It was a raining day, so it took me longer to decide what to do. I had planed to visit places outdoors, but The Bass Museum of Art seemed to be a better idea. And what a pleasant experience!
Collins Park, the entrance of the Bass Museum of Art.
It's called a museum, but it felt more like an art gallery to me.
Outside, at the park, it's the Miami Mountain (2016) by Ugo Rondinone - a 42 feet tall structure.
When you enter the museum a - literally - welcome wall welcomes you in 70 different languages.
I was lucky to get to see this amazing exhibition by Mickalene Thomas. She recreates an apartment environment from the 70's, with furniture, walls, floors, music, and lots of art, or course. Thomas has her own pieces here, but I was told she incorporates emerging artists in this exhibit as well. The whole experience is incredible. It's so colourful, but intriguing at the same time. It made me feel cozy and threw me back to aspects of my childhood. I absolutely loved it.
FROM THE BASS MUSEUM OF ART WEBSITE: https://thebass.org/art/mickalene-thomas/
Inspired by the local New Jersey play ‘Put a Little Sugar in my Bowl’ organized and performed by the artists’ mother, friends, and family as well as the parties hosted by the artist’s mother in the late 1970s, Mickalene Thomas: Better Nights is an installation that will transform the galleries into an immersive art experience for the duration of the exhibition.
The installation embodies an apartment environment, conceptually reconstructed according to the domestic aesthetic of the period, including faux wood paneling, wallpaper and custom seating reupholstered with the artist’s signature textiles. An extension of Thomas’ artistic universe, the installation incorporates both work by the artist and a curated selection by Thomas featuring work by emerging and prominent artists of color, with the prop-like tableau echoing the collage-like compositional style of Thomas’ paintings.
Sharing the museum's space is the South Korean artist Haegue Yang, with the exhibit In The Cone of Uncertainty. Yang's work didn't immediately speak to me like Thomas' did, still I was fascinated by her creativity and choices of material.
FROM THE BASS MUSEUM OF ART WEBSITE: https://thebass.org/art/haegue-yang/
In the Cone of Uncertainty foregrounds Haegue Yang’s (b. 1971, Seoul) consistent curiosity about the world and tireless experimentation with materializing the complexity of identities in flux. Living between Seoul and Berlin, Yang employs industrially produced quotidian items, digital processes, and labor-intensive craft techniques. She mobilizes and enmeshes complex, often personal, histories and realities vis-à-vis sensual and immersive works by interweaving narrative with form. Often evoking performative, sonic and atmospheric perceptions with heat, wind and chiming bells, Yang’s environments appear familiar, yet engender bewildering experiences of time and place.
The exhibition presents a selection of Yang’s oeuvre spanning the last decade – including window blind installations, anthropomorphic sculptures, light sculptures, and mural-like graphic wallpaper – taking its title from an expression of the South Florida vernacular, that describes the predicted path of hurricanes. Alluding to our eagerness and desperation to track the unstable and ever-evolving future, this exhibition addresses current anxieties about climate change, overpopulation and resource scarcity. Framing this discourse within a broader consideration of movement, displacement and migration, the exhibition contextualizes contemporary concerns through a trans-historical and philosophical meditation of the self.
These human size figures are amazing. They are build with small golden balls, like marbles size.
She plays with space, light projection and blinds.
This is my favourite part of Yang's work: the Yearning Melancholy Red (2008).
The circles of lights move through the hanging blinds, dancing slowing around the huge room. It's magical and the entire room chances colour and mood every second.
Mirrors add to the already lively experience.
Call Me Anything You Want, 2013
Artist Paola Pivi
Part of the exhibition Blind Spot, 2019, by Italian artist Lara Favareto.
This was a fun one. You walk around industrial sizes car wash brushes in full speed. It recreated memories of being inside the car while it was getting washed.
Later in the day the rain stopped and I continued with my original plan, heading to the mainland.
The Miami Design District is an interesting neighbourhood with fancy designers stores and fine architecture. It's not my natural environment, still it was worth visiting it.
The Design District is known for its sleek modern architecture, upscale interior design stores and art galleries. Luxury fashion and jewelry boutiques, cafes and celebrity-chef restaurants draw a well-heeled crowd. Public art dotting the area includes the Fly’s Eye Dome, a geodesic dome designed by inventor Buckminster Fuller. Opening in December, 2017, The Institute of Contemporary Art will show cutting-edge work.
I absolutely love these monkeys hanging from trees. They look so out of place - like me here - but they are fun and make the area a bit less pompous.
FROM : https://www.miamidesigndistrict.net/listing/775/pink-beasts-fernando-laposse/
The Miami Design District has chosen designer Fernando Laposse for their 2019 Design Commission. For his Miami Design District installation Pink Beasts, Fernando Laposse has commissioned the work of like-minded fiber artist, Angela Damman as well as local artisans in Sacabah, Yucatán as part of the installation.
For Pink Beasts Laposse used cochineals, a tiny insect that is native to central Mexico and grows on the Upontia cactus, commonly known as the prickly pear. Cochineal produces the world’s brightest natural red dye, which was originally used by the Aztecs to color everything from textiles to buildings. The cochineals are from an organic farm in the mountains of Oaxaca and dyed the fibers of the agave plant (also known as ‘sisal’) to make a landscape of pink.
There were a couple of fashion photo shooting going on.
Here are the monkeys again, with the fun pink hammocks and the Fly's Eye Dome right behide them.
This area breaks a bit from the overwhelming high end shopping experience. It's a good place to relax and perhaps think about the consequences of our crazy consumption habits.
FROM: https://www.miamidesigndistrict.net/listing/395/buckminster-fuller-flys-eye-dome-1979802014/
In 1965 Buckminster Fuller designed and patented the Fly’s Eye Dome, which he called an “autonomous dwelling machine” Prototypes began to be built by hand in 1977 and by 1983; three of the fiberglass spheres in various sizes (12-foot, 24-foot, 50-foot) had been produced. Fuller died before he was able to realize his vision for the structure. However, almost 50 years later, the design, a Monohex variation of the geodesic dome, can clearly be seen as a forerunner of today’s green building movement. In 2011, collector Craig Robins acquired the 24-foot prototype with the intention of exhibiting it and using it as inspiration for a key element of the Miami Design District. The following year, The Buckminster Fuller Institute, in partnership with Goetz Composites, ConformLab and DRDesign, began the development of a program to complete Fuller’s vision, using advanced technologies and materials not available to Fuller in the 1970’s. BFI was then commissioned to produce a Fly’s Eye Dome utilizing state-of-the-art materials, intelligence and techniques, to be prominently incorporated in the Miami Design District.
This sculpture is super cool.
The man is actually writing on the ground, and he only has the top half of his body.
https://www.miamidesigndistrict.net/#
Interesting roots.
It's just a cup, a very big cup - I can fit inside it.
It's big and uncomfortable like all the single use plastic cups we dispose every day.
FROM: https://www.paulacrown.com/jokester/
JOKESTER is a large-scale sculpture series by Paula Crown. Originating from an installation work — SOLO TOGETHER — JOKESTER takes Crown’s solo cup sculptures and brings it to a monumental scale. As a part of #solotogether, JOKESTER serves as a reminder of consumption, waste, pollution, and re-use. It was installed in Upper Gondola Plaza at The Little Nell in Aspen on Saturday June 23rd, 2018.
On Tuesday, December 4, DACRA unveiled JOKESTER 2 in Miami’s Design District during Miami Art Week 2018. The site-specific artwork is the second large-scale sculpture in the SOLO TOGETHER series. Its counterpart debuted earlier this year as a public art project in Aspen, Colorado, aimed at disrupting the bucolic scenery with a bold call-to-action to end single-use plastic waste. Crown’s JOKESTER 2 debut creates a pointed moment for reflection amidst the excitement and exuberance of Miami Art Week.
No, this is not an art gallery, nor a museum.
It's a garage... for parking cars.
Perhaps I missed the point, and it is an art gallery AND a museum after all.
FROM: https://www.dezeen.com/2018/07/05/museum-garage-parking-faciliity-miami-design-district/
Five architecture studios have contributed facades to this parking garage in Miami Design District, resulting in a mash-up of bold eclectic styles.
The seven-storey cast-concrete building, known as Museum Garage, was designed and engineered by Miami studio Tim Haahs with project manager Javier Sánchez.
People who know me well, knows I am not the best with directions. This trip has been no different. I often get lost and find myself exactly were I was in the first place. Anyway, sometimes it can be good to get lost, because you can find different e interesting things.
It wasn't in my plans to visit the Historic Buena Vista, but I accidentally found myself in this beautiful neighbourhood. It kind of reminds me of some buildings from back home - in Brazil,- specifically the one where my paediatrician used to work when I was a kid.
FROM : https://www.miamism.com/place/historic-buena-vista-east
Historic Buena Vista is located within The City of Miami, just north of The Design District - generally between NE 2nd Avenue and North Miami Avenue from NE 42nd Street to NE 48th Street. It was designated historic in 1988 and was developed from the 1920's to the present.
In the 1890s, Buena Vista was a small village whose founding and growth paralleled Miami's. During the Land Boom of the 1920s, the area was developed as the Biltmore and Shadowlawn subdivisions. Originally home to many “cracker” immigrants from Georgia and North Carolina, the neighborhood soon became popular with the owners of nearby businesses. The houses reflect their original owners' rising social status and include fine examples of Mediterranean Revival, Mission, Craftsman, and Art Deco style residences.
This place was also highly recommended by my friend Andrea from Toronto. The Mandolin is a must try restaurant just side the Design District area. The wait time for lunch at 3pm was about 30 minutes. The Mandolin is fun, busy, with people enjoying a great meal under trees in a large backyard.
FROM MANDOLIN'S WEBSITE: http://www.mandolinmiami.com
A story of love and heritage.
Inspired by the tavernas of Aegean coastal towns, Mandolin Aegean Bistro was opened by husband and wife team Ahmet Erkaya and Anastasia Koutsioukis in Miami in 2009 serving homespun recipes from Greece and Turkey. After a trip to Miami they stumbled upon an old 1940s bungalow and decided to move from New York and open their dream restaurant serving simple, unpretentious, healthy food using the freshest ingredients in a welcoming atmosphere being surrounded by a happy team and amazing people.
Opened in the burgeoning Design District, this eatery was created by restoring a quaint Florida home into a 150 seat restaurant with a full outdoor dining area, back house/indoor seating, bakery/market component, and its own edible garden, where they harvest their own seasonal ingredients.
As you enter the blue gates, you're instantly transported to the Greek islands or Turkish coast with a dose of warm, genuine, Mediterranean hospitality.
Fish, freekeh and veggies. Yummy!
After some shopping it was time to go back to the hotel.
I took the bus and the Miami Beach trolley, a free transportation that runs in a loop, from South to North Miami Beach.
I almost feel like a local. ;)
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