Love Is A Gas
Dec 5 - 12, 2023
39 NE 39th St, Miami FL
The Trops presents diverse cultural programming in shows unique to each exhibition space. Integrating interior design, technology, and art in the heart of Miami’s Design District, the exhibition “Love is a Gas” approaches a gallery space where contemporary art meets contemporary interiors and contemporary technology, with a mobile application that let’s visitors “collect” art memories of the works. Curated by art world virtuosos Brittny Gastineau and Nemo Librizzi in collaboration with Surface Magazine, this show presents the intersection of the major forces of a modern art experience.
Nick Farhi and Vahakn Arslanian are two artists on the rise, wildly different in their sensibilities yet both fixated on the metaphor of glass to mirror the fragile nature of our human experience. To title the show, curators Nemo Librizzi and Brittny Gastineau scoured Classical sources for inspiration including Shakespeare, Dante and the Old Testament. But it was while shopping in a hardware store that Blondie would inspire them through the radio, from the song Heart of Glass. The Trops has teamed up with Surface magazine to present this intimate glimpse of precarious Beauty as an alternative to the breathless bustle of Art Basel Miami. Two brilliant young artists at their more vulnerable, Arslanian feels his separation from society as if through a sheet of glass being born deaf, and Farhi's carefully considered still lifes of glass objects are forged with the intention of beauty, subject to shattering with one careless act.
(b. 1987, New York)
Nick Farhi utilizes installation and still life painting to connect people, places, and things. Through research, histories and relationships to one another are addressed and given a meeting place. Desperate, lush, and seismic shapes are made from confabulated memory and happenstance in the artist’s practice, arriving to a number of cross figural dialogues and polemics reflecting current events.
Nick Farhi
Sunshine Matroyshka
Oil, Pastel, Enamel spray on Aluminium
40 x 40 inches
2023
(b. 1975, Antwerp, Belgium)
Vahakn Arslanian is fascinated and inspired by roaring jet engine planes, explosives, luminous light bulbs and flickering candlelight. He has been nearly deaf since birth, his only sense of noise is from that which is thundering to the ears, for him, a glimpse at the vibrational frequency of sound. Along with his fascination with planes comes birds. Arslansian mends the two, such as his rough paintings and drawings of plane wings with bird feathers.
Vahakn Arslanian
Candle Bird
Oil on Canvas/ Graphite on Paper
10 ½ X 9 ½ inches
2003
Nick Farhi shares his studio and practice with the Trops at his studio in Harlem, NYC in April 2023
Surface Mag
Surface covers the worlds of architecture, art, design, fashion, and travel, with a focus on how these fields shape and are shaped by contemporary culture. For the past three decades while continually adapting to new digital media platforms, Surface has upheld the values of high-quality journalism and a robust digital newsroom focused on art and design news from around the globe.
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