2019-20
Elisabeth Condon. Carrier, 2018. Acrylic and ink on Fabriano watercolor paper. 30 x 22 inches.
Lilian Garcia-Roig. Homage to Viñales #6 from the Hecho con Cuba Series, 2017. Oil and soil on canvas. 16 x 16 inches.
Maria Martinez-Cañas. Untitled 027 from the Estructuras Transformativas Series, 2017. Mixed media on hybrid wood panel. Unique dimensions. 72 x 72 inches.
Carrie Sieh. A Neurasthenic a Playboy and a Weekend Warrior Walk Into a Bar, Remembering the Maine, 2014. Free-motion embroidery, paper, acrylic, and wire on pieced canvas and burlap. 112 x 84 inches.
December 20, 2019 – April 19, 2020
Located in all four Hayes Hall Galleries
Florida Contemporary, organized annually by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, aims to recognize great artistic talent springing from all corners of the state. This year’s invitational exhibition features the work of four distinguished women artists worthy of national attention: Elisabeth Condon (b. 1959), Lilian Garcia-Roig (b. 1966), María Martínez-Cañas (b. 1960) and Carrie Sieh (b. 1978). Based in Tampa, Tallahassee, Miami and Coral Gables, respectively, these artists have widely exhibited their art both nationally and internationally. The exhibition contextualizes their interpretations of artistic traditions using various materials and techniques within general contemporary artistic trends, and it also highlights their individual artistic concerns and merits.
These four artists’ creations push artistic limits as they explore the potential of materials and techniques, as well as emotional and cerebral landscapes. A recipient of numerous national grants, including a 2018 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant, Condon employs a level of abstraction and figuration that defies straightforward interpretation. She does so while simultaneously referencing and breaking away from Modernist abstraction and revealing her admiration for traditional Chinese ink painting. Best known for her large-scale, thick impasto, plein air landscape paintings, Garcia-Roig was awarded a 2006 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Her most recent works, painted with pigments made with red soil from Cuba’s Viñales Valley, represent reflections on personal and collective narratives of the Cuban diaspora, as well as her enduring preoccupations with nature and color theory. Martinez-Cañas, the recipient of a 2014 Pollock Krasner Fellowship in Photography, is a Cuban-American artist whose language of abstraction results from her rigorous investigation of Cuban Modernist art history in dialogue with her own personal stories. Her cross-disciplinary process and practice, which often incorporate various collage and photographic techniques, are in line with various hotly debated topics in today’s art world concerning the nature of photographic materials and experimentation. Sieh is a multidisciplinary artist working across media, using drawing, textiles, photographs and repurposed materials to create her thought-provoking pieces. She liberates needlework from its traditional dependence on functionality and craftmanship and, instead, deploys it as a critical means for visualizing sites where political economy, history and technology intersect.
These artists’ works reflect on numerous contemporary issues — psychological, sociocultural and art historical — through varying processes and aesthetic visual language, ranging from vibrant abstraction to expressive representation. Florida Contemporary is found in galleries on both the first and second floors of Hayes Hall.
Organized by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum.