Simon Vega & Daniel Arsham

Miami, FL – November 15, 2014 – It was a busy night over at Locust Projects on Saturday evening as they hosted the opening reception for artists Simon Vega and Daniel Arsham. Local art aficionados and admirers kicked off the evening with Daniel Arsham’s latest exhibition, Welcome to the Future, where Arsham transforms the gallery into an excavation site, digging a trench in the gallery’s floor that holds thousands of calcified artifacts—a muted cacophony of 20th century media devices. Mounds of boom boxes, electric guitars, SLR cameras, Blackberries, Nintendo controllers, VHS tapes, Walkmans, film projectors, and portable televisions, rendered in crystal, volcanic ash, and other minerals fill the pit, collapsing linear narratives of past, present, and future. The trench presents the recent past as archeology, a world of technological objects whose obsolescence was built into their design, preserved like petrified wood or the figures of Pompeii. Arsham is known for his sculptural and architectural works, which warp or destabilize recognizable structures and forms with playfulness and wit.

Daniel Arsham

Daniel Arsham

Deborah Scholl & Daniel Arsham

Howard Learner & Tracey Corwin

Tracey Corwin & Howard Learner

Augustina Woodgate, Tami Katz Freiman, & Anthony Spinello

Augustina Woodgate, Tami Katz Freiman, & Anthony Spinello

Daniel Arsham, Erika & Roma Cohen

Daniel Arsham & Chana Sheldon

Chana Sheldon

Chana Sheldon & Daniel Arsham

Later in the evening guests browsed Simon Vega’s debut Miami exhibition, Sub Tropical Social Sculptures. During a series of residencies in Miami in 2012 and 2014, Vega developed a series of social/sculptural experiments that, in his words, “reflect how people from very different geographical and social circumstances organically come together socially, in a way that is unique to Miami.” Vega’s project revolves around five simply constructed, human-scaled wooden structures designed to activate social interaction: Octagonal Discussion Table, Sun Siege Tower, Smoothie Station, Politics Play Station, and Free Down (Mini) Bar. The sculptures are open-ended, transmutable and mobile. Vega organizes happenings around the sculptures, at which point the structures become a tropical and color-injected version of Joseph Beuys’ “social sculpture” concept, both in the gallery and around the city, mixing the aesthetic and social experiences to create something that is both functional and non functional: a piece of furniture, a social platform and an aesthetic, contemplative object. The happenings bring forth essential elements in the process of making art that are seldom considered or valued: friendship, collaboration, sharing, spontaneity, and the character of the city.

Simon Vega

Chana Sheldon, Carol Jazzar, & Diana Nawi

Chana Sheldon & Simon Vega

Nicolas Guillen & Grace Jones

Anthony Spinello & Chris Oh

GALLERY SLIDER