Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami

Exhibition Schedule 2011-2012

 

Knight Exhibition Series

September 23 – November 13, 2011

The artists in this exhibition use playful tactics to confront, alter and inhabit existing societal structures.  By shifting their artistic practices, the artists operate as active agents, employing curatorial, administrative, and educational strategies and aesthetics to insert new meanings into existing realms. Most of the artists will be creating new works specifically for this exhibition. Works by Darren Bader, Nina Beier, Adriana Lara, Natalia Ibanez Lario, Jose Carlos Martinat, Amilcar Packer, Anders Smebye, and Nicolas Paris Velez will be featured. Modify, As Needed is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Associate Curator Ruba Katrib. Made possible by Knight Exhibition Endowment. Additional support provided by Funding Arts Network.

 

 

MARK HANDFORTH: ROLLING STOP

Knight Exhibition Series

November 30, 2011 – February 19, 2012

MOCA is currently celebrating its 15th anniversary in its Joan Lehman Building. An important part of the museum’s history is its strong support of Miami-based artists. Mark Handforth was the first Miami artist to receive a solo show at MOCA, North Miami in March 1996. He has since achieved major international recognition and has become an important role model for Miami artists.  This exhibition makes a strong statement about MOCA’s role in shaping Miami as an international center for contemporary art.

 

Handforth’s large-scale sculptures take their inspiration from everyday objects. Items such as an illuminated lamppost resting on the ground, a crying neon moon, a monumental coat hanger and a giant traffic stop sign are poetic, lyrical, and comical objects that wryly comment on daily life and human interaction. By blowing up their scale and distorting their form, Handforth imbues each object with a distinctive personality. Although each sculpture is a self-contained work, Handforth intended for groups of works to be shown together and has conceived the installation at MOCA as a landscape through which viewers can wander. The exhibition brings together over 30 works, including a major new light installation occupying over 80 feet of the museum’s wall that will highlight the unique space of MOCA’s current galleries designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates and will lead to the groundbreaking for its new expansion. The exhibition will spread out to locations throughout South Florida, including an installation of Electric Tree, located in Griffing Park, North Miami that consists of a giant banyan tree illuminated by over 60 fluorescent light fixtures. Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. Made possible by Knight Exhibition Endowment. Additional support provided by Christie’s.

 

 

PIVOT POINTS V: TERESITA FERNANDEZ

November 30 – February 19, 2012

MOCA’s Pivot Points exhibitions focus on the museum’s extensive collection. Teresita Fernandez received her first solo museum exhibition at MOCA’s former building in 1994 and has since achieved world renowned for her installations that evoke the relationship between space and the body.  Untitled (Swimming Pool), donated to the museum by Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz, was created for the museum and was the first work to be exhibited in MOCA’s Pavilion Gallery as part of its 1996 inaugural exhibition Defining the 90s: Consensus-Making in New York, Miami and Los Angeles.  This installation illustrates MOCA’s focused approach to collecting pivotal works that mark important moments in the development of the artists’ work and turning points in contemporary art.  Over the past 15 years, Fernandez has been featured in  numerous solo and group exhibitions worldwide and she has completed several large-scale site-specific commissions in Seattle, WA, Dallas, TX,  Naoshima, Japan, London, UK, and New York and will have a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2012. She is a recipient of the 2005 MacArthur Foundation “Genius Fellowship.

 

 

RITA ACKERMANN

March 15 – May 6, 2012

After moving to New York from her native Hungary in the early 1990s, Rita Ackermann first attracted attention for her drawings depicting young female figures representing the total freedom of living outside the rules and constraints of society. This survey exhibition examines the artist’s paintings throughout her career and the changes in her work that occurred through her immersion into Western culture. One of the few contemporary artists to discuss her work in terms of “style” rather than practice, Ackermann has forged a new visual language in painting, drawing and collages, which ranges from psychologically intense expressionism to colorfield abstraction. The exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami and is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater. A major monograph published by Skira Rizzoli with essays by Clearwater, Harmony Korine, John Kelsey, Felix Ensslin and Josh Smith will accompany the exhibition.

 

 

RAGNAR KJARTANSSON: SONG

Knight Exhibition Series

May 24 – September 2, 2012

Ragnar Kjartansson: Song is the first solo US museum exhibition of the work of Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. A musician as well as artist, Kjartansson (b. 1976) has been drawn to the theater and performance since he formed a band in his teenage years. The exhibition includes a selection of video works from the last decade.  Kjartansson’s videos reflect an interest in music and theater and the personae of its performers, often coupled with extreme environments. The End (2008) features two musicians in a mountainous snowy landscape, while Satan is Real (2005) finds the naked artist buried to his chest in the lawn of a public park, playing a guitar.

 

 

In addition to his video work, Kjartansson has become known for inhabiting galleries and more unexpected locations where he performs live, often for extended periods. For the 2009 Venice Biennale, he painted portraits of his friend, every day for six months, in a crumbling palazzo on Venice’s Grand Canal. Kjartansson’s approach wavers between besotted optimism and deadpan, sometimes unnerving, directness. Ritual, repetition, and an almost hallucinogenic reverie share the stage with humor, levity, and a charismatic impulse to entertain as in his film installation God 2007, in MOCA’s collection.   The exhibition is organized by Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh and is curated by Associate Curator Dan Byers.

 

 

ED RUSCHA: ON THE ROAD

May 24 – September 2, 2012

Los Angeles artist Ed Ruscha, whose career spans five decades, is known for his use of language to document and comment on the shifting character of American culture. For this exhibition Ruscha has drawn inspiration from the classic American novel On the Road by Jack Kerouac to create his own limited edition art book version of the novel and a new body of paintings, drawings and photographs,

The exhibition, organized by Douglas Fogel, chief curator of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, includes Ruscha’s artists book, large paintings and drawings each taking its text from the novel.  Just as Kerouac’s words provide Ruscha with new means to explore his archetypal landscapes, Ruscha’s art adds new analysis to Kerouac’s original and radical use of language.

 

 

M– USEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART

Address: 770 NE 125th Street,

North Miami, FL  33161

Phone: 305.893.6211

Website:www.mocanomi.org

 

 

Hours and Admission: Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday – 11 am to 5 pm; Wednesday from 1–9 pm; and Sunday from noon to 5 pm. MOCA’s galleries are also open on the last Friday of each month from 7–10 pm in conjunction with Jazz at MOCA performances.  Admission is free for MOCA members, North Miami residents and City employees and children under 12; $5 for adults; $3 for seniors and students with ID.

 

 

The mission of the Museum of Contemporary Art is to make contemporary art accessible to diverse audiences – especially under-served populations – by exploring the art of our time and its relationship to a broader cultural context.

 

Connect with Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami on Facebook and Twitter (@MOCANOMI).

 

 

MOCA Knight Exhibition Series

In 2007, MOCA received a $5 million endowment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to establish the MOCA Knight Exhibition Endowment. The endowment is part of a $460 million philanthropic initiative created by Knight Foundation to help transform South Florida by bringing the community together through the arts.  The Knight Arts Challenge includes three institutional endowments and an open-invitation community contest to fund the best ideas for the arts.  It enables MOCA to present exhibitions and multi-media projects each year featuring the work of emerging and experimental artists, as well as to develop innovative public and education programs. The Knight Foundation Endowment makes MOCA one of the few contemporary art museums in the nation to have a dedicated source of funding of this nature.  Since its launch in December 2008, MOCA’s Knight Exhibition Series has featured the exhibitions: Anri Sala: Purchase Not by Moonlight (2008-09), The Possibility of an Island (2008-09), Luis Gispert (2009), The Reach of Realism (2009-10), Ceal Floyer: Auto Focus (2010), and Cory Arcangel: The Sharper Image (2010).  For more, visit www.KnightArts.org.

 

 

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation advances journalism in the digital age and invests in the vitality of communities where the Knight brothers owned newspapers. Knight Foundation focuses on projects that promote informed, engaged communities and lead to transformational change. For more, visit www.knightfoundation.org.

MOCA Knight Exhibition Series is made possible by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Exhibitions and programs at MOCA are made possible through grants from the City of North Miami. Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, and the National Endowment for the Arts. With the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami is accredited by the American Association of Museums.

 

 

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