as water, light, and sound to create hybrid works of intricate energy, psychological weight, and symbolic richness. Jaume Plensa has had solo museum exhibitions at the MACBA: Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid Spain; MAMC–Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-Étienne Métropole, Saint- Étienne, France; Max Ernst Museum Brühl des LVR, Brühl, Germany; The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Yorkshire, England; and Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas. He lives and works in Barcelona.
Minna by Juame Plensa
FriendsWithYou Starchild
Artist: FriendsWithYouTitle: Starchild, 2022Medium: Powder Coated Steel & Aluminum, 28.5ft x 6ft x 50ft.Location: 41st Street & Pine Tree DriveAfter enthusiastic public response, the City of Miami Beach is pleased to announce the acquisition of the monumental artwork Starchild into its permanent collection. The sculpture by artist collaboration FriendsWithYou stands in Miami Beach’s Henry Liebman Square (41st Street & Pine Tree Drive).Starchild is the main character in FriendsWithYou’s newest body of work, a longform conceptual project in which the artists are renaming the Earth to “Ocean” as a means to unify the planet by a name. In this metaphor, Starchild is a key archetype inside the origin story of Ocean lore; he marks the beginning of life on Ocean — just as the artist’s iconic Little Cloud has been a key character in their oeuvre over the years, Starchild is now introduced as a symbol of light, power, and nature.For the past 20 years, FriendsWithYou has been on a mission to promote radical kindness and positivity through their work, from their public artworks and institutional works in the contemporary art world and reaching beyond into popular culture through immersive installations and experiences, sculptures, paintings, animation, live performances, virtual reality, and digital art. The artists have gained international recognition through their public exhibitions and artworks in museums, art galleries, and public spaces across the world, including fine art exhibitions at institutions such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the NSU Art Museum, and Dallas Contemporary; major installations such as their Little Cloud balloon at the 2018 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, their iconic set for J Balvin at Coachella in 2019, and Little Cloud Sky, a public art installation commissioned by The City of Miami Beach; and their hit animation series “True and the Rainbow Kingdom” on Netflix. The duo are currently developing two new television shows, with the goal of bringing art to the entire world through the medium to promote positivity and compassion. STATEMENT BY THE ARTISTS“Ocean is a collection of metaphors conjuring our combined humanity; where most belief systems highlight what’s unique to them, Ocean’s mythology aims to unearth the common myths and viewpoints that exist in everyone, deep in the human psyche, to create a mythology that everyone can not only relate to but be a part of, regardless of cultural background. The closer we get to the truth of our existence, the more we can sense the power of our nature. The unification and creation of a better society has to start with this understanding which allows us to be more compassionate to each other as well as seeing every living thing as us.”ABOUT FRIENDSWITHYOUFriendsWithYou is the art collaboration of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III, created with the intention to bring more joy, kindness, and love to the world. The collaboration is a vehicle for the exploration of emotional healing through culture creation and art making. Each work is created with the intention of transcendence, and nurturing care for the viewer or participant. FriendsWithYou’s meaning isin its name, in that everything in the universe can and wants to be friends with you, an aide in the promotion of love, harmony & peace in our lives. Our goal is to connect and heal as much as possible through our work, to grow the love and joy in each person, creating an exponential aggregate of sharing, healing, and compassion for each other and our living planet.
Friends With You Starchild by FriendsWithYou
My Home, Mi Hogar
Artist: Boa Mistura and O, MiamiTitle: My Home, Mi Hogar, 2023Medium: PaintLocation: 2231 Prairie Ave, Miami Beach, FLThe City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places Program is proud to present My Home, Mi Hogar, a public art project developed in collaboration between multidisciplinary Madrid-based artist collective Boa Mistura and poetry nonprofit O, Miami at Miami Beach Senior High School, located at the corner of Prairie Avenue and Dade Boulevard. To be unveiled on Friday, May 5, 2023 at 10:30 a.m., the project will feature murals and poetry permanently installed on the water tanks adjacent to Miami Beach Senior High. The featured poetry and finalized mural designs are the work of 201 students who have participated in workshops with O, Miami and Boa Mistura since the fall of 2022. My Home, Mi Hogar uses a line from Miami Beach Senior High student Valentina’s poem to transform the water tanks, which are part of the daily landscape of attendees, into a colorful message about pride of place. The water tanks are understood as the representation of two close but separate locations which emphasize the proximity of what unites us and the nuances of what makes us unique.On the water tanks, Valentina’s featured poetry reads, "finding my home in every voice that I hear (mi hogar está en cada voz que escucho)", which speaks of how our identity travels within us like a seed we plant in the place where we live, creating new stories, new ties, and new coexistence environments. One tank will be painted with the English line, and one will be painted to display the same line, translated into Valentina's native Spanish. "The My Home, Mi Hogar mural project transforms our water tanks into a vibrant display of collaboration between O, Miami, Boa Mistura, Miami Beach Senior High School, and the City of Miami Beach,” said Miami Beach Vice Mayor Ricky Arriola. “Valentina's captivating poem emphasizes the richness of our diverse community and the significance of inclusivity. This striking initiative not only elevates the visual appeal of the tanks, but also celebrates the voices of our young people and the shared human experience that transcends languages and borders." Known for their development of works in public spaces, Boa Mistura is dedicated to using artwork to transform cities and create links between people. O, Miami builds community around poetry in Miami, using language to invest in a new shared narrative for the city. Mi Home, Mi Hogar brings these missions together using color and language to cover two adjoining three-million-gallon water storage spaces. Keeping in mind the circular surface of the structures, the murals take on a repetition-based design that connects the beginning and the end, causing an infinite loop. In the spirit of Boa Mistura’s highly collaborative practice, sections of the mural will be painted by Miami Beach Senior High students themselves.About O, MiamiO, Miami builds community around the power of poetry. Through collaborations, projects, events, and publications, we create a platform for amplifying Miamians, investing in a new shared narrative of our city and a more equitable picture of its future. Since the Fall of 2022, O, Miami has been teaching poetry at Miami Beach Senior High School. About Boa MisturaBoa Mistura are a multidisciplinary team with roots in graffiti born at the end of 2001 in Madrid. Their work is mainly developed in public space. They understand their work as a tool to transform the city and create links between people and feel a responsibility towards the city and the time in which they live. About the City of Miami Beach Art in Public Places ProgramArt in Public Places is a city board responsible for the commission and purchase of artwork by contemporary artists in all media. The program allocates funds totaling 2% of hard costs for City projects and joint private/public projects. Funds from construction projects may be aggregated into the Art in Public Places Fund and allocated for artwork at public sites and for collection maintenance. The fund is administered by a City Commission-appointed citizen’s board of seven members, the Art in Public Places Committee.
