Arts

An artist who sets the stage

Miami native and now New York-based artist Daniel Arsham is having a pretty good week nationally, as works that reveal his broad reach into artistic exploration will be on show from coast to coast. Arsham’s first Los Angeles solo show just opened up at OHWOW, “the fall, the ball, and the wall.” As has become his signature, Arsham involves architecture and spacial reconstructions and interventions in his innovative pieces (things often seem to protrude then recede in a subtle fashion, from walls and floors, although they may be in fact static).

OHWOW, it should be noted, as become a bit of an L.A. home away from home for current and former Miami artists, including Luis Gispert, Michael Genovese and, just recently, Bert Rodriguez.

Here in Miami, a performance/dance collaborative piece from Arsham and former Merce Cunningham dancer and media artist Jonah Bokaer will take over the stage at the Carnival Studio Theater of the Arsht Center ( a Knight grant recipient) this weekend for “Why Patterns & RECESS.” These two produced an earlier work last year at the Arsht and at MOCA, called “Replica,” for which most people thought the sets, from Arsham, were the true stars of the show.

So it may be with “Why Patterns” as well, although instead of deconstructing walls, the set-action will be instigated by a ping-pong ball. “The visual design emerges from a single ping-pong ball that is introduced into a frame on stage, initiating a series of choreographed games,” is how it is explained. “Unpredictable results trigger events that flood the stage with thousands of balls, which are manipulated by the movements of the dancers as the square frame is collapsed.”

“Why Patterns & RECESS” will be performed at 8 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 27, and at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 28; Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami; arshtcenter.org.