Sunday Painter x Missoni Baia
Curated by Alex Nuñez
December 4-5, 2020
Missoni Baia Showroom 717 NE 27 Street, Miami, FL
Join us for a group exhibition exploring our idealized concepts of self improvement, a reevaluation of social interaction, and reconnecting with our natural surroundings at Missoni Baia in Edgewater.
Each work focuses on self reflection within the confines of domestic space and how we adapt and react to our immediate environment.
Abelardo Cruz Santiago was born in 1983 in indigenous Oaxaca, he has lived multiple lives. His life started off as a goat herder in his small town of San Juan Mixtepec. At the age of seven he and his mother emigrated to California for another life where he studied California linguistics and worked his summers in the luscious vineyards of wine country. After getting his Bachelors of Fine Arts, Cruz Santiago moved to New York City where he currently lives and works as an artist constantly studying social dynamics through language. @cancionmixteca
Angel Garcia is an interdisciplinary artist who investigates the connections between mysticism and the first-generation Cuban American experience. Their work considers concepts of gender, sexuality and audience within a social context. Born and raised in Miami, they have always felt an uncanny connection to the landscape and community that became a search for origin and truth that is reflected in their work. Their mediums include tattooing, video, performance, and object making. @humanrind
Alex Nuñez is a Cuban-American mixed media painter from Miami, FL. She received her Bachelors of Arts & Sciences from Loyola University New Orleans in 2006. She completed international workshops at Firenze Arti Visive, Florence and Metafora, Barcelona. In 2009, she received her Post Baccalaureate Diploma from SMFA, Boston. She received her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 2012; upon completion, she was awarded the C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship. Nuñez is the host and producer of the “Sunday Painter” podcast on Jolt Radio, now in the show’s fourth year of production and a recipient of Locust Project’s 2018 Wavemaker Grant. In 2019, she completed a year residency at the Deering Estate. She is currently a resident artist at the Fountainhead Studios in Little Haiti. Resembling a large, unruly overgrowth, Alex Nuñez’s abstract paintings suggest that ignorance is the ultimate existential threat. Obscuring hidden messages with boldly colored splashes and creeping abstract figures, her paintings are hidden object games reflecting the anxiety of human impermanence. Each work is an ominous reminder that survival is tenuous in a culture that emphasizes materiality and instant gratification over the protection of our natural environment. @shockingly_unambitious
Alexander Zastera is known for their dark mystical paintings, found object installation and public performance centered around the environment. Zastera graduated with a BFA in Studio art and BA in art history from Florida State University. Based in Miami Beach, Florida, working as an artist, activist, and educator they use their studio work and interest in public education to address local ecological issues. They have been a resident artist in the Miami Dade Library system with ProjectArt USA and their work has been featured at Deep Space Gallery, & Gallery, Locust Projects, PAMM, MOCA Nomi, and Superfine! Art Fair: NYC. Currently Zastera gallivants in a masked guise of the superhero “Climate Crusader," a South Florida based environmental superhero building climate resilience and awareness through videos, public performance, and inspiring community action to save the planet. @zastera
Anastasia Samoylova (b. 1984 in Moscow, lives in Miami) is an artist who moves between observational photography, studio practice and installation. By utilizing tools and strategies related to digital media and commercial photography, her work explores notions of environmentalism, consumerism and the picturesque. In 2020 she had her first solo museum exhibition of ongoing project FloodZone at USF Contemporary Art Museum. The book of the project was published by Steidl in 2019. @anasamoylova
Carlos Rigau, born in 1978 and raised in little Havana Miami Florida. Carlos graduated in 2002 from F.I.U. with a double major in Fine art and Television communications. In 2012 Rigau completed Hunters MFA program in NYC. He has exhibited his work in Berlin, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Miami. In addition to art making Carlos co runs an experimental artist run space named General Practice. Rigau is represented by LMAK projects in New York City. He has completed residencies at Acadia Summer Arts Program {Kamp Kippy}, Everglades AIRE, and the Deering estate. Fellowships at A.I.M. Bronx museum and a Media arts Fellow at BRIC in Brooklyn NY. @Cvs_sprite_cobrand_
Charlie Welch is an artist based in Philadelphia. He received a BFA, with a focus on photography, from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1989. After, he moved to New York where he worked as a photographer, doing window display and as a prop stylist and set designer.Charlie’s expertise from commercial work comes into play with his fine art. Photography is his main medium, but he also incorporates sculpture and collage. Constructed environments and playful sets are signatures of his work. Charlie conveys narratives about identity formation, public and private selves, and how we navigate through daily life.
Joyce Billet is a practicing artist who merges her forward-looking technical expertise with conceptual ideas. Her background in architecture has influence on her work which plays with materials and scale to mix the sensations of painting and sculpture. She explores the tensions and relationships, between the natural and the artificial, between the unique and the mass produced, between tradition and progress.
Billet graduated with a Bachelor’s in Architecture from Pratt Institute and in 2010 she received a Master of Science degree in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University, in 2018 she attended the New York School of the Arts Intensive Studio program. She lives and works in the U.S. @_j_b_c/
Juana Valdés' multi-disciplinary practice combines printmaking, photography, sculpture, performance, and ceramic. Values' artwork examines the post-colonial history of the Americas and the current representation of Latinos, Caribbean citizens, Blacks or what constitute "Other" in mainstream America. She has participated in residencies and exhibited, "much wider than line," part of SITE Santa Fe's ongoing biennial series. She is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner grant, New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship in sculpture, and National Association of Latinos Arts and Culture, Visual Artists Grant. Values holds an M.F.A. in Fine Arts from the Schools Visual Arts, her BFA in Sculpture from Parsons School of Design and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1995. She was born Cuba, has resided in the United States since 1971 and is currently a Assistant Professor of Printmaking at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. @jvaldesart
Lauren Shapiro is a visual artist living and working in Miami, Florida, United States. She earned an M.F.A. from the University of Miami and utilizes a multi-step casting process in clay resulting in modular sculptures and installations which reference systems and visual orders found in nature. Her work draws inspiration from environmental research and data, ceramics and social practice.
Lauren has been a resident artist at the Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute at Jingdezhen, China, where she observed and learned about post-production processes of industrial mold making and porcelain slip casting. She has exhibited during Art Basel Miami at Scope Art fair, the New Art Dealer’s Alliance (NADA) and she has showcased her work internationally during Art Basel Switzerland at Projektraum M54 and a solo exhibition debuted in Sao Paulo, Brazil. She completed a residency in the Amazon Rainforest of Brazil, collecting textures for her ecologically driven sculptures and installations. In 2019 she was awarded a Knight Arts Challenge grant for a project which will culminate in 2020 at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami. She is the current Artist in Residence for a National Science Foundation grant awarded to coral reef researchers at California State University. Lauren is a current artist in residence at the Bakehouse Art Complex in Miami in addition to serving as Head of the Ceramics Studio. @loshap