MAM’S Permanent Collection
Inspires New Exhibition

marking time: moving images
May 13 – September 11, 2005

Miami Art Museum ’s permanent collection inspires marking time: moving images, a new exhibition presenting 10 artists and 16 large-scale installations that are linked by the various ways they mark time through movement.   The exhibition opens at MAM on May 13 and remains on view until September 11, 2005.  The exhibition is organized by Miami Art Museum and curated by Assistant Director for Special Projects/Curator Lorie Mertes.  The exhibition is supported by MAM’s Annual Exhibition Fund with special assistance from Mimi and Bud Floback.

marking time: moving images features works from MAM’s permanent collection by Janine Antoni and Paul Ramírez Jonas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Ann Hamilton.  Also on view, are loans from other museums and private collections by artists Dara Friedman, Alfredo Jaar, Clare Langan, Paul Pfeiffer, Miguel Angel Rios, and Bill Viola. 

 “We’re pleased to present this exhibition,” said MAM Director, Suzanne Delehanty.   “marking time: moving images reflects the growth of Miami Art Museum’s collection and presents a theme that has preoccupied artists in the 20 th and 21 st centuries.”

Recent acquisitions on view in this exhibition include Always New Always Familiar of 2001, a collaborative work by Janine Antoni and Paul Ramírez Jonas. which consists of two separate videos and soundtracks shot simultaneously by the artists, one filming from the front of a moving boat and one from the back.  Melding contrary points of view, the work is a metaphor for the nature of relationships and the time shared between two people.  Dara Friedman’s Romance was originally commissioned as part of MAM’s New Work projects. On loan to MAM from a private collection, Romance is a film of various couples kissing in a park, presented in slow motion to influence our response to viewing the images.  

The exhibition also includes multiple works by Ann Hamilton and Felix Gonzalez-Torres—artists who have had a significant influence on the art of our time and whose work has featured prominently in MAM’s exhibition program in the last decade.

lineament , a seminal work by Hamilton in MAM’s permanent collection, embodies the fundamental vocabulary of being an artist; inspiration, process, and result.  The work consists of boxes containing emptied books, balled lines of text and a film documenting the repetitive action of an attendant carefully lifting strips of text from books and winding them into balls . capacity of absorption , on loan from a private collection, is another sculptural installation by Ann Hamilton reclaimed from previous ephemeral environments that engage the viewer through sight as well as sound.

marking time: moving images includes four sculptures by Felix Gonzalez-Torres whose work is a poetic meditation on the transience of life. Included is one of the artist’s largest paper stacks measuring 45 by 38 inches with an ideal height of 7 inches.  From a distance, the rectangular shape sitting on the floor recalls a minimalist sculpture. Up close, we see that it consists of individual sheets of paper imprinted with an image of the ocean. Visitors are allowed to take away individual sheets, and the stacks are replenished to their specified height as they dwindle over time. The artist thought of them as “gifts to the public.”

Also on view from MAM’s collection is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s stack piece with a circle of dolphins.  It is one of a very few such pieces the artist did not intend to be renewable as a way of addressing concepts of mortality and immortality. The third work in the exhibition by Gonzalez-Torres is a glittering beaded curtain made up of individual strands of colored beads that sway and click together as the viewer passes through. Like the two stack pieces in the exhibition, this work refers to the artist’s deep connection to the sea and its healing properties, stemming from his childhood memories of Cuba and his time in Miami and Los Angeles. The fourth work by Gonzalez-Torres tracks time of a different sort, graphically tracing with a simple line drawing the reality of AIDS, and its destruction of the body over time.

One of the highlights of the exhibition is The Greeting of 1995 by acclaimed video artist Bill Viola whose work focuses on universal human experiences. Viola’s piece, on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, is based on a Renaissance painting, The Visitation, a story from the New Testament about the spiritually significant meeting of the Virgin Mary and her cousin Elizabeth. Unless the viewer is familiar with the singular significance of this moment, the scene seems like a simple encounter.  Viola’s life-size, projection of the 45-second encounter is made to last ten minutes, intensifying the movements, gestures, and emotions of a seemingly ”everyday” moment in time. 

marking time: moving images includes works by Irish-born artist Clare Langan and Miguel Angel Rios of Argentina on view for the first time in the United States. Langan’s Film Trilogy suggests a post-apocalyptic future in which environmental catastrophes envelop the earth in water and ice, sand and lava. Unfolding like a surreal dream, Langan’s three films follow a figure wandering the world bearing witness to the temporality and fragility of human existence.

A MORIR(‘til Death) by Miguel Angel Rios is a video projected larger-than-life on three walls, depicting a game played with spinning tops, called trompos.  The lyrical, and sometimes violent dance of the anthropomorphic spinning tops is a metaphor for the chance moments that add up to our time on earth.

 “One of the exciting aspects of this exhibition is that it is about time on many levels,” said MAM Assistant Director for Special Projects/Curator Lorie Mertes. “MAM’s own history is highlighted with works that were either acquired from or commissioned for past exhibitions.  One such case is represented by the loan of Alfredo Jaar’s Crossing and Bonjour Securité. These two works were commissioned twelve years ago by MAM, then the Center for the Arts, and remain as haunting today as they were at the time they were created. Jaar’s photography functions as political witness to a significant moment in Miami’s history.” 

The two works include images appropriated from news media that recorded the plight of Haitian refugees apprehended by the US Coast Guard while en route to Florida in June of 1992. Bonjour Securité consists of five freestanding light boxes with images of dazzling blue water. On the wall behind the light boxes are 25 framed mirrors which simultaneously capture the viewer’s reflection along with the partially revealed faces of detained men, women and children.

  Presented in conjunction with the exhibition is a special project by Miami-based artist Wendy Wischer.  Full to Wailing and Back Again, is a large-scale, outdoor light projection of the phases of the moon over a 28-day cycle.  The installation, which marks time as it mimics the progress of the moon, will be projected on the wall of the Central Support Facility in downtown Miami at 50 NW 2nd Avenue in the evening hours from late July through August.   This work is also a recent acquisition to MAM’s permanent collection.

Artists in marking time: moving images engage the viewer through the experience and perception of time. In using concepts of time as both subject and medium, the works in the exhibition encourage viewers to become aware of the passage of time and how it relates to one’s view of the contemporary world. 

FUNDING
Grand Benefactors Ferrell Schultz, Tina Hills, Joan Reynolds Linclau, Patricia Papper Benefactors Northern Trust Donors The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Aaron I. Fleischman Foundation, Mary & Howard Frank, Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene, Deborah & Larry Hoffman, Mellon, Nedra & Mark Oren, Podhurst Orseck, P.A., Toni & Carl Randolph, The Scharlin Family Foundation Sponsors Darlene & Jorge M. Perez, Arthur H. Rice, Raquel & Michael Scheck Patrons American Express Company, Christie’s, Diane & Ernest Halpryn, George L. Lindemann, Nancy & Robert Magoon, Jane & Albert Nahmad, Beverly & William Parker, Roz & Charles Stuzin, Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation, Inc. –   Stephen H. Cypen, President

ABOUT THE CURATOR
MAM Assistant Director for Special Projects / Curator Lorie Mertes has been with the museum since 1994. She has curated solo exhibitions by such artists as Russell Crotty, Jim Hodges, Liisa Roberts and Alexis Smith, as well as curating New Work Miami: Robert Chambers and Frank Benson, New Work Miami: Dara Friedman and Robert Thiele, Focus on the Figure: Selections from MAM’s Permanent Collection 2001, and mantle, a special project by the critically acclaimed artist Ann Hamilton commissioned by MAM in 1998. Ms. Mertes recently organized the first museum exhibition in the United States of collaborative works by artists Janine Antoni and Paul Ramírez Jonas and served as the MAM Curator for the traveling exhibitions: Kerry James Marshall: One True Thing, Meditations on Black Aesthetics, Shirin Neshat, Let’s Entertain, and Roberto Matta: Paintings and Drawings of the 1940s. Upcoming projects include a solo exhibition of Shahzia Sikander opening in October and a special outdoor project with Vik Muniz during Art Basel/Miami Beach.

SPECIAL ADMISSION FOR marking time: moving images
Everyone marks the passage of time on their birthday.  Visitors with birthdays during the months the exhibition is on view (May – September) receive free admission to MAM for that entire month when they present their ID at the Visitors Services desk.

VISITORS GALLERY
Take time to play and explore themes in the exhibition through reading, writing and hands-on activities. Visitors are invited to mark time in their own lives by “weaving a web of life” and recording significant personal events onto paper ribbons, then weaving them together in a large loom. Visitors can learn more about the history of time or learn how to play trompos, a game depicted in the exhibition where wildly spinning tops symbolize the beauty and randomness of life. 

RELATED PUBLICATIONS

Gallery Notes
An exhibition brochure featuring an essay by curator Lorie Mertes is available free of charge in the gallery. 

Catalogue - Available at the MAM Store in July
The exhibition is accompanied by a 48-page catalogue with four-color illustrations of each of the 16 works in the exhibition.  It will include an illustrated essay by the curator and biographies on each of the 10 artists. 

PROGRAMMING FOR FAMILIES AND SCHOOL GROUPS

MAM in the Neighborhood 2005
MAM staff visits parks or community centers all summer long with fun art lessons to prepare young visitors for a trip to the museum.  MAM then hosts the groups at the museum for tours and activities led by trained Gallery Teachers.  Activities will include a tour of marking time: moving images.  To participate in MAM in the Neighborhood, 2005, call MAM’s Education department: 305-375-4073.

Second Saturdays are Free for Families
Second Saturday of every month, 1 – 4pm
June 11, July 9, August 13, September 10
Drop in to enjoy fun, interactive programs. Families of all ages explore MAM together, find inspiration to create works of art, and participate in hands-on activities led by Gallery Teachers and student volunteers.

PROGRAMMING FOR ADULTS

JAM @ MAM – Happy Hour with an Artful Twist
Third Thursdays 5-8:30pm
May 19, June 16, July 21, August 18
Music, cocktails, hors d’oeuvres
Look for MAM’s ¿Question Authority? team stationed in the galleries to answer your questions or give impromptu tours
MAM members free; non-members $5

Guided Tours for Adults in English and Spanish
Sundays, 2pm and by appointment
Bring your group for a free tour of the exhibition led by MAM’s trained tour guides.

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