Florida Contemporary

2020-21

Elisabeth Condon. Garden of Chaos, 2018. Ink, acrylic and watercolor on paper. 85 x 55 inches.

December 2020 – July 25, 2021
Located in the Kohan, Newell, and Friends of Artis—Naples Galleries of Hayes Hall

Florida Contemporary, organized by Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum, aims to recognize great artistic talent springing from all corners of the state. This invitational exhibition features the work of three distinguished women artists worthy of national attention: Elisabeth Condon (b. 1959), Lilian Garcia-Roig (b. 1966) and Carrie Sieh (b. 1978). Based in Tampa, Tallahassee and Miami 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 three 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. 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 the three galleries on both the first and second floors of Hayes Hall.

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