Local Art, National Appeal


  Guns. Romance. Television. Alcohol.

  Nope, not this week's topics on the Jerry Springer show, rather they are the subjects of "New Art," the June exhibit at the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art in Lake Worth, Florida.

  "New Art" features the winners of the South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship Program for Visual and Media Artists. The exhibit's paintings, installation, photography, video, and drawings were created by local artists, but these artists explore themes that resonate throughout the United States.

  Kyle Trowbridge's work addresses the loss of innocence our children face to the everyday threat of violence, particularly handguns. His subjects are kids, who he renders in a non-threatening 50's-style illustrations.  The University of Miami instructor's untitled 3'x4' inkjet print depicts school-children in the lunchroom, drinking milk and eating wholesome food while their classmate sits in the foreground holding a revolver.

  Using a video loop to morph the covers of romance novels, Robert Arnold explores love, romantic tension, and desire in "The Morphology of Desire."  The ever-changing faces of these heroes and heroines begin to develop a passionate narrative that evolves but never resolves in the art of this Florida Atlantic University professor.

  Charles Recher brings his video and installation art to the people, and as he videos his own video creations, public reaction becomes part of his art. The video trio at PB/ICA documents his exploration of time and journey in "Ride," a bus installation which few pedestrians paid notice to, and "I Think I'm Ready, which was displayed in a Miami storefront.  In a wrenchingly accurate observation on our television-addicted society, "Video Prophet," records a person walking down a busy Miami Beach sidewalk with a monstrously size television mounted where a head should be. The screen projects an enormous face that says only "Hi," "Hey," and "What?"  It laughs. It cries. But it cannot articulate beyond the simple monosyllabic greetings and query.

  If you're wondering why the water coolers are roped off at this museum, that's because they aren't just water coolers.  They're "Water Coolers," installation art by Jason Hedges.  The Broward resident challenges the viewers with the unexpected. If you breached the cordon to get a drink from one of these four coolers, you couldn't drink the water. There's no water in them. Surprise: it's vodka.

  The exhibit also includes the photographic explorations of Haitian myth, magic, and ritual by artist Jenny Zeller; pop-culture commentary through advertising icons and everyday items from Ray Azcuy; collage and paint "abstract expressionism" by Bruce Helander; minimalist (and very tiny) drawings by William Cordova; a filmic experience of youth, adolescence, aging and dying by Wynsum Hatton and> Andrew Wise; and a "sweet" domestic installation carpeted in hard candies by Rosario Marquadt and
Roberto Behar.

  The dozen artists that were chosen as this year's fellowship awardees were culled from the grant applications of artists from Martin, Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties.

  "New Art" will be displayed through June 30 at PB/ICA, 601 Lake Avenue, Lake Worth, Florida.
For more information: www.palmbeachica.org

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