Bird

Ray Smith’s playful abstractions know no bounds. Over the decades Smith has worked in paint, paper, wood and in this case, rubber and cement. This particular series of monumental sculptures seem to be pulled directly from the pages of his sketchbooks into three dimensions, their weighty materiality seems almost impossibly at odds with their curvilinear shapes, they are somehow both foreboding and friendly. Pulling directly from the pages of both Picasso and an elementary school age child’s drawings, Smith’s Bird perches itself on the landscape and our mind scape.

Ray Smith (American, b.1959) Born in Brownsville, TX, and raised in Central Mexico. Smith emerged in the 1980s, and continues to produce exuberant paintings and sculptures characterized by an inimitable style and subject matter that reflect his bi-cultural American and Mexican heritage. Contorted and morphed figures recur throughout his work, in a hybrid that draws from his early studies of fresco painting with traditional practitioners in Mexico, and an indebtedness to Picasso, the Surrealists, and the politically daring Mexican muralists. Through these varied beings, Smith reflects upon the complexities and absurdities of society, family, politics, culture, war, and the human condition itself, framed by birth and death.

The artist has held more than 50 exhibitions around the world during the last two decades, mainly in the United States and Mexico, but also in Japan, Europe, and South America. He participated in the 1989 edition of the Whitney Biennial in New York City. Smith exhibited at the First Triennial of Drawings at the Joan Miró Foundation in Barcelona, Spain, and took part in the group exhibition called Latin American Artists of the 20th Century, which traveled from Seville, Spain, to the Musée National d’Art Moderne at the Pompidou Center in Paris, the Kunsthalle in Cologne, Germany, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Smith’s paintings are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the Wurth Museum in Kunzelman, Germany, the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, amongst others. He currently splits his time between Brooklyn, New York; The Lower Rio Grande Valley, TX; and Cuernavaca, Mexico.

Special thanks to Amaral Custom Fabrications for fabrication and installation partnership

Channel Park Bench

What does citizenship mean?

This is the question posed by artist Tom Scicluna with Channel Park Bench, an outdoor bench made of perforated steel planks with thermo-plastic coat finish and steel pipe, which reads “CITIZENSHIP.” As anti-homeless benches /hostile architecture increase in popularity across the country and immigration laws are being called into question, this piece begs the viewer to think about who qualifies as a citizen and who gets left in the margins of society.

Artist Statement:

“Channel Park Bench is a fully accessible, readymade public bench conceived as a civic-orientated sculpture. Purchased from a commercial outdoor furnishings website, Channel Park Bench is the third in a series of reified bench products, which feature a customizable text application based on predetermined and ideologically charged advertising-based renderings and illustrations. Functioning as both a physical and participatory object, Channel Park Bench serves as an active and critically engaged marker of public space.”

Artist Bio

Tom Scicluna (b. 1974 London, UK) lives and works in Miami, FL. Scicluna received a BA in Contemporary Art Practice from the University of Northumbria, UK, and an MFA in Sculpture from the University of Miami, FL. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Florida International University. Scicluna's practice includes site-based sculptures, interventions, and gestures that materially and conceptually respond to the given situation of exhibition. Reconfiguring commercially available objects and discarded materials, Scicluna's context-informed practice actively engages notions of public space and infrastructure, participation and authorship, production and the conditions of display. Recent shows, projects, and residencies include: Artpace International Residency Program, San Antonio, TX (in conjunction with Oolite Arts); Domain, Nina Johnson, Miami, FL; 2019 Atlanta Biennial: A thousand tomorrows, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Some Aesthetic Decisions: Centennial Celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, FL; and Climate Sync, a public artwork realized in conjunction with Miami-Dade Art in Public Places. His work is in the permanent collections of ICA Miami, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, Miami-Dade County Art in Public Places, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.

Special thanks to Amaral Custom Fabrications for fabrication and installation partnership.

Free Fall III

This stainless steel reflective sculpture by Rado Kirov is now on view at Biltmore Park in Downtown Providence.

"I like to explore the contrast between the organic fluidity of what I call the 'Mercury Effect' as a medium and the rectilinear rigidity of a cube to which it gives (and by which it is given) form. The 'Free Fall' is dynamic and leaves the observer in suspense, awaiting the inevitable tumble." -Rado Kirov on “Free Fall III” (Stainless Steel), 2018

After years of working in traditional metalsmithing in both Bulgaria, where artist Rado Kirov was born, and South Africa, where he and his family immigrated, Rado began working in sculpture. Through that exploration, he developed a unique technique of manipulating a sheet of stainless steel by hand. By using the inherent physical properties of the metal to create a striking liquid-like three-dimensional surface, Rado’s works dynamically mirror their surroundings and draw viewers into their sparkling reflections.

The Column

The Avenue Concept is proud to help present the world premiere of "The Column," a soaring, reflective stainless steel creation by Rado Kirov now at Biltmore Park.

After years of working in traditional metalsmithing in both Bulgaria, where artist Rado Kirov was born, and South Africa, where he and his family immigrated, Rado began working in sculpture. Through that exploration, he developed a unique technique of manipulating a sheet of stainless steel by hand. By using the inherent physical properties of the metal to create a striking liquid-like three-dimensional surface, Rado’s works dynamically mirror their surroundings and draw viewers into their sparkling reflections.

“As an artist, I believe that one’s creative pursuits are a mirror for one’s understanding and perception of life; it is my unwaveringly optimistic, positive outlook on life that I endeavor to express through my art. My mirror-polished stainless steel artworks reflect, whimsically and playfully, everything in their surroundings….The message that I am trying to put across through my art is directed to those to whom it speaks, almost intuitively. It can be encompassed in a single word – the most important one on earth – Life.” - Rado Kirov on his Mercury Effect Series