The current exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA in North Miami is dedicated to the sculptor Mark Handforth. The exhibition is titled Rolling Stop and brings together 25 works as well as models, including a major new light installation of a solar eclipse. Other works on display are an illuminated street lamp resting on the ground, a weeping neon moon, and a monumental coat hanger.
Mark Handforth was the first Miami artist to receive a solo show at MOCA in March 1996. The artist was born in 1969 in Hong Kong. The sculptor lives and works in Miami, Florida. He grew up in London, and studied at Städelschule, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and the Slade School of Fine Art at University College London. Handforth moved to Miami in 1992.
Handforth’s large-scale sculpture often reflects objects from public space, such as street signs and street lamps, that he reproduces in twisted and bended form. He also often covers the objects with wax from burning candles that he places on them.
His work has been exhibited in exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, DC), Dallas Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), Art Institute of Chicago, Kunsthaus, (Zurich), Le Consortium (Dijon)Â Gavin Brown’s enterprise (NY), Modern Institute (Glasgow), and New York’s Central Park, among others.
The exhibition is curated by MOCA Executive Director and Chief Curator Bonnie Clearwater and is part of MOCA’s Knight Exhibition Series. It runs through February 19, 2012. The exhibition extends beyond the museum’s galleries with works installed on the MOCA Plaza and in the museum’s courtyard. Other locations offsite include installations in the City of North Miami’s Griffing Park, an on a billboard in the Wynwood Arts District of Miami.
Mark Handforth: Rolling Stop / Museum of Contemporary Art MOCA, North Miami. Opening and Vanity Fair / Vanity Fair International Party. North Miami, November 29, 2011.
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