At the Wynwood Walls, March 2013: Mural is FUTURA 2000 by Kenny Scharf

Once and mostly still the Barrio, Wynwood is an emerging destination north of Miami's downtown, just before the causeway to North Miami Beach.  Fabulous street art (some curated, some not) covers dozens of walls in a neighborhood of warehouses, small manufacturing facilities, and abandoned buildings.  Galleries, restaurants, and such are beginning to proliferate.

Wynwood is not especially conducive for my art-making.  Most of the places where I usually find my non-intentional forms have often been given some sort of intentional treatment.  For example, here is a very purposefully painted utility pole.

A few blocks north of the Walls is the Rubell Family Collection where I wanted to see the Oscar Murillo exhibit (through August 2).   The gigantic works (below) created during a five week residency last year are gorgeous, evocative, and counter-intuitively intimate.

The museum occupies what was once a Drug Enforcement Administration evidence warehouse, large enough for confiscated cars, boats and such.  It is the finest boutique museum of contemporary art I have visited with a significant collection wonderfully displayed and imaginatively curated.  The building itself - or at least its floors - inspired me as you will see in the next post.

Murillo at work last summer

Legacy Russell has a review of and interview with Murillo in the current edition of BOMB. She writes:

For Murillo, the act of making holds as much potential for liberation and functionality within the confines of one’s studio as it does in one’s home, on the street, or within one’s community. In his work, actions and words, paint and parties, all speak at the same volume. The objects made by his hand float buoyantly within the realm of the liminal, always here and there, inside and out, home and abroad, all at once very familiar, and yet, somehow, entirely untranslatable. Murillo’s use of text in his paintings illustrates the limits and the possibilities presented by language; words are part of histories that are not always our own, but that we cling to. The physicality of painting is one that provides a sturdy framework for making the leap into the performative realm, a showing of convivial desire. Here, the artist raises a champagne glass—and sometimes an arepa—in lieu of a looking glass, an eloquent reminder of the spaces we travel between and a reflection of these worlds and the constructs that lend them composure, and neutrality.