Pérez Art Museum Miami

The work in this gallery emerged in the 1950s after World War II. Post-war American art mirrored the era’s societal values and changes, with movements like Abstract Expressionism championing individualism and freedom of expression. The booming economy and technological advancements influenced artists to experiment with new materials and techniques, while also inspiring movements like Pop Art that embraced consumer culture. The political climate of the Cold War positioned abstract art as a symbol of American freedom, contrasting with Soviet-controlled art. Later, as social changes unfolded, particularly the Civil Rights movement, artists increasingly addressed themes of equality and race in their work. The Space Age sparked futuristic and minimalist art trends, while growing environmental awareness gave rise to land art. Throughout this period, artists both reflected and challenged these values, creating a diverse artistic landscape that continues to influence contemporary art. 

Post-painterly abstraction developed as a response to the emotional intensity of the Abstract Expressionism movement, seeking to go beyond the gestural approach of artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning by promoting a more cerebral type of art. In turn, this new movement focused on the simplicity of the material itself. It emphasized large areas of pure color, hard-edged forms, and minimal texture. Artists like Morris Louis and Helen Frankenthaler focused on the flatness of the work, using techniques such as staining unprimed canvas. This movement, which included subgroups like Color Field and Hard-edge painting, reflected post-war American values of order and rationality. It mirrored the era’s focus on technological progress by experimenting with application methods and working with new materials like acrylic paints (a recent invention at the time). Post-painterly abstraction significantly influenced subsequent art movements, paving the way for Minimalism and artists like Morris Louis by challenging traditional notions of composition, marking a shift towards a more conceptual approach in abstract art. 

Delta Eta by artist Morris Louis is a painting on canvas made in 1960. It measures nearly nine feet by nineteen feet and is hung in landscape orientation, meaning its longest side runs parallel to the floor. 

This painting is an example of Abstract Expressionism, which is a style of painting that focuses on the gestural and often spontaneous movement of shapes and colors and how they can convey emotion. It is from the artist’s Unfurled series, which is characteristic of “Delta Eta,” as it is comprised of what could be considered three distinct sections. The outer sections are mostly comprised of a large expanse of unprimed canvas, which is a soft beige in color as well as a soft weave in texture. The middle section consists of four life-size drips of paint that span diagonally across the composition and past its edges, mimicking the slow and viscous drip of maple syrup. 

These monumental and splashing strips of paint are in various colors that seem to glow from within the canvas. A cadmium orange thickly drips from the top center of the canvas towards the left-hand side. Below that is a purple drip, followed by an apple green and finally a velvety deep teal. Although these drips flow closely to each other, they do not touch, thus creating a tension of movement and a striking vividness against the raw canvas. The flow of these drips is neatly interrupted in the very center of the canvas with an implied line of untouched background. To create this illusion of a vertical line, the movement of the paint seems to ambiguously stop abruptly and then continue again. 

The artist is known for pouring a viscous paint called “Magma” directly onto a canvas and then either tilting the frame or varying the tautness of the canvas to gently direct the paint. Because of the unprimed nature of the canvas, the paint has completely penetrated it, similar to dying fabric. The intentional placement of these drips as well as their soft texture heavily implies that this is the case with Delta Eta. The entire composition seems to vibrate with both starkness and vibrancy, stillness and movement, resulting in a meditative experience. 

Untitled (Mirrored Cubes) is composed of four large cubes with mirrored surfaces. The cubes are presented on the ground level and aligned in a grid formation. Each cube measures twenty-four inches tall, wide and deep, or around two square feet. They are positioned roughly two feet apart, yet the placement of the cubes can vary depending on the exhibition or space.  

This is a site-specific work that can be rearranged every time it is displayed. The cubes are constructed of wood and covered with glass mirrors that reflect their surroundings. The mirrored cubes can easily blend into the space as they are below eye level. Lighting in the gallery will reflect from the top of each cube. This work is an optical illusion that creates a void in the gallery as there are no edges to the cubes. Each cube blends into the space seamlessly reflecting the visitors and other art pieces, if any.  

This work is often presented in an empty room and reflects only the walls and other cubes creating an ‘infinity’ effect, like a visual echo through physical space. The edges of the cubes are sharp and should be avoided. Though it is not encouraged to walk through the cubes, there is a two-foot gap between the four objects, creating a cross shaped void between the pieces.  

In this gallery, six artists push artistic boundaries through diverse approaches.

Lydia Okumura creates installations that explore perception through geometry and dimension, using string, glass, and paint to make works that change with the viewer’s position. Her work since the 1970s combines Brazilian Constructivism—a movement that emerged from Brazil’s mid-20th century social climate, connecting geometric abstraction with social concerns—with Minimalist ideas, turning flat shapes into seemingly three-dimensional forms. 

Mark Bradford creates large abstract works from materials found in his South Los Angeles community, like posters, billboard paper, and street advertisements. He builds and sands these layers to reveal hidden histories while exploring social justice, inequality, and discrimination. His prints follow a similar approach, using found materials and sanding to create richly textured editions that echo his larger works. Through this process, Bradford turns everyday materials into powerful statements about urban life. 

Richard Serra’s work emphasizes physical weight and presence. Julie Mehretu’s work often references specific historical events and political movements, translating complex social narratives into visual form through her distinctive vocabulary of signs, symbols, and architectural fragments, while Ellsworth Kelly focuses on pure color and shape interactions. Nicole Cherubini reimagines ceramic traditions, combining clay with metal and wood in sculptures that balance rough and refined elements. 

Untitled, by Mark Bradford, created in 2012 is a series of fourteen printed artworks arranged in a grid. These prints were produced using photogravure. Producing an image from a photographic negative transferred to a metal plate. The prints were also created using etching and chine-colle a printmaking technique that involves adhering a thin paper to a thicker sheet of paper, or support, during the printing process. The dimensions of each artwork within the grid are 20 x 16 inches.   

Each print has a white background with rough, scratched textures. The artworks use black and white, to create a distressed or weathered effect. In the center of each artwork is a small, dark grey and black square or rectangle. Each square or rectangle has worn text at the center from advertisements, notices, or political slogans. The artwork appears old, weathered, and rough. Scratched backgrounds also add to the appearance of being exposed to the elements for a long time. 

Untitled II, by Lydia Okumura, created in 1981, is a site-specific art installation made of acrylic, aluminum, and cotton thread. The installation dimensions from wall to floor are eight and half feet tall, nine feet in width, and four feet in depth.

This sculpture features a combination of geometric shapes and soft, muted colors. It is composed of floating planes in light purple and a pale pink, delicately suspended in the gallery space.   

The art installation includes a painted pale pink square on the gallery wall connected by nearly invisible strings and painted lines to a purple aluminum shape on the floor. The artwork connects these two flat shapes with aluminum wire and painted lines to give the illusion of a floating or tilted cube. The lines connecting the shapes make it look like the artwork hovers in the air. This effect creates an illusion of depth and makes the shapes look three-dimensional. As visitors move around the artwork, the angles and perspectives shift, creating a dynamic experience.  

Using simple shapes and lines, the work draws attention to how the work interacts with its environment.  This art installation is displayed both on the white walls and wood floor of the gallery, which contrasts with the clean, solid pastel colors of the artwork.    

In Alfredo Jaar’s Europa viewers are met with large lightboxes that seem to depict flames. Behind the flames are several fragmented images of people and rubble, seemingly in the aftermath of a battle or war. The images are somber and illuminated by the light of the orange light boxes. By presenting the images in this way, Jaar places viewers in the uncomfortable realization that it is almost impossible to grasp the entire effects of war.  

The piece was made in response to the Bosnian War that lasted from 1992 to 1995, one year after this piece was made. The Bosnian War was the result of the breaking up of Yugoslavia because of the effects of the Cold War leading to fighting between the Army of Republika Srpska and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina/ the Croatian Defense Council. The war would produce indiscriminate destruction of cities and ethnic cleansing. Resulting in the only incident in Europe to be recognized as genocide since World War II.  

While peace negotiations were finalized in November of 1995, war continues to plague people around the world. Although this work was made in response to a specific war, its message remains relevant today as we are flooded with images of war that make it near impossible to grasp the true horror it brings innocent people.  

Just a few steps down the hall we are met with Insults by Luis Caminzter. This large installation contains the phrase “All those who can’t read English are stupid” in several different languages. This work pokes fun at nationalistic mindsets that hold one cultural norm above others. These mindsets are usually accompanied by anti-immigrant sentiments that lead to tensions between differing groups of cultures and ethnicities.  

Paired with the work of Alfredo Jaar, we are forced to see the relationship between cultural and ethnic bigotry and its most ugly possibilities in the genocide of the Bosnian War and other conflicts. The two works create a cause-and-effect relationship where one leads to the other and vice versa.  

While both artists tackle complicated and divisive cultural issues in their own tone and artistic approach, both do it in innovative ways. One with humor and language, the other with poeticism and confrontational imagery.  

Europa by Alfredo Jaar is a mixed media sculpture made in 1994. It is made of six double sided light boxes and thirty frame mirrors. The light boxes measure forty inches squared with a depth of eight inches. The frame mirrors measure twelve inches squared with a depth of two inches. Altogether the piece measures roughly four feet by forty-four feet.  

The piece depicts six large light boxes with orange transparencies that illuminate the thirty frame mirrors.  

The light boxes sit on the gallery floor and are evenly spaced from one another about three to five feet. Each one contains a different transparency that is primarily orange in color with bits of darker orange red. They give the impression of close ups of flames and are mostly abstract. Behind the light boxes, fixed to the gallery wall in a straight line are the thirty frame mirrors. They are illuminated by the light of the larger light boxes in front of them and each one contains different photographic images in color. The images include: two people holding hands in front of rubble, a child with gauze around their head, an elderly woman engaging the camera, and an upside-down photograph of people standing on and looking at rubble on the ground.  

Insults by Luis Camnitzer consists of large vinyl lettering directly applied to the wall. The dimensions of the work vary every time it is installed, covering the entirety of the wall of its location. It is shown in landscape orientation, meaning that its longest side tends to run parallel to the ground. 

The lettering in Insults consists of the sentence “All those who can’t read [___] are stupid” in six different languages, with the name of the language it is written in filling the space of the blank. The black text covers the entirety of the wall from top to bottom and side to side. With the fonts alternating in style cycling between bold and serif, spaced evenly as if they were taken out of the page of a textbook. 

This gallery presents both the monumental and the modest. Richard Dupont’s towering bronze sculpture of a bather commands our immediate attention, while small rain drops, and everyday moments photographed in the work of Glenda León draw attention to life’s often overlooked details. 

The exhibition’s title, ‘Every Sound is a Shape of Time,’ takes its inspiration from León’s artist book Cada sonido es una forma del tiempo. Since 2010, León has been transforming photographs of everyday scenes into visual musical scores, inviting visitors to contemplate everyday life through a new perspective. For example, her piece Lluvia (Rain) transforms a rain-speckled window into a musical composition, overlaying staff lines on an image of grey skies and glistening droplets. The last image of the suite, Nombre de todos los dioses (Names of all gods), contains 130 names of gods from around the world written in braille on a musical staff. 

Badende, a German word that translates to “bathers” in English, is used in the context of art, particularly in titles of paintings or sculptures depicting people bathing or at the beach. This theme was utilized by several artists at the turn of the century—most notably from Paul Cézanne, who created a series of paintings titled ‘The Bathers.’ Richard Dupont’s take on the theme is inspired by a bronze sculpture sharing the same title created by the artist Wilhelm Lehmbruck in 1905. This German sculptor, printmaker, and painter is best known for his melancholy sculptures of elongated nudes. 

For this sculpture, a live model was digitally scanned while posing, and this scan data was slowly altered over many months of drawing and digital manipulation. Traditional lost wax casting was then used to realize the virtual shape in bronze. The result is longer than life limbs, a face and body that looks normal at one angle and turns out to be flat from another vantage point. This makes the sculpture appear realistic and abstract all at the same time. 

Badende is a larger-than-life bronze sculpture at nine feet tall, five feet wide, and just under five feet deep. The monumental sculpture is painted matte black and depicts a nude woman with exaggerated and elongated limbs. The woman is bending over and rests her left arm on her left calf, while her other arm is bent with her hand resting on her waist. Her face is calm, her eyes cast downward as she gazes at her left hand. 

Cada sonido es una forma de tiempo (Every sound is a shape of time) is an artist book by the Cuban artist Glenda León. In its current display, the seven pages of the book are hung side by side in one consecutive line. Each page of the artist’s book measures thirteen inches tall by nineteen inches wide. Together, the work hangs horizontally, with its longest side running parallel to the ground. 

Since 2010, the artist has been transforming photographs of everyday scenes into visual musical scores. For example, in Lluvia (Rain), Léon captures a window with drops of rain, displaying an overcast day with a backdrop of a grey and black sky. The surface of the window is adorned with numerous water droplets, and through this moisture-laden pane, there are subtle white parallel lines across the horizon. These lines are not randomly placed but instead, seem to mimic the structured arrangement of music on a staff, as if the image itself were a sheet of music. These subtle lines are found throughout the suite of images. In Vuelo (Flight), we see birds flying with fine black lines crossing over them in the sky; in Otoño (Autumn), we see them over dry leaves on the ground; in Estrellas (Stars), over specks of light in the night sky; in Azar (Chance), over the three pairs of dice on a white background. The last image of the suite, Nombre de todos los dioses (Names of all gods), contains 130 names of gods from around the world are written in braille on a staff.

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Every Sound Is a Shape of Time: Selections from PAMM’s Collection

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In this current moment of dynamic global change and rupture, art can provide a beacon for humanity. This exhibition, embodying the mission and vision of Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), emphatically draws from the collection’s strengths in a plurality of voices.

August 8, 2024 – March 16, 2025