Adalberto Delgado: Again, After All These Years – Knight Foundation
Arts

Adalberto Delgado: Again, After All These Years

By Janet Batet, Miami Arts Journalist Under the Bridge is the name of the new art space recently added to the Miami art circuit network. Located in North Miami –just below the Red Bridge Studios– and under the direction of Lou Anne Colodny, founding director of MOCA North Miami and for fifteen years director of it’s predecessor (COCA), the experimental space means a new vitrine to alternative projects in our city. The gallery/studio that works by proposal submission and invitation, opened its doors with the hilarious exhibition Again, After All These Years.

The show includes a selection of the latest artifacts conceived by the multidisciplinary artist Adalberto Delgado, very well-known of South Florida’s art scene for his irreverent artistic production, his charismatic character “El Sacerdote de la Rumba” and his active role in Nada –one of the most radical art intervention groups in the eighties in the local arena.

Again, After All These Years is an acute commentary about the increasingly rarefied contemporary art circuit and the pretentious aura that still today surrounds arts.

Based on the widespread notion of “object trouvé” inaugurated by the historical avant-garde, Delgado recreates a much-appreciated laid back ambiance. Boxes, disposable materials, tags, and all kind of secondary stuff are transfigured into detonators that compel our senses, inviting us to a ludic and critic reading of the art world and its entourage.

The dynamic proposed between the artifacts conforming the show is crucial. Passing the doorway a small cotton tag suspended on the wall challenges visitors: “Wanna Watch”. This piece shares space with what looks like a geometric-abstract canvas what actually is only an empty box container.

Other relational objects includes a capricious bridge made of white ordinary plastic pipe that stands on precarious balance over the ground, challenging the public that careless pass by without noticing it and –inevitably– knocking it down over and over again. The key to this piece is a short video clip hanging on the opposite wall. The video is a remix that takes as point of departure the work of another miamian artist: Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez. Delgado manipulated the original video with high contrast and filters making a sort of dance of evolving organic forms. From time to time, as a subliminal message, a short futile notice warns us about the care with the pipe piece lying on the floor.

Again, After All These Years is a sharp proposition where humor and creative rigor go hand in hand.

Under The Bridge, 12425 NE 13 Ave #4, North Miami; 305-987-4437