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As we approach the 2024 Miami Art Week, Sponder Gallery of Boca Raton offers a curated selection of artists that embody a commitment to dialogues around artistic legacy, environmental awareness, and innovation. This year, the gallery’s exhibit brings together works that bridge historical and contemporary sensibilities, uniting artists across epochs to reflect both enduring traditions and forward-looking practices. Highlighting these themes, the exhibition calls on a rich roster of artists whose works resonate with themes of environmentalism, materiality, and cultural memory, demonstrating art’s power to transcend its own time.

The Sponder Gallery art fair roster includes significant figures like Doug Argue, Stanley Boxer, and Lynn Chadwick, whose foundational modernist practices anchor the exhibition and continue to inspire generations. Their contributions, alongside Dan Christensen, James Austin Murray, and Donald Martiny, reflect an era of rigorous experimentation and abstraction, laying the groundwork for today’s explorations in form and meaning.

However, Patrick Tagoe Turkson’s contributions stand out as a vital, contemporary expansion of these dialogues. Tagoe Turkson’s work brings an innovative ecological and cultural perspective. With each assemblage, Tagoe Turkson explores the relationship between environmental degradation and cultural memory, creating textured, patterned works that evoke the rhythms of textile traditions and address the socio-environmental impacts of global waste.

In a thrilling premiere, sculptor Scarlett Kanistanaux will be making her Art Miami 2024 debut with Boca Raton-based Sponder Gallery, offering a rare opportunity for South Florida collectors to experience her deeply spiritual work firsthand. Known for her evocative ceramic and bronze portraits inspired by Buddhist monastic life, Kanistanaux’s sculptures capture the serene dignity and quiet power of young monks and nuns—a resonant and timely choice for the culturally diverse art lovers of Miami.

For Kanistanaux, who hails from Erie, Colorado, this appearance with Sponder Gallery marks an exciting milestone in her career. Sponder Gallery has long been a fixture in South Florida's art scene, and this collaboration highlights the gallery's commitment to showcasing artists whose work resonates with universal themes. Kanistanaux’s introspective portraits align seamlessly with the gallery’s vision, creating an ideal fit for both artist and gallery.

Beverly Cuyler, Sponder Gallery Director, expressed enthusiasm for bringing Kanistanaux’s work to the prestigious Art Miami stage. "Scarlett's work touches on themes that are profoundly universal—compassion, introspection, and a quest for peace," said Cuyler. "We are thrilled to introduce her powerful sculptures to the Art Miami audience and share her vision of harmony and reflection with South Florida's passionate art collectors."

Minimal and Post-Minimal: Sculpture Beyond the White Cube by Annalisa Rimaudo 

What you see is what you see” declared Frank Stella (1936-2024) of his work, neatly summing up one of the central characteristics of Minimal Art, in contrast with the Abstract Expressionism that preceded it. If we are to take this phrase literally, what “we see” is essentially the work of male artists. When F. Stella started work on his radical black striped paintings in 1959, however, the Cuban artist Carmen Herrera (1915-2022) had already been producing striped acrylics since the early 1950s.

Minimal Art has undeniably been historicised as masculine, a bias that is evident when we look at the creators chosen by art history to represent the movement: they are the omnipresent characters of the time, part of an art scene structured by a powerful patriarchy. The movement has been theorized mainly by men and not only by artists, such as Donald Judd (1928-1994) and Robert Morris (1931-2018). The term itself was introduced by Robert Wollheim in his article “Minimal Art”, published in Arts Magazine in 1965, in which he analyses this then-dominant artistic movement as a fundamentally reductionist form, resting on ideas of non-intervention as applied to the found object and the essentialism of monochrome inherited from two great male artists, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967).

Yet one cannot deny that women artists and critics are also protagonists here. And, though the qualifier “minimal” has historically been favoured over “ABC Art”, the term put forward by Barbara Rose, several women artists represented the movement, both “in” and “off” the scene, from its very beginnings.

The Kx2 exhibition Ripple Effect is on view at Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery 10/3-11/9

Deeply concerned with the urgent environmental issues facing our world, artist duo KX2 is excited to present "Ripple Effect" at the Rosemary Duffy Larson Gallery. This exhibition is a culmination of their ongoing exploration into the fragile relationship between urbanization and the environment, focusing on critical themes such as water infrastructure, climate change, flooding and the diminishing access to potable water. Through this body of work, the artists aim to not only reflect upon the impact of climate change on infrastructure but also to provoke a dialogue about the future of our communities and our planet.
 

NEAR THE RIVERS THERE ARE MANY LARGE SPRINGS | MILENA ARANGO, DONNA RUFF, KX2 (RUTH AVRA AND DANA KLEINMAN)

Near the rivers there are many large springs is an exhibition that highlights the Florida landscape from the lenses of four South Florida artists that use historical elements, raw data, repurposed materials, and nature to create awareness of the changing environment in the area. Milena Arango’s leaf imprints on paper and textile using natural pigments extracted from the teak tree serve as a reflection of her personal journey. Her 197-feet long VTG (Vestigium Tectona Grandis) exposes traces of leaves and the effects of land and water from multiple landscapes. Donna Ruff’s interest in history and the tropical landscape led her to discover archival landscape photographs in a 1920’s book by John Kunkel Small.

One view in Terminal 1 through July 2024

HYDRA is a thought-provoking installation shedding light on the vital, but often overlooked, network of utility pipes that silently weave through our modern world. These pipes are the unsung heroes of modern infrastructure ensuring we have access to clean water, efficient storm drainage and proper wastewater disposal. Just like veins in our bodies, they form a complex system essential for the health of our society.

The artist created this piece out of his love for Israel. Proceeds from the gallery and the artist will benefit Magen David Adom and Friends of the IDF. Available in 37 x 75 inches and 48 x 100 inches.

The $200 million renovation of this sprawling 1,000-room, Michael Dell-owned resort is just the beginning. 

What’s the deal? 

It began life, in 1926, as The Ritz-Carlton Cloister Inn: a Spanish colonial-style, 100-room property. Almost a century (plus several owners) later and The Boca Raton is a 337-acre hospitality behemoth with over 1,000 rooms, two 18-hole golf courses, a 50,000-square-foot spa, seven swimming pools, 30 tennis courts, a 32-slip marina, 13 restaurants and bars and 200,000 square feet of meeting space. The property is divided between its original buildings known as the “Cloister,” the “Bungalows,” the “Tower,” the “Beach Club” and the “Yacht Club.” 

Last year, the resort reopened following a $200-million refurb that changed the color of “The Pink Hotel” (as locals have dubbed it for decades) to a “coastal white” (proprietors’ words). The barrel tile roofs, archways, mosaics, and ceilings have been restored, and an injection of modernity given to a grand old dame of US hospitality in the form of modern, locally sourced furniture and rotating artworks, provided by the nearby SPONDER GALLERY.  But this is just the beginning, as even more costly upgrades are coming at a yet-unspecified future date. 

The Weisman Art Museum presents DOUG ARGUE: LETTERS TO THE FUTURE, which will be on view through the summer from June 17 – September 10, 2023. Doug Argue emerged onto the Twin Cities art scene in the early 1980s. At the age of twenty-two, he had Á¬lled a studio with sensational, larger than life paintings made on a scale for museums. Their enormous size aside, these gnarly, expressionist images stood apart from current art fashion. In place of the abstract or conceptual art of so many of his contemporaries, Argue’s early imagery featured intensiÁ¬ed personal memories and the louche inhabitants of his imagination. 

In the ensuing years, Doug’s autobiographical tendencies found a wide range of expression. After becoming a parent he created a series of works that feature fathers and sons. Toned down in size and intensity, these works contain a childlike curiosity about the world that aligns with their subject. Once the artist returned to his studio, however, he again began to make work on a grand scale. In the mid-1990s, word spread about a new painting that was drawing attention in his studio. This canvas, which became known as the “chicken painting,” was a major tour-de-force. It soon went on loan to the Weisman where it became an immediate favorite of visitors to the museum. 

ARTFUL TOUCHES

Opening a location at The Boca Raton in 2009, Sponder Gallery has presented the resort with a wide collection of Post-War and Contemporary art featuring artists who display innovative techniques and a unique approach to materials.  Highlighting the work of Armenian-born and New York based artist, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan, two versions of “DS Mirror for Ukraine” are Sponder Gallery’s latest offerings to adorn The Boca Raton.