Opening February 15, 2024. Sea Change threads together themes of artificial intelligence, simulation technology, and identity to understand the precarious position of seismic change that comes to society, culture, and the human condition.
(MIAMI — November 27, 2023) — Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) is pleased to announce Sea Change, an immersive exhibition reflecting on the acceleration of changes across climate, culture, and time. Featuring a diverse array of artworks, ranging from Leo Castañeda’s sentient landscapes to Lorna Mills’ animated GIF collages, Sea Change presents an international selection of time-based media artists alongside five new commissions from Miami and its regional neighbors. Each piece echoes the exhibition’s central theme: the interconnectedness of the virtual and the natural world. Selections from the exhibition will be available for global audiences via PAMMTV—the first-of-its-kind streaming service that delivers video art from PAMM to viewers at home.
Sea Change threads together themes of artificial intelligence, simulation technology, and identity to understand the precarious position of seismic change that comes to society, culture, and the human condition. The survey includes a variety of aesthetic styles and formats such as generative art, animated GIFs, video games, 3D experimental films, and virtual reality—a “download” of how artists critically engage with technology in the studio. Participating artists include LaTurbo Avedon, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Leo Castañeda, Fabiola LaRios, Cassie McQuater, Lorna Mills, Harvey Moon, Eva Papamargariti, Rodell Warner, Rick Silva, and Nicolas Sassoon.
The works in Sea Change flow between climate warnings, reflections on human nature, and futuristic reframings of current technology. Each work offers a perspective on the interconnectedness of technology and the natural world and prompts viewers to examine their role in the ecosystem.
The connection between nature, technology, and human experience is further articulated in Eva Papamargariti’s Liminal Beings, which highlights the fluidity between machine and human. This work puts viewers on the verge of these two states, developing both sets of characteristics simultaneously. Cassie McQuater’s Love Birds, Night Birds, Devil-Birds is a surreal reimagining of Leonora Carrington’s novel “The Debutante,” portraying a societal debut transformed into a fantastical landscape of strange creatures and fluorescent flora. McQuater’s virtual reimaginings bring form to transformation, much like Carrington’s surrealist paintings—among PAMM’s permanent collection. Lorna Mills adds to the whimsy with wnrwnrchickndnr, which pulls the viewer into a unique GIF-filled landscape and interspecies collage of networked culture and the natural world. Finally, Harvey Moon’s SlowScan considers our linear existence through time and our highly networks and surveilled day-to-day experience. Moon’s algorithm taps into live-feed surveillance cameras around the world and records hours of footage to produce a new temporal output—a software-mediated reality where time is rendered in a new way.
By highlighting iterations of our collective experience at the arrival of Artificial General intelligence (AGI), Sea Change provides a new context for visitors not only to see their own experiences, concerns, and dreams for the future reflected back to them, but also to step into those experiences from new perspectives.
“We’re particularly enthusiastic about showcasing these formative works of time-based media art alongside new works by artists whose thinking and creativity are helping us imagine new possible futures,” said Jay Mollica, Senior Director of Digital Engagement at PAMM. “That’s why in addition to showcasing these pioneering works, Sea Change commissioned five new works by Fabiola Larios, Alfredo Salazar-Caro, Rodell Warner, Leo Castañeda, and Rick Silva and Nicolas Sassoon.”
“At PAMM, we strive not only to create space for these critical conversations in our galleries, but also to bring those conversations to our audiences wherever they are,” said Mollica. “Through these visionary artworks, we invite viewers to not just observe, but to engage, reflect, and reimagine our collective future in the face of relentless change. Sea Change stands as a testament to the power of art in shaping our understanding of the world—urging us to contemplate our role in the vital and ever-changing balance between our natural and the technological worlds.”
Visitors can experience Sea Change from February 15–August 18, 2024 at PAMM in the Bank of America Gallery. Visitors can also explore selections from Sea Change for free via PAMMTV.
Sea Change will be on view through August 18, 2024.
Support for PAMM’s project galleries, and for this exhibition, is generously provided by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
ABOUT KNIGHT FOUNDATION
The Knight Foundation are social investors who support democracy by funding free expression and journalism, arts and culture in community, research in areas of media and democracy, and in the success of American cities and towns where the Knight brothers once had newspapers. Learn more at kf.org and follow @knightfdn on social media.
ABOUT PAMM
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), led by Director Franklin Sirmans, promotes artistic expression and the exchange of ideas, advancing public knowledge and appreciation of art, architecture, and design, and reflecting the diverse community of its pivotal geographic location at the crossroads of the Americas. The nearly 40-year-old South Florida institution, formerly known as Miami Art Museum (MAM), opened a new building, designed by world-renowned architects Herzog & de Meuron, on December 4, 2013 in Downtown Miami’s Maurice A. Ferré Park. The facility is a state-of-the-art model for sustainable museum design and progressive programming and features 200,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor program space with flexible galleries; shaded outdoor verandas; a waterfront restaurant and bar; a museum shop; and an education center with a library, media lab, and classroom spaces.
