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A great evening organized by MIFA – Miami International Fine Arts – to celebrate the opening of the exhibition: Rhythmic Brush, the figurative artistic movement in Florida, on display until January 25th, 2020.
The MIFA exhibition, is the celebration of contemporary realism in all its artistic forms from portrait to still-life, from still life to landscape, from sculpture to ceramics to photography, which highlight a multiplicity of applied artistic techniques: charcoal, graphite, oil on canvas, watercolor, crayons, silverpoints and mixed techniques.
Numerous artists, almost all of them from Miami, participated both with their works and with their presence at the opening night with ribbon cutting by the President and Director of the Gallery, Teresa Jessurum Uribe.
This is without a shadow of a doubt a good sign given the fact that Miami is the focal point of connection of the Americas and, despite the arrival of the upcoming Art Basel and all the connected satellite fairs that weigh more around business than the pleasure to make art, the city still shows a certain sensitivity to the artistic forms that today are subverted to carve out a space for originality.
The exhibition highlighted the works created by different artists, united, in order to represent reality in different ways as the experience and the perspective of each one is different. Through the walls of the newly opened building we can feel the explosion of color on the canvases by Tere Jessurum Uribe (Teresa Uribe) who, with her color, is able to convey all the Caribbean folklore to the viewer, as well as succeeding with the same intensity to represent in the chromatic variation of charcoal, the sublime picture of a little girl who supports her little brother (Big Sister). Realistic images become an expression of myth in the works of Milixa Moron (Yara, 2012, Oil on linen, 39.4″ x 27.5″) while Elkin Caas, represents female beauty both in her daily life (Feng Shui Girl 2) and in the vital aura of the red color (The Prayer The Answer). They seem to smell the roses in the still lives of Diane Reeves (Dancing in the Light)) and appear, instead, to be dormant in a kind of immortal space in the still life paintings of Salvador Zarate (That Paintings Trash). The works of Jesus Villareal (Sleep) seem unfinished as they embrace the dreamlike works of Sonia Hidalgo (Hasmodai, Spirit of the Moon).
The still life can be sharp in the oil on canvas by Carlos Martinez Leon (Hojas en un Florero) in the same way that Eduardo Angel cuts his portraiture with chiaroscuro net (Profile Study of E.V.). The colorful crayons of Luis Gil (Estimulos de la Sociedad) give way to social compositions, real (La Etad Dorada) or presumed (Octavio Paz y el Laberinto de mi Soledad) by Dario Ortiz.
Epifanio Serna offers great landscape watercolors (Element: Water, part of series of Vizcaya Gardens) while Brett Harvey’s sculpture absorbed in his thoughts (Together) witnesses the voices of the people. Orlando Adriani’s photographs peek out from the wall as he can hyper-realisticly capture the human person behind the image of the homeless (Lost) or the climate in the game between elderly ladies (Shuffle Board).
These and other artists on display include Adriano Rios, who presented ceramic works (The Fear) and sculptures (Latinoafricana).
Brett Harvey will be part of the MIFA faculty starting January, the month in which he will begin teaching sculpture.
The MIFA was born with the aim of restoring vitality to artistic realism through a mixture of the methods used in the famous classical-realist academies of the 19th century and imparted to MIFA by teachers who studied among the various schools also in the prestigious Angel Academy of Art by Master Michael John Angel, in Florence, Italy, and which consequently share a clear connection in terms of the pursuit and achievement of goals.
Highlights of the academy are teaching, planning art exhibitions and cultural collaboration with local authorities and artists.
The MIFA was born physically in the wake of the art school that Milixa Moron and her husband Elkin Caas, founded in 2013: the artistic studio Chiaroscuro, in Doral. The upgrade to the new building (at 5900 NW 17th Ave, Miami) came as a result of the need to expand the spaces in addition to the realization of the dream of creating an artistic complex that can bring together under the same wing the disciplines of painting, sculpture, music, ceramics and photography will follow.
MIFA, is recognized with a unique accreditation number by the ARC -Art Renewal Center-, the world body dedicated to the rebirth and preservation of representative art that accredits institutions able to comply with the high standards required by curriculum provided by the regulation.
Currently, Miami International Fine Arts offers different types of teaching, including the traditional 5-day-a-week course and the two-day-a-week half-time course, which differ in frequency and extension over the years achieving the same result.
In addition, on the basis of the work needs of the 21st century, the academy has included courses of study that can be reconciled with the work activities that are held for the duration of a day, on Saturdays or in evening hours.
In addition to academic attendance, specific and regularly organized temporary courses can be attended. To promote the dissemination and sharing of culture, MIFA also offers free and open art history courses, on a monthly basis and taught by the authoritative Elkin Caas.
MIFA represents a great possibility in Miami’s diverse artistic landscape, its optics are similar to that of the FACE -Fine Arts Convention and Expo- of which Milixa Moron was the protagonist last year at the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables and whose purpose is to mix contemporary art and realism in a kind of Contemporary Realism.
The exhibition Rythmical Brushtrokes: Figurative Art Movement in Florida will be an extra option not to be missed for those who will find themselves living the chaotic Miami Art Week, because as supporting the founding members, quoting Camille Paglia – an art teacher at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and a writer – ” The only road to freedom is education in art. Art is not a luxury for any advanced civilization; it is a necessity, without which creative intelligence will wither and die.”
Art that, however, needs to promote a return to discipline with traditional and time-tested methods, which can provide a solid foundation in drawing and painting, art that, as Lauren Amalia Redding says, in the poster that opens the exhibition: [It] mixes centuries of applied elegance with contemporary, multicultural voices.”
(On the title: The Prayer The Answer by Elkin Cañas. Oil on Linen. 54″ x 40”)
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