A nude man posed for photographs, his weight shifted to one leg while his opposite hand is raised to his shoulder. He mimics Michelangelo’s “David” sculpture almost perfectly. The man is missing a leg. It was blown off when he stepped on a landmine.
The black-and-white photographs by Colombian artist Miguel Angel Rojas, currently on display at Allapattah art space El Espacio 23, represent more than what meets the eye, said Patricia Hanna, the Jorge M. Pérez Collection director.
“It’s a very strong image of this young man, but also the resilience of the human figure,” she said.
Humanity is challenging and traumatizing. It’s messy and gross. It’s beautiful and empowering. The human experience is difficult to capture in words, but El Espacio 23’s exhibition, “Mirror of the Mind,” takes a solid crack at it through 150 artworks from over 120 artists. The show aims to capture the complexity of the human experience through figuration, a type of art that depicts real objects and the human figure. It opens Nov. 7.
El Espacio 23, a converted 28,000-square-foot warehouse, annually displays exhibitions entirely comprised of works from the collection of real estate developer Jorge Pérez. After last season’s textile exhibition featuring mainly abstract works, co-curators Hanna and Anelys Alvarez went the opposite direction this time around.
As a collector, Alvarez said, Pérez has championed figurative artwork “even when it was not as trendy as it is now.”
The more time the co-curators spent sifting through artworks, the more they encountered pieces that would shape the show’s overarching themes. One of those pieces was the late Mexican artist Julio Galan’s self-portrait painted on mother of pearl. Galan, who died six years after he painted the work in 2000, is depicted with Bowie-esque pale skin, quaffed hair, blushed cheeks and bright red lips.
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“A lot of his work was embedded in his identity and his own personal experiences. He was quite ahead of his time,” Hanna said. “There are key pieces along the way that always speak to us.”
The end result is an exhibition that feels like an emotional rollercoaster, reflecting the highs, lows and plateaus of life through sculptures, photographs, paintings and film of the human body. The show is divided into six sections meant to take visitors on a journey: Perception, Trauma, Introspection, Belonging, Healing and Flesh.
“Those experiences are paradoxical in a way, but many times they coexist in life,” Alvarez said. “We go through trauma and pain, but we have the capacity to heal and be resilient and enjoy pleasure.”
'Haunting images of the past'
The show opens with a familiar yet anonymous figure.
“Tank Man,” a white, bronze sculpture by Spanish artist Fernando Sanchez Castillo, depicts the unidentified man who was famously photographed standing in front of a line of tanks in protest at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989. The sculpture stands straight up at the entrance of the main gallery space “to confront the viewer,” Hanna said.
“It’s this notion of how you perceive history and how history has been told to you,” Alvarez said. “He is anonymous. Nobody knew who he was. Nobody knew of him afterwards. He remains in history as this mythical figure of this tank man, but very elusive in a way.”
The “Perception” section of the exhibition deals with several images of historical figures, sometimes in tongue-in-cheek ways.
Think of Napoleon. In his hey-day, he was perceived as a powerful, power-hungry, hot-headed, looming political figure. But when artist Larry Rivers saw a famous portrait of the French emperor standing in an “effeminate” pose, he perceived him to be quite silly, Hanna said. In 1965, he painted his version of Napoleon’s portrait, called “The Second Greatest Homosexual.” (Which begs the question, who is the first?)
Other works blur the lines of who -- or what -- we perceive to be as familiar faces. A series of Spanish artist Jorge Ribalta’s black-and-white photographs line the wall of a hallway. The fuzzy, unfocused portraits of faces, like an up-close image of a grimacing Gene Simmons from Kiss, are meant to trick you. Those aren’t real people in the photographs. They’re figurines.
“It’s a simulacrum,” Alvarez said. “What is reality? What is representation? What is the power of an image?”
Several artists throughout the show play with the use of figurines, miniatures and toys. In a small, dark room beside the Ribalta images stands a towering sculpture called “The Cellist” by Miami-based artist Reginald O’Neal. The artwork, which Pérez purchased from last year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, is based on kitschy musical souvenirs O’Neal bought in New Orleans. The giant musician has his back turned to the viewer, a critique of racial disparities that persist in America today.
The show’s second section, called “Trauma,” references and reflects on the darkest parts of history and humanity, like violence and oppression.
Several works reference the Holocaust. On one wall, a body -- either dead or asleep -- lies in a desolate field nestled in dried flowers. It’s called “Pietà” by artist Anselm Kiefer, who grew up in post-World War II Germany and often confronts his country’s history in his work. Across from it are 23 close-up images of Jewish students taken from an old yearbook just before World War II.
“It’s these haunting images of the past,” Hanna said.
The themes of the “Trauma” section are perhaps best summed up with Ethiopian artist Aida Muluneh’s photographed self-portrait. The artist is almost entirely painted in white, besides her blood-red hands. A third red hand creeps on her shoulder.
“It addresses the impact of trauma on the body. It doesn’t matter how much white you use to cover,” Alvarez said. “The blood, the suffering is still there haunting her.”
Peace, love, redemption
The heaviness dissipates as visitors move through “Introspection,” with works that depict moments of solitude, and into “Belonging,” a section dedicated to community, friendship and family.
“You go through the trauma, you think about it and then you of think about your place within the community,” Hanna said. “The moments of celebration, the moments of the everyday and really a sense of belonging.”
Several works are displayed on the wall salon style, almost like how they would appear as decoration in someone’s living room. One bundle of artworks includes a colorful painting of a Haitian carnival by artist Philome Obin alongside neon-painted steel drums by Alvaro Barrington. At another cluster of works nearby, women gossip while doing laundry and a Jewish family enjoys a Passover Seder.
A large painting by Jared McGriff, another Miami-based artist, is displayed prominently. The work, called “A Bond at the Edge between Solid and Liquid,” shows two women in bathing suits at the beach. Photographed portraits show families from around the world in their homes. In “Les amis à la chaussée,” a photograph by Malick Sidibé of Mali that translates to “the friends on the road,” a group of young people smile and embrace.
The following “Healing” section is meant to feel especially cathartic. Several works show people with their arms stretched upwards, like in Yael Bartana’s “Redemption Now,” a neon light sculpture of two female figures raising their fists to the sky. Elizabeth Catlett’s “Webbed Women” sculpture of a female figure reaches upwards. Across the room, an angel painted by Portia Zvavahera flies to the heavens.
Healing can be found in many ways, Hanna and Alvarez said.
You can find it through love, like in Didier Williams’ “Kisa n’ap fe ansamn,” a painting inspired by his desire to start a family with his husband. And you can find it through spirituality, like in Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons’ Polaroid triptych “Above All Things,” which depicts elements of a cleansing ritual in honor of the Yoruba orisha, Obatala. The three photographs show three sections of her body dressed in white: Her head with the outline of a house drawn on her face, her hands holding a plate of meringues and her feet surrounded by cracked coconuts.
Water is a common symbol of spiritual cleansing, Alvarez said. Dual images by iconic photographer Carrie Mae Weems show two women, both illuminated by cobalt blue light, drenched in pouring rain. “They’re very empowering,” Hanna said.
The following gallery space, situated in between the “Healing” and “Trauma” sections, is pitch black besides two projectors that show “The Fury,” a haunting double-channel video installation by Iranian artist Shirin Neshat. Two videos simultaneously play, showing the same scenes from different perspectives. The 16-minute work is intense. The film follows the journey of a young Iranian woman now living in the United States who remains traumatized by her time as a political prisoner.
The co-curators created a loop within the exhibition, representing how moments of trauma and redemption happen simultaneously in peoples’ real lives. If you enter the video room through “Healing,” you exit into the “Trauma” section, and vice versa.
“Many times, those experiences co-exist,” Alvarez said.
'Flesh and bone'
The building’s second floor is dedicated to “Flesh,” the exhibition’s final section focused on the human body itself in its most primal -- and usually naked -- form. The artists featured in this section were unafraid to explore the body in all its weird glory.
“Here we’re seeing the materiality of the body, like excretions, body gestures, pleasures, nakedness, vulnerability, voluptuousness,” Hanna said.
On the floor is Brazilian artist Vera Chaves Barcellos’ “Epidermic Landscapes,” photographs of skin zoomed in so up-close they look like landscapes of an alien planet.
Several artists in this section pushed the envelop on depicting social taboos in their work. Perhaps chief among them is artist duo Gilbert & George, known for highlighting bodily fluids, literally and explicitly. Their bold 1996 work “Blood and Piss” sets the tone for this portion of the exhibition.
Marisol Escobar, a pop artist best known for her sculptures, embraced the female form with her drawing “Woman from Paris.” Next to it is Jim Dine’s “9 Little Flesh Paintings” of simple nipples. Painted in hues of pinks and fleshtones is Marta Minujin’s work of a reclining nude woman whose back is turned away from the viewer.
“What are the cultural connotations of a body? Whether it’s a sexual connotation or talking about the carnal nature of the body, it leaves all that open to you, to your interpretation,” Alvarez said.
Hopefully, Hanna said, the exhibition will inspire viewers to “dig deeper” as they reflect on themselves and others.
“We’re moving so fast, and we we’re always on our phones. I feel like a show like this will bring you back down to who we are as humans,” Hanna said. ”Explore those emotions. Think about your own life. Think about your own trajectory. How we perceive ourselves, how others perceive us, and how that affects how you act going forward. I think that’s an important question for the future.”
The timing of the exhibition’s opening, the same week as a particularly divisive Election Day, adds to viewers’ interpretation of the show, as well, the curators said. Humans are all fundamentally the same. We perceive ourselves and others. We dream. We feel pain. We love. We heal. We do it all in our bodies.
“Not everybody’s experience is the same, and people go through different experiences depending on their context, but there are some things or emotions or experiences that we can all share,” Alvarez said. “At the end, everybody is flesh and bone. Everything has an end, and everything has a beginning.”
IF YOU GO
What: Mirror of the Mind: Figuration in the Jorge M. Perez Collection
When: Opens Nov. 7. On view until Aug. 16, 2025 Where: El Espacio 23, 2270 NW 23rd St, Miami
Info: Free and open to the public. Walk-ins welcome. Visit www.elespacio23.com to reserve a viewing time or guided tours.
