Category: Current Exhibitions

In a recent interview, artist Vaughn Spann (American, b. 1992) remarked, “Abstraction maps reality.” The four monumental paintings on view, all from the series Marked Men, represent the convergence of abstraction and figuration in Spann’s art. Rendered as a grid, each panel features a prominent ‘X’ at the center of the composition. Vibrant paint—from sapphire to sky blue, crimson red, fire orange, and marigold yellow, to blush pink and emerald green—emphasize Spann’s lattice of kaleidoscopic color. A combination of pigment and housepaint, the artist works the surface of the painting on the floor of his studio, building texture withing the picture plane, and then completes the work upright on the wall.

The X serves as a stand-in for the body and represents both personal and collective experiences. Created in a variety of hues and form, the X ranges from prominently visible to camouflaged or hidden. In Spann’s paintings, the X serves as a portrait of the everyman who has been targeted in racial profiling. It reflects self as well as the unknown or anonymous person. In discussing the inspiration for the Marked Men series, Spann shared: “I was stopped and frisked for the first time while I was an undergrad student…I was walking home from studying at a friend’s house. Cops pulled me over. Four other cop cars came by. They put me against a gate, and my hands are up, split. That same gesture echoes the X. And, for me, that’s such a symbolic form, and so powerful to this contemporary moment.”

Spann’s paintings illustrate a breadth of art historical and contemporary art influences, from the colorful abstract paintings by Stanley Whitney and Brice Marden’s lyrical yet minimal canvases, to Pop art icon Andy Warhol. Although each painter offers a uniquely different approach to art making, the grid and notion of repetition or seriality unites the artists. Both a formal and narrative choice, the containment of the grid heightens the image’s meaning or allegory. In discussing his grid paintings, Whitney once remarked, “There is freedom in setting limits for one self.” Spann, greatly inspired by Whitney, builds on this sentiment and adds, “…with freedom comes responsibility.” In this gallery, Spann’s Marked Men series signifies the artist’s dedication to social activism while paying homage to art history.

Born in Orlando, Florida, Vaughn Spann received his BFA in studio art from Rutgers State University and earned his MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University’s School of Art. His art has been exhibited across the globe, with exhibitions mounted at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Rubell Museum. Spann’s work resides in the collections of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Buffalo AKG Art Museum, and others.

 I’m interested in the look of things and the quality of being there. A moment that is completely frozen with all the variety of textures; rust on poles, crumbling asphalt, light hitting the grass.

                                                                                                                                                      Rod Penner

In the late 1960s, a new genre of realist painting emerged in New York City and San Francisco. While Pop art and abstraction remained the dominant forms of painting at the time, a group of artists explored the convergence of photography and painting. Dubbed “Photorealism” by the gallerist Lou Meisel, a cohort of artists used their own photographs to create landscapes, portraits, and still lifes in exact detail. To create such precise paintings, the Photorealists often employed projectors to enlarge their images onto canvas and utilized novel tools, such as spray guns, to render works with smooth surfaces. Brushwork, particularly bold gestural mark making, was abandoned in favor of a look that mirrored the quality of the photograph. The pictorial content varied but typically the West Coast artists favored everyday scenes of daily life. East Coast artists captured the shiny allure of chrome objects, such as diners, trucks, cars, and the typography of signs and advertisements. Artists on both coasts emphasized light and reflection in their paintings, which remains a signature element of Photorealism.

Rod Penner’s photo-based work inherits the legacy of Photorealism but also challenges the aesthetic of the genre. For nearly 40-years, Penner has painted America’s small towns. While much of his work portrays communities in Texas and New Mexico, Penner’s paintings explore the beauty in absence and decay that inhabit the once bustling corridors of Main Street, America. In this selection of eight paintings, Penner details deteriorating building facades, aging signs, and vacant streets devoid of people. Brooding clouds and expansive skylines loom above the one and two-story buildings, further highlighting the spectral quality of the town. Penner’s use of light and shadow, as well as reflections in puddles, create both a sense of drama in the composition and emphasize the passage of time.

To create his paintings, Penner uses his own reference photographs and videos to render precision of subject, light, and form. Unlike the Photorealists, he is not interested in recreating the photographic image, rather he uses the photo as a sketch. He photographs sites in the evening or Sunday mornings, finding inspiration in the solitude and quietness of the moment. In the studio, Penner uses a small paintbrush to laboriously render the details and visual textures of each scene. Although from a distance the works may appear as a photograph, close inspection of Penner’s paintings reveal his carefully placed brush marks. Each painting represents the artist’s poetic interpretation of Americana and the enduring presence of the past.

Throughout the exhibition visitors will encounter vividly painted canvases, detailed embroidery, as well as gold foil and mosaics. A feast for the eyes, the works included in the exhibition are unabashedly sumptuous. Beginning with pattern painting and moving into complex fiber works, the exhibition examines how artists embraced excess and rejected restrained formality. In their work and in their personal lives, several artists considered feminism to be a core component of their practices. Some aimed to elevate color palettes and techniques traditionally associated with women artists.  

Embellish Me is presented in honor of Norma Canelas Roth (1943–2022). A tireless advocate for artists, Roth felt deeply passionate about collecting art that was often neglected by mainstream art dealers, critics, and curators. Born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, and an alumni of the University of South Florida, she lived much of her life in Florida. She remained committed to collecting in depth. Embellish Me presents a selection of works collected by Roth, many of which made by artists affiliated with the Pattern and Decoration movement, which she collected extensively.  

Embellish Me: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth and William Roth is organized by the Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum at FIU and presented in collaboration with the Tampa Museum of Art

Haiti emerged as a sovereign state after a massive slave rebellion overturned the established order in a dramatic and violent revolution. Since 1804, the island nation has embarked in continual attempts at self-rule but many of these efforts proved unsuccessful, never fulfilling the dreams of a better life cherished by the former enslaved. France, the former colonial power ousted by the rebellion and bitter at the loss of her crown jewel, made sure itself and its allies never gave the first Black republic a fair chance to compete fairly in the concert of nations. The successive governments of Haiti could not garner enough economic clout to make the transfer of impoverished and destitute slaves into a citizenry that could muster and foster a stable, progressive society. All in all, the former slaves were left mostly to their own devices when it came to nation building. Forming an identity needed and required with their new freedoms remained unresolved for centuries. Today, they remain in that constant quest for social cohesion but Haitians noteworthy accomplishments in the field of visual art helped define its national character. 

Contrary to most of its neighbors in the Caribbean archipelago, one can say that Haiti’s visual culture emanates from its majority working class rather than from a well-tutored elite or directed from government led cultural initiatives.  Early travelers’ accounts to the island revealed cultural flourishes peculiar and distinct from Haiti’s neighbors. Their narratives perceived the Black republic as a place of wonder. One could sense it in the reports detailed in Eugène Aubin’s In Haiti: Planters of Yesteryears, Negroes of Today (1910) or William Seabrook’s book The Magic Island (1929). Published in the early 20^th-century, both books featured extensive photographic coverage of the island nation but revealed unsympathetic and unabashedly racist opinions of Haiti. However, the publications’ images included ornate wall paintings unique to the rural habitats and sacred sites of Vodou temples, which were profusely decorated inside and outside. These photographs provided a glimpse of what would become decades later, a “discovery” of Haiti’s creative legacy. 

In 1944, Haitian intellectuals collaborated with Dewitt Peters, an American conscientious objector, to found the Centre d’Art in Port-au-Prince. The institution provided access to art to all strata of Haitian society. Artists gravitated to the Centre d’Art and what they brought with them was, though very far from any academia, a varied, fresh, and startling artistic expression. Each artist depicted a world they envisioned or observed in their own way. At the time the devotional practice of Vaudo was prohibited yet the artists creatively revealed the outlawed spirits and lwas (Vodou deities) to the world. The artists also depicted a way of life—simple and ordered—as probably more a wish than everyday circumstances. The bucolic aspect of these works likely triggered the term “naïve” as an explanation of Haiti’s art yet it was anything but simple. The art served as a form of protest in that artists pointed out at what Haitian’s expected, wanted, and deserved, and not what they had.  Learn more from guest curator, Edouard Duval-Carrié:

This exhibition aims to reframe the context of modern Haitian art. The paintings in this gallery, all masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection, attest to the unique and complex history of Haiti and its cultural legacy. Displayed at different heights yet in dialogue with each other, this installation metaphorically represents the artists’ ideas and ideals. Spiritual figures hover above mortals, as seen in works by André Pierre and Robert Saint Brice. Paintings by the Obin Family, Riguad Benoit, and Salnave Philippe-Auguste hang at a height that envelops the viewer rather than serve as a passive encounter with the artists’ world. The Albrecht Collection provides an overview of the production of art from an island nation, that despite adversity and strife, has and continues to strive in its creative practices.  

Reframing Haitian Art: Masterworks from the Arthur Albrecht Collection was curated by Edouard Duval Carrié, guest curator. 

Funds for the conservation of the Arthur Albrecht Collection were generously provided through a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project.

A celebrated artist, Garry Winogrand transformed the genre of street photography in the 1960s. With his Leica camera in hand, he captured the movements, both hurried and introspective, and raw emotions of his subjects. Initially published as a monograph, the portfolio Women are Beautiful (1975) represents Winogrand’s most significant project. Comprised of 85 photographs, the series features women engaged a range of ordinary activities –walking across the street, enjoying a conversation, and dancing in a crowd. Some of the photos are direct, with the woman walking straight towards Winogrand’s lens, while others reveal the photographer observing quiet moments of solitude.

In the early 1980s, the Tampa Museum of Art established photography—with an emphasis on work created after 1970—as a primary collecting area. The collection now comprises more than 950 photographs and demonstrates how the medium evolved throughout the 20th-century. TMA’s photography collection includes works by John Baldessari, James Casebere, and Cindy Sherman, as well as the candid photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andy Warhol, and Winogrand.

This exhibition is sponsored by David Hall and Judy Tampa

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic represents the first survey of Pepe Mar’s art and highlights 15-years of the artist’s practice, from 2006 to 2023. Presented as a Gesamtkunstwerk, the exhibition itself has been conceptualized as an immersive artwork with the objects on view complemented by the artist’s vibrant fabric walls, plush poufs for sitting, and lush orange carpet. Each work is uniquely different yet incorporates Mar’s signature materials—such as paper cut-outs from magazines, catalogues, and books, decorative textile motifs, clay vessels and figurines, as well as found objects discovered by the artist in shops and thrift stores throughout the world.

Mar opens the exhibition with a sculpture garden and introduces the figure “Paprika,” the artist’s alter ego. Paprika anchors Mar’s work and represents the personal and the Other, as well as the fusion of medium and object. Loosely chronological, Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic is organized by concepts and processes present in Mar’s oeuvre: Assemblage, Revival and Mythologies, Face-Off, and Fabric Paintings. Assemblage examines personal and social identities as well as Queer aesthetics. Revival and Mythologies explores the artist as collector and ethnographer. In this section, the magnum opus The Cabinet of Dr. Mar highlights visual traditions and personal lore. The grid of collages entitled Face-Off illustrates Mar’s approach to portraiture, masking, and explorations of self. Fabric Paintings serve as an archive of the artist’s past works with sculptures, assemblages, and photographs transformed into colorful textiles.

Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic features 60 works of art from public and private collections across the United States, including Burning Up, a collage sculpture acquired by the Tampa Museum of Art in 2019 that served as the inspiration for this survey exhibition. The title of the exhibition pays homage to the 1979 exhibition of Mexican master painter Rufino Tamayo entitled Rufino Tamayo: Myth and Magic, organized by the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum in New York City. While the works on view highlight Mar’s influences—art history, Mexican artifacts and architecture, fashion, science fiction, and pop culture—the exhibition also speaks to the artist’s biography. Living between the border of the US and Mexico, and later establishing roots in Miami, Florida, the art on view reveals the connections between self and site, and material as metaphor. As seen in Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic, the works from the past 15 years reflect the evolution of an artist, as well as a transformative return to his creative roots.

The accompanying catalogue Pepe Mar: Myth and Magic will be published in Fall 2023.

Born in 1977 in Reynosa, Mexico, close to the Mexico/United States border, Pepe Mar spent his childhood living between two cultures. His family moved to Brownsville, Texas during Mar’s teenage years and he started making art in his family’s garage. As a young artist, he purchased inexpensive materials such as feathers and beads from craft stores such as Michael’s. He received his BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and earned his MFA from Florida International University in Miami.

Mar has received several prominent grants, including an Ellies Award from Oolite Arts in 2020 and 2018. Solo exhibitions have been mounted at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO (2022); Frost Art Museum at FIU (2020), Miami, FL; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA (2019); and Locust Projects, Miami, FL (2018). In Fall 2023, a solo exhibition of Mar’s work will be presented at the Everson Museum in Syracuse, NY. Mar is represented by David Castillo. The artist lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Supported in part by:

Jaume Plensa is an internationally acclaimed artist who has exhibited his sculptures in museums all over the world. In locations as diverse as Seoul, Paris, Chicago, Bordeaux and London, Plensa’s monumental sculptures have reaffirmed the power of art to transform a public space into a community. This is aptly demonstrated in his first major commission in the United States, The Crown Fountain in Chicago’s Millennium Park (2004). Two 11-story LED towers face each other across a thin pool of water, with images of a changing and diverse city reflected in the water, a continuously cycling metaphor for the life of a city.

The Crown Fountain was the beginning of Plensa’s investigation of the portrait via photography and form. This led to works like Laura with Bun. At more than 23 feet tall, this artwork expresses both individual and universal traits at great scale, inviting viewers to consider multiple aspects of beauty and human nature. Like all of his large-scale female portrait heads, Laura has her eyes closed, as if looking within. In speaking about these works, Plensa has said, “Look into yourself. My piece is a mirror to reflect your image, so you can think about your own interior—how much beauty we have inside of ourselves.”

Laura with Bun initially came to Tampa as part of the 2016 exhibition Jaume Plensa: Human Landscape. Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous gift and the overwhelming popular support of nearly 100 donors, the Museum has committed to purchase the sculpture for our permanent collection. For their support of this purchase, we are most grateful to:

Anonymous

Celia & Jim Ferman

The Williams Family

Penny & Jeff Vinik

Mark Anderson & Keith Bucklew

Maureen & Douglas Cohn

Stephen & Marsha Dickey

Sara Golding Scher & David Scher

Allison, Robby, Dallas, & Adelaide Adams

Carlton Fields

Blake & Tate Casper

PNC Bank

Susie & Mitchell Rice in honor of Michael Tomor

Jeff Tucker & Len Kizner

FRIENDS of the Museum

And all the Friends of Laura:

Burton N. Mulford & R. Dean Hamric

Mary Alice McClendon

Sara & Mort Richter

Tampa Downtown Partnership

Thomas Hochhausler & Sung Lee

Julianne McKeel

Sharmila & Vivek Seth

Ellen & Don Stichter

Mrs. John Brabson in honor of her family

Reba Cardillo

Margo & Hilliard Eure

Drs. Daniel & Jamie Fernandez

Holmes Hepner & Associates Architects

Rob Iles & Mike Paonessa

Sue & Bob Isbell

Judi Kelly

Arnold & Gail Levine

Keith & Judith Maurer

Ingeborg Michaels

Dr. Richard E. & Mrs Mary B. Perry

Robin C. Sharp & Annemarie Christino

Barbara & Fell Stubbs

Laura & Ed Waller

Linda Rice

William M. Blanchard

Donna & Tom Brumfield

Suzanne Camp Crosby

John Hunter

Sandy & Floyd Juster

Art Keeble

Bob & Kathy Lewis

Leslie & Hampton Stephens

Your Neighbors at TAPS Restaurant Bar & Lounge

Pam Wysocki

Sharon & Lew Sibert

Anonymous

Hillary Carlson Cone in memory of Douglas P. Cone

Todd Edwards

Candy Olson in honor of

Charles, Henry, Edward & Margaret Jaskowiak

and Lynnea & Robbie Cobey-Broad

Keen O’Sullivan

Ellen & Bruce Houghton

Susan Landa in memory of Peter Landa

Grant Wilson & Diana Stevens

in memory of Laura Lundgren

Jim & Susan Casebeer

Chris & Stephanie Arnold

Dolores Coe

Ana Cruz

HJ Freeman

William Hein

Nancy, Ryan, & Briana Kipnis

Bill & Pam Michul

Bill Rogers

Julie Graham Sargent

Bob & Cathy Smith

Lincoln J. Tamayo

Alison Watkins

Marilyn & Robert Farber

David & Diane Drapcho

Colin DeVito

Harrison DeVito

John & Patricia Gorzka

in honor of Julia Gorzka Freeman

Bill & Judy Graham

Gail R. Hirsch

Jennifer Holmberg

Beth Iandoli

Marcia Israeloff & Paul Jacobsen

Kathy, Natalie, & Kaitlin Lowy

Amy, Michael, & Myla Martz

Joe & Laraine O’Neill

Mindy & Carl Snyder

Dana & Paul Whiting Jr.

Anonymous

Marilyn Zoidis

Alice Prida

Martha Coulter

Miriam B. Zack

Julia, Brett, & Jack Freeman

Mr. & Dr. Sarro

Anonymous

Abby Jetmundsen

Leo Pevnick

Today, we recognize various expressions of identity, such as personal, social and national identity. Certain frames of identity are well-defined or fixed, others are based on personal choice or may change over time. Think of economic class and social status, education and profession, culture and nationality. Also, language, lifestyle, musical preference, personal companionship, political allegiance or religion. These frames of identity may invoke a sense of belonging or form exclusive alliances. They may also provoke feelings of marginalization, even policies of segregation. Or, they may create demands for acceptance and equal treatment. This exhibition engages the public to reflect upon the differences and similarities between the ancient world and our contemporary society. Some themes the visitor may encounter include masculinity and femininity, intimacy and ethnicity.

In the ancient world such expressions of identity could not always be articulated explicitly because the terminology for voicing thoughts about personal, cultural and national frames of identity often did not exist. That is not to say that Egyptians or Persians, Greeks or Romans did not experience a sense of belonging to a certain group sharing a cultural, linguistic and historical heritage. They recognized biological differences between men and women, and they believed that certain social roles belonged to the different genders. Ancient societies were unambiguously patriarchal and hierarchical, with certain political rights held as privileges of well-defined classes. Others were excluded – such as enslaved persons, peasants, women and/or resident aliens (even when living in the same country for generations), who had little or no rights.