MIAMI — On a hot day in April, on the West end of Wynwood, I visited the Center For Visual Communication on the edge of what is referred to as the Fashion District of Miami. Enter the main gallery and ask the attendant to take you next door to the Project Space, a temporary venue showing the exhibition Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl curated by Julian Navarro.
Walking around the three-room exhibition, you would probably over look this work. It is an all white installation, on the floor of an unfinished room, with a low level audio track playing. Escape the warehouse wasteland of hot dogs and bulk bling and absorb this cool contemplative landscape.
The installation, Hover, by Teresa Diehl is made of three inch figurines of humans and animals standing around a mini mountain. The sound of a helicopter comes in and out making it impossible not to think of Vietnam. Spotlights cast long shows of the mound against the wall, highlighting the details in the figures. You realize they are women carrying baby sheep, the fragile, and including the landscape the whole work is made of the same destructible material, glycerin, or soap.
This work resonates- you can flip through our chapters of vulnerability- war and natural disasters, and the piece still speaks to the present. The mind flashes to Haiti, the land of undrinkable water, sick soil, and poverty.
The longer you spend in the room, the long shadows, low audio, and white sculpture, you realize what is missing from the piece is the hysteria. There is no frenzy. The figurines are not pushing to the top like one would expect, there is just a natural force swirling them up were we naturally seem to want to go. The work is a beautiful and subtle mediation on impermanence, loss, the human condition and the repetition of time.
Guerra de la Paz, the collaborative team of Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz, the other artists showing in the exhibition, like always, do not disappoint with their meticulously woven, playful sculptures commenting on contemporary culture. The colorful pieces provide a nice contrast to the ghost white work of Teresa Diehl. As you leave exhibition, take note of the irony of Guerra de la Paz exhibiting in the heart of Miami’s Fashion District.
Center for a Visual Communication
Beyond the Daily Life: Guerra de la Paz and Teresa Diehl
541 NW 27th St. (Next door at the Project Space)
Tuesday through Friday: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday: Noon to 5 p.m.
http://www.visual.org/index.html
The show is up until the space gets rented
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