Artmedia Gallery is proud to present the exhibition In the Vicinity: New series by Silvia Lizama, open to the public from November 19, 2015, until February 5, 2016. The images on view are part of a larger body of work the artist made during 2014 titled Lion, Fountain, and Statue Series.

For this project, Lizama recorded sculptures placed in the gardens and yards of houses located in the neighborhoods of Miami-Dade and Broward counties in South Florida. She was concerned with registering her subjects within their contexts, elaborating a visual commentary addressed by a cultural motivation.

She worked with a digital camera but printed her raw files on silver gelatin paper in a traditional black & white darkroom. She used the tondo format recalling the first amateur camera produced by George Eastman, at the end of the nineteenth-century, and taking advantage of the concentrated vision it permits. Lastly, Lizama hand-colored her prints, producing by this process a singular, not repetitive work.

This series could be seen as a survey on how the prestige of Greco-Roman sculptures has survived through today as a decorative practice in the open-air spaces of private homes across South Florida. This series also depicts a regional style extended through middle and upper middle classes. Cement, resin, and other cheap materials substitute the marble of the original ancient sculptures in their contemporary versions, which are frequently changed in size as well. Silvia Lizama’s artistic strategies summarize these characteristics with a self-conscious elegance and amusing manner.

About the artist

Silvia Lizama, born in Havana, Cuba, moved to South Florida in 1960. She earned a BFA from Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida and an MFA from Rochester Institute of Technology in New York.  She is currently Chair of the Department of Fine Arts at Barry University in Miami Shores, Florida. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the Americas, as well as in Spain.

About the curator

José Antonio Navarrete has developed an extended international career as a curator, researcher, and critic of visual arts and culture. His lengthy bibliography focuses on topics of modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on how media technology has affected and transformed art practices. As an artist, he presented his first solo exhibition, What images can do, at artmedia GALLERY.

About the gallery

Artmedia Gallery was founded in 2012. With a location in Wynwood Art District, Miami, Florida, the gallery has the mission of exhibiting and promoting contemporary art. One of the gallery’s central objectives is to explore the vast possibilities of the expanded notion of art through media technology, with photography and video as its core interest.