Vickie Pierre

View fullsize

Multi Media

Artist Statement

My work is informed and inspired by memory, popular culture, surrealism and the decorative and ornamental arts. This inspiration has manifested itself in years of collecting a myriad of materials that suggests a sense of beauty, design and the natural world.

My practice includes various techniques and materials. Often times the materials that I employ are vintage, mass-produced objects (including Avon perfume bottles and Syroco decorative wall art) that serve as muses for my two-dimensional works such as paintings, drawings and collages or as integral elements within my assemblages and installations. With the guidance of these appropriated source materials, my continued focus is on the exploration of self-identity, with references to my Haitian culture and mythology, while concurrently considering feminine tropes and historic and contemporary cultural politics. 

The combination of these re-contextualized objects along with the titles and texts, stemming from song lyrics, constructs a narrative that continues the inner dialogue of identity and socialization. Alternately, the compositions of the assemblages and paper works allude to biological and botanical structures, while maintaining base aesthetic sentiments of femininity, beauty, romanticism and sensuality.

When my work is observed, my hope is that the public will initially be drawn in by the playful whimsy of the "characters" and design elements. However, in engaging further with the work, I would like viewers to contemplate their own experiences with culturally loaded imagery or objects and consider how that may influence their understanding of identity formation and identity politics in the broader culture.

Artist Links

www.vickiepierre.com

Nick Mahshie

Artist Statement

Nick Mahshie builds installations, creates adornment for the body, and invents visually stimulating environments for his audience to explore. These are spaces where drawing, painting, screen printing, and collage intersect to create the saccharine landscapes of his imagination. As a Miami native, his work reflects the pop culture, clichéd tropical aesthetic and organic resilience that define the Caribbean-American landscape. 

Simple and readily available materials allow him to prolifically create installations and wearable art with ceremonious appeal. Inspired by the fantasy of carnivals and the necessity–bred resourcefulness of his Cuban elders, he assembles cardboard, reconstructed used garments and painted surfaces to create work that is both visually saturated and socially engaging to an audience far beyond the art-consuming public. The size of his most recent installations summons the public to gather beneath kaleidoscopic canopies and within protective habitats, eliciting a feeling of transformation and healing possible through the collective reimagining of what a shared public space is and can be.

Nick holds a Masters of Design in Fashion, Body & Garment from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago under the direction of artist Nick Cave, and a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design. He lived for five years in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he is better know as visual and performance artist Tranqui Yanqui.

He is the recipient of the 2017 RumChata Fellowship Award, and his artwork has been recognized by national Argentine newspapers such as La Nación, Clarín, and The Buenos Aires Herald, as well as international publications such as The New York Times and Time Out Magazine. He has been exhibited in ArteBA 2010 (Appetite Gallery), Fundacion Telefonica, and Fundacion OSDE (Buenos Aires), as well as Le Petit Bain (Paris), StarkArt (Zurich), and the Children’s Museum of the Arts (NYC).

He recently launched Tranqui Prints, a platform to develop his textile and installation design while working to build a shared workshop for other printmakers in Miami.

Artist Links

www.nickmahshie.com

@tranquiyanqui

@tranquiprints

Stephen Arboite

After joining The Fountainhead Residency from July 17 - Aug 13, 2017, Stephen decided to call Miami home.

In partnership with N'namdi Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENT

Stephen Arboite was born in New York City in 1987 to Gaelle and Mario Arboite who ventured separately to America from Haiti in the early 1980s.

Stephen may have reaped the benefits of being born into a cultural Mecca renowned for itsworld-class galleries, museums, and institutes. Or perhaps, Arboite’s father triggered his son’s curiosity for the arts while heading an outreach organization in Brooklyn where city kids were introduced to African, Caribbean, and Latin music, art, and dance. Maybe it was quiet ambition and recognition, assumed while selling sketches to eager schoolmates. Whatever the case, the young artist was compelled.

In 2005 Arboite entered SUNY Purchase for a BFA. In that time Arboite began looking at the works of Marlene Dumas, Wangechi Mutu, Willem de Kooning. His approach to work from then on considered beauty outside of classical aesthetic paradigms and with emphasis on the “ethereal consciousness of the body.” For his desire to capture and harbor spirit, Arboite veered ever so lightly to the abstract and grotesque. As a result his work has taken on a more intuitive quality. In 2010, Arboite spontaneously moved to Miami on a personal quest towards industry and independent artistic exploration, while continuing to develop his signature style of exploring nature, matter, movement, and spirit on paper. The artist typically begins his experiments with a coffee base…layers seem to swim amongst one another in pools and drips tiered with dried pigments, while inks and otherwise diluted colors stream and explode. It’s an orchestral effect, conducted vibrantly.

In 2013, Arboite work was recognized and showcased during Miami Art Basel. The artist continues to live and work in Miami Beach, Florida.

“My work contends with the spiritual transformation and evolution of human consciousness. Bodies are eviscerated; anatomical structures splinter while fluids spatter. Form is purged and abstracted for the instinctual visualization of my subjects’ true nature. What emerges is aura, or pure spiritual essence, free of embodiment and all its limitations and conventions. I am compelled to try to capture what cannot be caught.

My staining technique provides for fluidity, harmony, and liberation, while leaving a subtle trace of my process. Grounded coffee, metallic powders, and organic pigments swirl, pool, settle, and converge to form the strokes that further delineate the subject matter. Streaks, speckles and splotches detail the molecular frenzy of such transformations while alluding to subconscious escape. They tell a story that is constantly unfolding.

Paper allows a further engagement with the process and its medium. For me, the experience is cathartic. The spontaneous and unforgiving nature of paper gives birth to anamorphic beings which vaguely arise in conception, yet are concrete in projection. As such I act as a medium or key, unlocking complex emotional and spiritual states of being.”

ARTIST LINKS

Website: https://www.stephenarboite.com

Gallery: http://nnamdicontemporary.com/portfolio/stephen-arboit/

Instagram: @seleck