WISH YOU WERE HERE
Mindy Shrago
Jan 20-27, 2024 | Club Gallery
South Florida native Mindy Shrago synthesizes and combines aspects of painting and sculpture in her thoughtful and diverse body of ceramic work in a career-spanning exhibition at Miami’s Club Gallery. Throughout Shrago’s oeuvre, she has playfully questioned and redefined the boundaries of what is traditionally two and three dimensional. By juxtaposing flat, underglaze-painted subjects and landscapes with sculptural relief and fully three-dimensional forms, a visual metamorphosis occurs and the representational is released from the two-dimensional picture plane. This redefinition of space within her work creates a sense of freedom and an escape into utopian landscapes created with inspiration drawn from her love of the surrounding tropical South Floridian environment along with the colors and aesthetics of vintage Florida kitsch. However, Shrago doesn’t simply celebrate nature, but has always made sure to leave space within her work to contemplate our complex relationship with it, both positive and negative. “My landscapes remind us that we are merely on a point or place along the way toward something we can only dream of - harmony and balance with nature” she says of her series Playing with the Environment. Each piece within presents detailed renderings of local flora and fauna painted and airbrushed on separating sculptural puzzle pieces and blocks slowly falling away from one another as if to suggest our ecological systems may be coming apart as well.
In earlier works, surrealistically sculpted pink flamingos, representing “elegance and serenity”, peel and stretch off of stark-white, geometric ceramic planes “contrasting, competing and demanding exploration”. Each one casts a long, dark foreboding Trompe l'oeil shadow, taking it out of the kitschy visual vernacular of tacky Floridian tourist traps into a somber space to contemplate our decimation of local wildlife and ecosystems. Looking back on her entire body of work Shrago says of the medium she has been devoted to throughout her entire artistic career “I find clay to be aesthetically adventurous, sensuous and alive. I am in tune with the material - one that is malleable and responsive to my touch. "Being" is submitted to a radical process of "Becoming", the transformation of matter by a mysterious natural process: that process involves certain risks which I find exciting."
She has balanced this with optimistic, joyful work since retiring from her prolific career as founder and CEO of the forward-thinking Young At Art Museum (YAA), created after receiving her BA in Ceramics from the University of South Florida and representation by the renowned Gloria Luria Gallery. The period she spent building and overseeing the institution imbued in her a need to convey universally positive messages within her artistic practice, leading to a full series of dripping ceramic ice cream cones, originally commissioned in 1979 by the then popular restaurant and ice cream store chain Howard Johnson. In Shrago’s newest series Wish You Were Here and Clouds she cheekily flattens ocean scenes, marshes, tropical beaches, flamingos and idyllic blue sky-scapes onto ceramic slabs reminiscent of vintage postcards, sometimes even including 3-dimensional, ceramic push-pins when hung on the wall.
Photos: Zachary Balber | Press Release: Zack Spechler & Ben Morey
Mindy Shrago
Jan 20-27, 2024 | Club Gallery
South Florida native Mindy Shrago synthesizes and combines aspects of painting and sculpture in her thoughtful and diverse body of ceramic work in a career-spanning exhibition at Miami’s Club Gallery. Throughout Shrago’s oeuvre, she has playfully questioned and redefined the boundaries of what is traditionally two and three dimensional. By juxtaposing flat, underglaze-painted subjects and landscapes with sculptural relief and fully three-dimensional forms, a visual metamorphosis occurs and the representational is released from the two-dimensional picture plane. This redefinition of space within her work creates a sense of freedom and an escape into utopian landscapes created with inspiration drawn from her love of the surrounding tropical South Floridian environment along with the colors and aesthetics of vintage Florida kitsch. However, Shrago doesn’t simply celebrate nature, but has always made sure to leave space within her work to contemplate our complex relationship with it, both positive and negative. “My landscapes remind us that we are merely on a point or place along the way toward something we can only dream of - harmony and balance with nature” she says of her series Playing with the Environment. Each piece within presents detailed renderings of local flora and fauna painted and airbrushed on separating sculptural puzzle pieces and blocks slowly falling away from one another as if to suggest our ecological systems may be coming apart as well.
In earlier works, surrealistically sculpted pink flamingos, representing “elegance and serenity”, peel and stretch off of stark-white, geometric ceramic planes “contrasting, competing and demanding exploration”. Each one casts a long, dark foreboding Trompe l'oeil shadow, taking it out of the kitschy visual vernacular of tacky Floridian tourist traps into a somber space to contemplate our decimation of local wildlife and ecosystems. Looking back on her entire body of work Shrago says of the medium she has been devoted to throughout her entire artistic career “I find clay to be aesthetically adventurous, sensuous and alive. I am in tune with the material - one that is malleable and responsive to my touch. "Being" is submitted to a radical process of "Becoming", the transformation of matter by a mysterious natural process: that process involves certain risks which I find exciting."
She has balanced this with optimistic, joyful work since retiring from her prolific career as founder and CEO of the forward-thinking Young At Art Museum (YAA), created after receiving her BA in Ceramics from the University of South Florida and representation by the renowned Gloria Luria Gallery. The period she spent building and overseeing the institution imbued in her a need to convey universally positive messages within her artistic practice, leading to a full series of dripping ceramic ice cream cones, originally commissioned in 1979 by the then popular restaurant and ice cream store chain Howard Johnson. In Shrago’s newest series Wish You Were Here and Clouds she cheekily flattens ocean scenes, marshes, tropical beaches, flamingos and idyllic blue sky-scapes onto ceramic slabs reminiscent of vintage postcards, sometimes even including 3-dimensional, ceramic push-pins when hung on the wall.
Photos: Zachary Balber | Press Release: Zack Spechler & Ben Morey