WHERE
Faena Art Project Room
3420 Collins Ave, Miami Beach, FL 33140
WHEN
Friday, November 17, 2023 - February 9, 2024
PROGRAM
Friday, November 17:
Opening Celebration
Wednesday, December 6, 6:00–9:00pm:
Food truck experience with Paul Qui, featuring specialty cocktails and live DJ performance.
Opening Friday, November 17, 2023, Faena Art will present a new exhibition by Miami-based artist Kelly Breez in the Faena Art Project Room. Breez will transform the Faena Art Project Room into an immersive dive bar experience for visitors titled ‘Dirt’s Dive’, an homage to the progressively declining bar scene of old South Florida. The exhibition reimagines the ever-changing nightlife of Miami through the unique perspective of a local artist. Faena Art will host a special celebratory event for ‘Dirt’s Dive’ during Miami Art Week on Wednesday, December 6, 2023, featuring a culinary food truck-inspired experience with James Beard award-winning restauranteur and chef Paul Qui. A catalyst for innovative, site-specific, and immersive practices, Faena Art bridges the popular and the experimental, making art accessible to all, fostering new models for community-oriented exploration that transcend the traditional boundaries of art, science, philosophy, and social practice.
In ‘Dirt’s Dive,’ artist Kelly Breez (b. 1985) will create her own fantastical bar scene incorporating dynamic sculptures and drawings as well as life-sized cut-out figures reminiscent of assemblages by Edward Kienholz and Alex Katz’s work. The exhibition will also feature sculptures and drawings in the style of colorful bar ephemera to create an immersive and interactive installation. The artist will manipulate scale in the installation, imbuing the sense of an alternate universe, a fantasy-like scene that balances the familiar and unfamiliar. Breez, who was born and raised in South Florida, will incorporate personal history and local anecdotes into her aesthetic storytelling.
The artist has always been inspired by the unique motif that is South Florida nightlife. This project brings attention back to the disappearing establishment of the dive bar, a place that offered an opportunity for chance encounters with iconic local characters such as the old Florida fisherman—someone who tells stories filled with wisdom, grit, humor, and unique knowledge of the sea. In this way, the artist addresses the theme of authenticity, subtly pointing out the unfortunate loss of Miami’s iconic old haunts and the authenticity attached to them.
‘A dive-y bar is the ultimate equalizer,’ says artist Kelly Breez. ‘The environment just puts everyone on the same page. No one is a stranger, everyone is a character, anything is on the table. Collaboration feels intrinsic in a dive. Lots of ideas are always flying around. I love that energy.’
Collaborator Chef Paul Qui says: ‘Dive bars for me were the epicenter of creativity. They brought together people from high and low places, Celebrities and misfits alike. It was a space where nothing mattered but the conversation at hand. I realize now that those moments in the height of my youth would be the fuel that would drive my creative path.’
One of the earliest sorts of communal spaces, the bar has come to represent a place where people gather to regale one another with experiences and stories. The bar as a communal space recounts both a familiar and an unfamiliar tale – a mysterious meeting place where relationships begin and end, and business deals made and broken. The exhibition is a striking, humorous celebration of the bar as a pillar of community and expression.
SPECIAL THANKS
Special thanks to Chase Sapphire for their generous support of Faena Art’s projects at Miami Art Week 2023.
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