Locust Projects: 105 NW 23rd St, WYNWOOD, MIAMI FLORIDA 33127

phone number: (305)576 8570

In the main space, LOCUST PROJECTS will present new work by Los Angeles artist Kori Newkirk made specifically for the space. At the forefront of a generation of young African-American artists, Newkirk has exhibited his work in galleries and museums around the world. His exhibition at Locust Projects will be his first one-person show in the south florida region.

Locust Projects is pleased to present Bixel, Kori
Newkirk's debut single channel video.  Science fiction
and semi-autobiographical in tone, Bixel furthers
Newkirk's formal and conceptual investigation of the
mediated self within the larger urban and pastoral
landscape.   Armed with a mouth full of silvery
glitter, Newkirk's head and torso ascends and retreats
from beneath a lush green lawn, as if emerging from an
invisible borrow. Bixel is punctuated by a sequence of
non-narrative and non-linear imagery ranging from a
close-ups of windmill fans to the artist himself
traversing the picture frame in whirlwind-esque
spirals.   Recalling previous photographic work, such
as Haywood - where Newkirk's obfuscated naked body
stands blanketed among pristine snow – or in Juke –
where the artist, in a suit, lays on a lawn shielding
his eyes from the glaring sun, Bixel interrogates
notions of privilege and complicates the legibility of
a delocalized body politic.

Continuing in the tradition of giving artists carte blanche, Locust Projects invited Newkirk to create a new project without any restrictions. This gave him the freedom to work in a medium which he had never had the opportunity to explore in the past. Locust Projects will be showing his first ever video work.

Newkirk’s exhibition adds to the list of outstanding projects that Locust Projects has hosted. The list of artists is nothing to scoff at: Nick Relph and Oliver Payne, Eric Wesley, Jon Pylypchuk, Nathan Carter, Alex Bag, Gregory Green, and Mark Leckey, among others.
Working with artists who are beginning to break into the international art world, Locust Projects provides them the opportunity to work without the stuffiness and restrictions of a larger institutional setting. They are literally allowed to do whatever they please here, and there can be little doubt that this is at the center of the exciting exhibitions that we have hosted in the past.

In the project room, LOCUST PROJECTS will host an exhibition with new works by New York-based artist Justin Lieberman.

Lieberman writes: “The group of paintings I am presenting were inspired by the so-called "traces" on many of the paintings of Jackson Pollock. These traces, cigarette butts, clumps of paint brush bristles, partial footprints on the surfaces of the paintings were an affectation of lasses-faire by the artist deliberately placed to give a macho impression of not caring about the finer, unimportant details of presentation and above all to avoid treating the painting as "precious." These elements of the paintings have become famous as well for the problem of conservation that they present. A familiar and comic scene is that of the group of museum conservators gathered around a cigarette butt that has fallen off of one of the paintings with magnifying glasses and tweezers in hand, bent on it's preservation. In the 9 paintings in the show my intention was to isolate this particular idea by creating a group of works in which there was no paint at all, only "traces". Debris from my studio floor as well as the area surrounding the garbage cans outside my building which I would apply by emptying my shop-vac onto a sheet of paper prepared with glue. As for the "precious" aspect of the work, a colored frilly cut paper border frames each painting. These borders also serve to differentiate the otherwise similar works through color as well as introducing a minimal seriality to their installation. The borders also provide the starting point for the titles of the individual works: each one is named after the emotion traditionally associated with the color of its border. I have accounted for the conservation of my paintings in advance by providing a metal trough with each one (except for Envy, which has a matching broom) to collect the bits and pieces which will inevitably drop off with time.”

click here for article1 about this show (miami new times)

click here for article2 about this show (artnet)

click here for article3 about this show (new york times)

click here for article4 about this show (artnet)

PRESENTED IN COORDINATION WITH AMC LIASIONS