Shana Beth Mason
The academically-minded contemporary art community in Miami agrees that Romero Britto equals blasphemy. His obnoxiously loud, empty designs ripping off every cultural staple from Mickey Mouse to Jesus Christ have landed on hundreds of tourists’ hard-case luggage and have gone as far as earning a shelf in the gift shop of the Louvre. This appears to be the trigger for a noticeable hint of hesitation or outright resistance against pop art in the Miami art world.
Even Wynwood gallerist Harold Golen, who sells action figures, books, and prints in his funky gallery on NW 2nd Avenue, declares that his gallery specializes in “pop surrealism.” His wild combinations of Buck Rogers-like comic strips laced with crude language and sexual innuendoes and giant alien sculptures are not quite the tourist trap laid by Britto. Nearby, Muralist-turned-animé whiz Miguel Paredes opened a small store displaying wide-eyed bunnies and Buddhas (and somehow manages to retain a hardened, urban edge). Pop culture itself is healthy in Wynwood, breathing through the now-famous Wynwood Walls (conceived by Jeffrey Deitch and Tony Goldman) and seen through other colorful murals sprawling through the Downtown and Design District sectors. But to find a worthy work of pop art takes a bit more digging.
Wolfgang Roth & Partners Fine Art, a floor above the street in the Miami Design District, offers works from Robert Indiana, Andy Warhol, and hyper-pop’s poster boy David LaChapelle. More subversive, provocative, and disturbing pieces can be found at Francisco De La Torre’s Butter Gallery in Wynwood: artists such as Tawnie Silva, Rick Falcon and Ahol Sniffs Glue push the pop envelope with plastic bag sculptures, exquisitely rendered figurative paintings, and graffiti tags, respectively. Newly minted galleries in Wynwood: Waltman Ortega Fine Art, Black Square Gallery, and Ascaso Gallery all show contemporary art that tugs at the pop enthusiast.
And yet, these galleries are considered the new generation of Miami’s contemporary art environment. Long-established names (by comparison) such as the Dorsch Gallery, Gallery Diet, Fredric Snitzer, Locust Projects, and Bas Fisher Invitational are pointedly geared towards ambitious multi-media installations, rigorous contemporary painting and drawing, and performance art. Pop art in Miami is, apparently, an underground phenomenon that is cautiously stepping into the public consciousness. Perhaps it is the fear that a city often associated with a saturated, excessive personality (not unlike Las Vegas, but with an undeniable Latin American influence) and catering to tourists and retirees would cave in from an overdose of pop imagery. But slowly, pop is beginning to find a unique, unscathed voice in Miami’s contemporary arts scene without a trace of Britto’s suitcases or perfume bottles.
