The arts are nothing if not resilient. While rising rents and materials costs, a softening consumer economy, and decisions such as the Florida Department of Transportation’s move to erase street art have all posed challenges in our region, Delray Beach’s artists remain committed to their creative endeavors. If you need a reminder that Delray remains a thriving epicenter for the arts, the current centerpiece exhibition at Arts Warehouse should assuage any doubts.
Unlike most group exhibitions at the CRA-run venue, there is no theme to “Modular,” which opened earlier this month and runs through Oct. 25. Abstract and figural, conceptual and literal, photography and painting and sculpture all are presented. The link that binds the 13 artists in the show is that all of them rent studio space within Arts Warehouse. With most of the exhibited work produced in this very building, “Modular” serves as more than a celebration of Delray’s homegrown talent. It’s a testament to the venue’s leadership in curating and fostering a diverse roster of residents whose art is just as accomplished as the more widely known names brought in for special exhibitions.
The first artwork most visitors will encounter is Ma Nong’s “Self-Portrait,” a clear-eyed expression of the historically abstract artist’s embrace of new forms without jettisoning her roots. In the painting, the artist, confident and rosy-cheeked, sits in front of one of her own abstract canvases, her upper body blurring surreally with a cube. The piece plays tricks with our eyes on multiple levels, a marvelous hybrid of a painting that lacks an obvious precedent—and it’s my personal “Best in Show.”
Other highlights include two works by Nickki Lewis-Parker exploring the S&M subculture. In “Adam,” the titular figure is faceless and painted from behind, his sinewy arms and back a subtle dance of shifting colors and shadows. The same color palette informs “Atlas,” in which a ball-gagged man stares up at his dominatrix with puppy-dog eyes, and her arm reaches over his bare chest, each consenting adult engaging in a beautiful ballet of control and tenderness.
Intimacy, both direct and indirect, also infuses the photography of Andrea Sarcos Valencia, whose “Pride Mango” presents the fruit as a fragmented collage of fleshy and sweaty close-ups as sexually suggestive as any of O’Keeffe’s libidinous flowers. Sarcos Valencia’s “Papaya Self Portrait” is effectively a polyptych of nine photographs of the artist’s nude body and the titular fruit, sometimes paired, sometimes separate. The eye’s left-to-right movements from photograph to photograph suggest the cuts in an avant-garde film—none would have been out of place in the 1993 Vietnamese-French masterpiece “The Scent of Green Papaya.”
The human body is also central to the multidisciplinary works of Angela Bulich, as the feminine form of the Venus archetype appears throughout her contributions to “Modular,” whether on a paneled screen, a canvas or hanging sculpture. The bodies, deconstructed as repeated lines, appear as graphic, direct and perhaps as playful as a Keith Haring figure.
Transitioning into the fantasy realm, selections of kiln-fired, individualistic dragon busts from Jess Burbridge’s “Elemental Guardians” series of ceramics dot the gallery, watching over the space—often with eyes of reflective labradorite—like protectors. On the surface of “Eden,” a serpent surrounds a quartz crystal at the mythical beast’s third eye, while flowers and mushrooms bloom around it; the sculpture truly evokes its Biblical name. In “Naidara,” an homage to the naiad, barnacles and other marine dwellers cling to the dragon’s scaly surface, its colors a coastal palette of oceanic blues and whites.
My favorite work of pure abstraction in “Modular” is Marianela Pérez’s “Balance I” and “Balance II.” Inspired by the artist’s introduction to Miami sunsets, these pastel visions of mostly triangles and parallelograms suggest a sky split into a motley geometry. They are endlessly fascinating.
I’ll close this review with a big smile, which is what the 3D mixed media works of Kelsey Paz Snyder conjure. In “Fresh Squeezed,” a plaster-of-Paris sculpture of a Turkish towel adds weight and depth atop a painting of a beach picnic, in which a cut lemon fell from its surface onto the sand. The reflection of a palm tree, cast on both the two- and three-dimensional elements of the canvas, serves as a lovely detail, and adds a sense of place to the scene.
Snyder’s “Sundazed” similarly blurs dimension, as a sand-smudged towel ripples outward over a tableaux of beach necessities, such as a partially submerged canister of sunscreen. You can practically smell the salty air wafting from these canvases—evocations of Delray Beach itself, frozen in time and space.
“Modular” runs through Oct. 25 at Arts Warehouse, 313 N.E. Third St., Delray Beach. Admission is free, and the gallery is open Wednesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. For information, call 561/330-9614 or visit artswarehouse.org.
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