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| R311.4 - (2017) Reinforced Concrete / Acrylic / Aluminum 36x 96x 26 inches / Troy Simmons |
MIAMI, FL: Much of the recent history of Wynwood has involved artists turning what was once a drab warehouse district into a vibrant, colorful hub for culture and the arts. The revitalization clearly inspired artist Troy Simmons, whose latest exhibition at the Bakehouse Art Complex, "The Open House," involves ripping open aluminum and concrete industrial structures to reveal color within. He exhibited with Tom Scicluna, whose work focuses on the recontextualization of everyday objects.
South African-born contemporary art curator Clair Breukel was the creative force behind this exhibition. Here's her synopsis of the show:
"A real estate term for inviting prospective buyers to survey a home, “Open House” signifies open doors, an invitation for inspection and the possibility of acquisition. During this process one might study house’s make up including its windows and doors, and ask revealing questions about the materials of its core foundation. The Open House is not then a home, but a gallery of its own display.
In the exhibition The Open House, Troy Simmons proposes structural anomalies that are at once uniform in their concrete and aluminum construction, yet protruding, geometrically twisted and formally ‘different.’ Inviting closer inspection, Simmons’ works instigate interaction by seductively revealing bands of colorful neon enamel, which subtly position the human body within these reinvented urban forms. Simmons opens a door and a window for discovery.
In real estate, Open Houses expose private interiors to public eyes. However rules dictate visitors to be passive lookers. In other words, the personal is made only marginally public. Intervention in this open forum—either removing or adding objects—although possibly illegal and definitely frowned upon, is an entirely plausible and easily attainable action.
Purposefully overturning procedural behavioral Tom Scicluna finds objects from the everyday and recontextualizes them by proposing situations and constructs that displace, disrupt and renew these objects. In this way, Scicluna brushes up against institutional norms by rethinking traditional formats of exhibition and methods for processing art. Politely, humorously, and often times importantly uncomfortably, Tom Scicluna intervenes". -
Claire Breukel
