PAMM opens a rare Basquiat showcase, The Set celebrates music and community in Delray, and upcycled art puts ocean plastic to good (re)use. Plus, punk legends Subhumans and more in your week ahead.
WEDNESDAY
What: “Entangled and Ingested: The Work of Katharine Owens”
When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Resource Depot, 2508 Florida Ave., West Palm Beach
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/882-0090, resourcedepot.org
The two verbs in the title of this exhibition refer to the impacts of plastic pollution on sea life. When turtles and other beloved ocean fauna encounter our manmade detritus in our national environment, they often find themselves entangled in it, or they ingest it. Owens, a National Geographic Explorer and Fulbright fellow, sees her artistic practice as an extension of her environmental advocacy work. “Entangled and Ingested,” a project begun in 2021, features portraits of animals harmed by nondegradable plastics. Owens’ medium is these very collected materials, which are hand-stitched onto canvases in a labor-intensive process. Her portraits include the Antarctic skua, the Atlantic cod, the black-footed albatross, the blacktip shark and many more. Explore the exhibition any day through Aug. 15.
THURSDAY
What: Sounds of The Set
When: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Where: Libby Wesley Plaza, 2 S.W. Fifth Ave., Delray Beach
Cost: Free
Contact: 561/243-1077, downtowndelraybeach.com
When was the last time you visited The Set, Delray Beach’s tight-knit downtown community named for the pioneering Black settlers who helped build the city into the multicultural haven it is today? Thursday is a prime opportunity to become reacquainted, as it marks the summer’s first of two “Sounds of The Set” evening gatherings. Spanning from Libby Wesley Plaza to The Hive (at 34 S.W. Fifth Ave.), visitors can peruse unique items from Blackmer’s Market, explore the independent shops along Fifth Avenue, and groove to live music from the five-piece soul quintet JM & the Sweets. The next “Sounds of The Set” is not until Aug. 27.
What: Opening night of “Basquiat: Figures, Signs, Symbols”
When: 8 to 9:30 p.m.
Where: Perez Art Museum Miami, 1103 Biscayne Blvd., Miami
Cost: Free
Contact: 305/375-3000, pamm.org
Tragically taken from us at 27, in 1988, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat managed in 10 short years what many artists strive over a lifetime to achieve—an instantly recognizable style, a frontier vision that rewrote the rulebook on what’s possible in visual art, acclaim generations beyond their death: In 2017, an untitled Basquiat painting netted a record-breaking $110.5 million at auction. But for an artist of such galvanizing influence, Basquiat’s work is rarely shown in large-scale exhibitions outside of the biggest art enclaves in the world, which makes this selection of 10 masterworks, on loan from the Kenneth C. Griffin Collection, the largest Basquiat show in Florida to date. The exhibition will run for nearly a year, but there are two incentives to visit on Thursday. For one, admission is free, as it is on Thursday After Dark evenings. And second, the opening includes live DJing from Carter Jackson-Brown and Kumi Alvarez, who will spin an eclectic variety of the classic jazz, punk, and hip-hop that inspired Basquiat to create art.
FRIDAY
What: Opening night of “The Art of Language”
When: 6 p.m.
Where: ArtServe, 1350 E. Sunrise Blvd., Fort Lauderdale
Cost: Free
Contact: 954/462-8190, artserve.org
Letters, words, and sentences can be employed for more than just literary and communicative means; as the artists in “The Art of Language” reveal, they also have been serving as aesthetic objects, independent of linguistic understanding, for millennia. Expect the right and left brains to merge in this exhibition, which explores the artistic merit of forms as varied as calligraphy, poetry, and storytelling, including a curated collection of illuminated manuscripts from Tony Pastucci. The exhibition will run through Aug. 28, but Friday’s opening-night reception is the only time to experience an interpretive dance performance by Emily Caravella that brings the language-arts concept fully into three dimensions. Friday also marks the opening night of ArtServe’s solo exhibition “Ceramic Sculpture by Walter O’Neill,” also running through Aug. 28.
SATURDAY
What: Subhumans
When: 7 p.m.
Where: Respectable Street, 518 Clematis St., West Palm Beach
Cost: $29.97
Contact: 561/832-9999, sub-culture.org/respectable-street
Founded in Wiltshire, England in 1980, Subhumans rode the first wave of punk rock to its anarchic terminus, with their classic first three albums—The Day the Country Died, From the Cradle to the Grave, and Worlds Apart—serving as an essential part of their country’s soundtrack of anger and disillusionment in the Thatcher era. Loud, aggressive, and snotty but with an underpinning of melody and hooks, their general accessibility mirrors Bad Religion’s sound and ascent here in the United States. Rare among bands that launched more than 40 years ago, Subhumans still includes three members who have been with the group since its 1982 debut, including indefatigable frontman Dick Lucas.
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