North Terminal

Air Chair

Paul Villinski

Found wheelchair, steel, aluminum, wood, rayon, 2005, 18’6” x 3” x 11’6”

Concourse D
2nd Level, near Gate D19, Skytrain Station #1
Post-Security

A pilot of sailplanes and paragliders, Paul Villinski was born in York, Maine, USA, in 1960, and has lived and worked in New York City since 1982. Metaphors of flight and soaring often appear in his work. With a lifelong concern for environmental issues, his work frequently re-purposes discarded materials, effecting surprising and poetic transformations.

Air Chair can be sited on the floor, and in fact, “taxied” around by someone seated in it, but it is really meant to be seen suspended in space, in a hopeful, ascending attitude.

I understand perfectly why humankind has always dreamt of joining the birds in flight. As a sculptor, my hope in Air Chair was to begin with what is for most an image of earthly limitation – a wheelchair – and to “liberate” that image with the imagination – to send it soaring. I hope that viewers will engage their imaginations to take the controls of Air Chair.

- Paul Villinski

 Photo by Dan Forer. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport

ALL WE NEED IS LOVE

R & R Studios 

Silk flowers & EPS, 2008, 6’6” x 3’ x 4’ (each letter), 6’6” x 60’ (approx. overall)

Concourse D
3rd Level, Customs corridor
Post-security

The work by Miami architect/artist team Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar, known as R & R Studios, have the power to delight.  At Miami International Airport, we are thrilled to present The Alphabet which consists of ALL TOGETHER NOW, PEACE & LOVE, BESAME MUCHO and ALL WE NEED IS LOVE, in various areas of the airport.

We created The Alphabet as a gift to encourage the expression of poetic thoughts. Our hope is to bring forth positive emotion, reuniting it with form, facilitating communication through the universal language of flowers.

All the letters of The Alphabet are upper case asserting their formal singularity through a simple and direct font. Each letter, in turn, is composed of a constellation of flowers, their variety suggesting individuality and, yet, a community of feeling.

We regard each letter as a painting that calls and retains our attention, and creates a spark that inspires and, perhaps, directs us to compose words that are affirmative and uplifting. In this matter, The Alphabet generates social sculptures that explore the politics of hope through the universal language of flowers.

- R & R Studios

Bio:

R & R Studios, the collaborative office of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt is a multidisciplinary practice weaving together visual arts, architecture, design and the city. Celebrated, as one critic put it “as architects of hope” their works propose encounters of stories and spaces, which alternate between the personal and the public, the quotidian and the extraordinary, the poetical and the political. R & R Studios works erase boundaries between art and life and suggest “imaginary solutions” for a better world.

Andan Volando

Emilio Adan Martínez

Australian pine, machine stitched treated paper, string, aluminum rod and paint, 2009, dimensions variable

Concourse D
2nd Level, between Gates D29 & D30
Post-security

Andan Volando (2000) and Ando Volando (2016-2018) are on view at MIA’s Concourse D and Concourse E, respectively. Both installations feature pieces constructed with paper, string and Australian pine branches, suggesting seemingly delicate sculptural pieces as light, floating works of art. Resembling kites and boats, and conveying the idea of flight, the works comment on the concept of travel and on the fleeting passage of time through life, space and dimension.

The title (literally, “they’re flying”) has many meanings, most of which are lost in translation. And like, most popular expressions, it is full of emotion and speaks of soul.  Similarly, the installation evokes multiple associations, “inviting the most intimate dreams, hopes, fantasies and memories.”

Bio:

Emilio Adan Martínez was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, in 1954. At the age of six, Martínez moved with his family to Miami, Florida. The artist has worked in many different creative disciplines throughout his career, including fashion design, photography, drawing, printmaking, painting and sculpture. Martínez earned his BFA from Florida International University and has participated in several South Florida exhibitions. His first solo exhibition was at MIA’s Central Terminal Gallery in 2000. Martínez’s work can be found in public and private collections throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe. He lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Photo by Pedro Wazzan . Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport

Florida Bay, Dawn - Florida Bay, Dusk

James Couper

Oil on canvas, 2013, 5 x 10’ (each)

North Terminal, D
3rd Level atrium, above international arrivals
Pre-security

These paintings depict Florida Bay, the southernmost mainland point in the United States. My intention in making these works was to bring the viewer into contact with the light, space and transformations that make this place so special.

- James Couper

Bio:

James Couper is a Professor Emeritus in the FIU Art + Art History Department, the founding director of the Art Museum at FIU (now the Frost Art Museum), and a full-time painter. He is also the founding director of the FIU Art + Art History graduate program and has served as the department’s chair. He retired in 2005 after 33 years and maintains residences in Miami and Tallulah Falls, Georgia, drawing inspiration from both locales. The Ringling Museum, the Boca Raton Museum, and numerous other private, public, and corporate art collections have featured and acquired Couper’s works.

 Photo by Dan Forer. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport

Meltdown

Jen Stark

Acrylic paint mural, 2014

North Terminal, D
3rd Level, entrance from the MIA Mover
Pre-security

For this Miami International Airport commission, Meltdown expands on her previous work of creating complex colorful sculptures from paper and other media.  Her work frequently explores ideas of replication and infinity, echoing the patterns and intelligent designs found in nature.

Meltdown is a large-scale mural depicting organic patterns oozing down, creating a waterfall of colors. My artwork concentrates on the hypnotic, time-intensive process of cutting and layering. The patterns I create mimic the repetitive intricate layers of plants as well as the geometric framework of the universe. -Jen Stark

Bio:

Jen Stark’s art is driven by her interest in conceptualizing visual systems to simulate plant growth, evolution, infinity, fractals, mimetic topographies, and sacred geometries. Using available materials—paper, wood, metal, paint—Stark strives to make work that balances on a razor’s edge of optical seduction and perceptual engagement.  The resulting works often resemble organic, molecular, cloud-like structures, and are imbued with kinetic, undulating effects that serve to dislocate the viewer from staid reality into an immersive ecosphere of echoing patterns and the implausible designs found in nature. Even her vivid colors are in direct conversation with the natural world; the attractant/repellent properties of flowers encouraging pollination or insects warning birds of their poisonous traits, and the luminous mystery of phosphorescent sea creatures are among Stark’s concerns.

Not limited to the confines of museums and galleries, Stark’s diverse practice—a series of sculptural objects that rely on a commitment to process and hypnotic repetition; charismatic wall works; widely seen murals; and intricately animated films—have been exhibited throughout the world.

Stark was born in Miami, Florida in 1983, and lives and works in Los Angeles, U.S.A.

Photo by Peter Vahan. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport

MIA Flower Fence

Roberto Juarez

Mixed media on wood panels, 2011, 6.5” x 432”

Concourse D
3rd Level, near Gate D17, Skytrain Station #1
Post-security

Inspired by the lush landscape and indigenous traditions of Florida, MIA Flower Fence juxtaposes botanical style renderings of Florida wildflowers with geometric patchwork designs of the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida. A glimpse of Miami's clear skies and starry nights celebrates the splendor of Florida's tropical climate and blossoming gifts of nature. (Co-fabricators: Mark Tambella and Nicholas Freberg Morgan)

Bio:

Roberto Juarez, (b. 1952) is an American visual artist known for his paintings, murals, and mixed-media works. Born in Chicago, Juarez received his B.F.A. at the San Francisco Art Institute (1977) and pursued graduate studies in Television and Film at the University of California, Los Angeles. Juarez frequently employs painterly floral motifs, which are inspired by the traditions of Hispanic and non-Western painting.

Juarez's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Mexico, and is included in major museum collections such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Denver Art Museum, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, the Newark Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, Florida.

Photo by Dan Forer. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport

Nature Studies in Three Works

Cristina Lei Rodriguez

Digital prints on translucent vinyl, 2020-2022, dimensions variable

Concourse D
2nd Level, Post TSA Checkpoint #4
Post-security

Nature Studies in Three Works (2020-2022) is a largescale three-part window installation created in conjunction with the artist’s solo exhibition at Miami International Airport, The Sun Scans New Growth (October 1, 2022 – March 5, 2023). For this installation, Rodriguez’s art practice cultivated native and tropical plants in her garden as a study and mediation on how nature adapts, thrives, fails, and is born again. Inspired by the complexity of nature, each of the three works, as evidenced by their titles, is a moment in time visually recorded and documented. We hope this monumental installation offers visitors a sense of immersing themselves in the South Florida landscape.

Bio:

Cristina Lei Rodriguez lives and works in Miami. Rodriguez received her B.A. from Middlebury College in Vermont and her M.F.A. from California College of Arts in San Francisco, CA, in 2002.

The art Rodriguez creates takes many forms, but all are inspired by the complexity of nature and made from common materials that are given a new intangible life. Her work is organic and minimalist yet pristinely finished, echoing a tension between the natural and the artificial. Her art has been exhibited internationally and nationally at museums, institutions, and galleries such as the Serpentine Gallery (London), Brooklyn Academy of Music (New York City), Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin (Paris, Miami), and Team Gallery and Deitch Projects (both New York City). Rodriguez’s work is included in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art (Oslo), Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Bass (Miami Beach), Boca Raton Museum of Art, NSU Art Museum (Fort Lauderdale), and the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum (Miami).

Coreopsis Study Part 1 (April 20, 2022, 11:37am) and Coreopsis Study Part 2 (April 20, 2022, 11:20am), 2022, 117 x 280 in. each. Photo by Daniel Portnoy. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport.

Staging a Florida Sunset (October 15, 2020, 12:01pm), 2022, 136 x 335 in. Photo by Daniel Portnoy. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport.

Installation Brochure

PEACE & LOVE

R & R Studios

Silk flowers & EPS, 2013, 2’ x 5’ (approx. each letter), 20’ x 16’ (approx. overall)

Concourse D
2nd Level, between Gates D29 & D30
Post-security

The work by Miami architect/artist team Rosario Marquardt and Roberto Behar, known as R & R Studios, have the power to delight.  At Miami International Airport, we are thrilled to present The Alphabet which consists of ALL WE NEED IS LOVE, ALL TOGETHER NOW, BESAME MUCHO and PEACE & LOVE, in various areas of the airport.

We created The Alphabet as a gift to encourage the expression of poetic thoughts. Our hope is to bring forth positive emotion, reuniting it with form, facilitating communication through the universal language of flowers.

All the letters of The Alphabet are upper case asserting their formal singularity through a simple and direct font. Each letter, in turn, is composed of a constellation of flowers, their variety suggesting individuality and, yet, a community of feeling.

We regard each letter as a painting that calls an retains our attention, and creates a spark that inspires and, perhaps, directs us to compose words that are affirmative and uplifting. In this matter, The Alphabet generates social sculptures that explore the politics of hope through the universal language of flowers.

- R & R Studios

Bio:

R & R Studios, the collaborative office of Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt is a multidisciplinary practice weaving together visual arts, architecture, design and the city. Celebrated, as one critic put it “as architects of hope” their works propose encounters of stories and spaces, which alternate between the personal and the public, the quotidian and the extraordinary, the poetical and the political. R & R Studios works erase boundaries between art and life and suggest “imaginary solutions” for a better world.

Photo by Dan Forer. Courtesy of MIA Galleries, Miami International Airport