This will be the first US institutional solo exhibition by the Berlin-based artist and the first time we have the opportunity to share with the public the outcome of one of our ARTSail residencies. The exhibition will run through November 7, 2021.
Featuring a combination of work created by the artist in response to his residency, in 2017 and 2018, along with a few earlier works, through a series of photographs and films, the exhibition takes the audience on an aquatic journey spanning from the wetlands of Big Cypress, to the choppy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, all the way to the Nordic Sea and the Adriatic.
From the Curatorial Essay:
"It’s 5:30am on Jan 15, 2018, the skies are still dark as we are gingerly riding down Tamiami Trail, the 275 miles long road that cuts across the Everglades connecting Florida’s east and west coasts (Tampa to Miami, hence its name). Our destination: Marco Island - where we are chartering the boat that will take us for the second time to the site that has captured Simon’s imagination since he first discovered it while doing some prep-work for his residency with ARTSail, the Dome House of Cape Romano.
This is the second part of the artist’s residency, approximately 6 months after his first visit to Miami. When the Dome House appears on the watery horizon, about 35 minutes into the spirited ride on the Gulf’s choppy waters, it looks like a case-study of a Fata Morgana (defined in Wikipedia as: “a complex form of superior mirage visible in a narrow band right above the horizon”). Only this is not a mirage, but the very real remnants of a luxury villa built by Bob Lee, a retired oil producer (the irony should not be lost here!) in the late 1970s, and abandoned after Hurricane Andrew in 1992. As we get closer, we realize that only four of the six domes that were standing just 6 months earlier, are still above water…Hurricane Irma, in September 2017, took its toll on the structure, and for the 5 of us on the boat, this is an all too real snapshot of the deadly combined effects of coastal erosion, sea level rise and higher-intensity hurricanes, all by-products of climate change, that most South Floridians are well too aware of".