A Space to Have A Space: Juliana Bukowitz and Roberto Montes de Oca

On view December 5th-12th during Miami Art Week 2024

“The clearest way into the universe is through a forest wilderness” – John Muir

In this exhibition, we are juxtaposing the works of two artists, Juliana Bukowitz and Roberto Montes de Oca, who reach toward universality through completely disparate lenses, one earthbound and the other cosmic, and who lead us to reflect within and without.

And we are not asking for a passive viewing or a cursory nod.  Rather, we are asking the viewer to move through the earthy, elemental reminders and invocations of our planetary home in the work of Bukowitz and from these activations of memory and birthright, to project the mind’s eye toward the celestial perspective brought by Montes de Oca. 

Bukowitz, mixed media on canvas, 2024

This movement seeks to evoke a spectral interference in the viewer, as if infra-red operators signaled the viewer through to visible light arrays and culminated in gamma infused frameworks each prompting a new confrontation, asking for a new solution. And this confrontation is not AND/OR but seeks to find new operators within us, within that “star-stuff” contained within us that Carl Sagan so famously alluded to, and that was so inspirational to Montes de Oca in this series. 

Montes de Oca, acrylic on canvas, 2023

So this Miami Art Week, let’s claim a space a to have a space.  In such fragmented times, let’s turn the tatters of our attention toward these marks, each in turn a guide, the reassuring yet beguiling strata of Bukowitz’s compositions like the heavy tow of our own ionic boundaries, our vibratory framework on the verge of being hacked. And from this vulnerable, venerable bio-space, let’s borrow Montes de Oca’s imaginary Webb telescope to project into time, to reflect as our ancestors reflected.  Or maybe even to reflect with our ancestors, somewhere in the antiquity of now.

Gined López Ganem

GG Art Space and AnEyeDiary would like to thank the Historic Dorn Building for hosting this exhibition.

Prelude to Line and Essence by Hollye Davidson, An Exhibition and Artistic Immersion

An artist with strong South Florida roots and a profound commitment to her practice, Hollye Davidson is continually involved in a compassionate search for expansive joy that brings a stirring post-contemporary vision of the empathetic power of the canvas to her paintings and drawings. In her figurations, she makes the most poignant statements by employing a simplicity of line that presides over an almost ecological symbiosis of form and color. Over the past few years, she has also been creating bold and sweeping murals that capture this vision with her sincere and honorable treatment of imagined flora and fauna.

Our selection for the present exhibit Line and Essence is centered around twelve major canvases and four focal point works as they dialogue with a commercial urban lobby, a space devoted to transition and transaction. In keeping with the transient environment, the works will be installed in one day and will remain in situ for just twenty-four hours.

Valentia (Courage Horse), oil on canvas, 78″ x 40″

Four canvasses from the Albus series, Frau mit Tiger, Mein beiden Ichs, Eine echte Frau, and Portrait von Lisa, show us captivating, gestural portraiture and bring us directly to the honesty of the artist’s use of line to convey inner states. A companion to these works, the focal piece Tenderness reveals a highly developed example of this style, with line predominating over the remaining formal aspects of the portraiture, such as space or texture.

Frau mit Tiger, oil on canvas, 72″ x 36″

Next, we have chosen four works from the Equinessence series, Valentía, Inertia, Inquisitive Master, and Einstein’s Horse, where one of the most ancient of art historical motifs, the horse, is brought to this space of transit as a monument to mastery and remembrance. Apart from these, the focal work Galliope, naif heiress to Kandinsky’s Der Blaeu Reiter (The Blue Rider), draws us to a nondimensional environment of bare blue that is the only sustenance for our gaze as we commiserate with the movement of a sonsy mare who has cast off her rider.

Artist Hollye Davidson with painting Valentia and the author

Finally, the featured Candessence works, Fearless, Return to Yellow, Portrait von Jodi, and Freed Spirits explore how chromatic essence can lend substance to line and seek to evoke instantaneous emotion in a lithe, sublimated manner.

Fearless, oil on canvas, 48″ x 60″

In a contemporary art world obsessed with conceptual translation, with the need for continual intercessions, indulgences, rituals, and liturgies that convey the intentions of artists to their audiences, Davidson appeals as directly to her viewer as the light will allow. This exclusive showing will be accompanied by the premiere of the immersive exhibition The Stair Pond inside the adjoining staircase.

Gined Lopez Ganem is the Co-Founder of Alberto Puerto Music and GG Art Space, with over 10 years of experience as a university program director and over 20 years of experience as an educator and content creator. Gined has been a contributing author at LnS Gallery, NuFlamenco Collaborative, Cultural Arts Exchange, and other artistic projects. In 2023, she was selected as a recipient of a Chase Breakthrough Grant for minority women founders through Digital Undivided.

Gined López Ganem, Founder, GG Art Space