January 22nd - March 11th 2022
Gallery Hours: 24/7
miniMAC (miniature Mount Airy Contemporary)
25 West Mt Airy Avenue, Philadelphia PA 19119
www.mountairycontemporary.com
miniMAC is pleased to announce Magic, an exhibition of works by Henry Bermudez and Mikel Elam.
In his work, Henry Bermudez embraces a hybrid of myths, symbols and religious lore from pre-Hispanic, Judeo-Christian and Afro-Caribbean influences. Through various processes and mediums [paint, glitter, cardboard, cut paper assemblage, and ink], his work includes a compendium of aesthetics that reflect his vision of art beyond Western tradition.
“It is my hope that my work can transcend timelines and national boundaries as I join magical dimensions of symbols with western rationality,” Bermudez says. “This blend of cultural diversities is my autobiographical vision that further defines itself through immersion into societies other than the one I was born into.”
The core of Mikel Elam’s work is a discovery of self through the lens of a 21st century dweller. Our present lives are objectified by history, identity, gender and caste.
Elam attempts to tell stories of capture, release, struggle, spirit and presence. His protagonists are meant to survive - to rise up in spite of external oppositions. His subjects cling to hope by accessing ancestry, protecting their young, engaging in spirit and moving forward, ignoring the naysayers. Elam makes attempts to tell magical stories with elements of myth, desire, spirit, and fortitude.
“Afrofuturism is a word which resonates with my ideals,” Elam says. “In essence it’s the modernist story of Black skin moving from a worn torn past into a secure more equal future. Slavery may have existed. It doesn’t have to define us.”
An American contemporary artist born in Venezuela, Henry Bermudez (https://www.henrybermudezart.com) emerged from the Caribbean tropics and immigrated to the USA in 2003 due to political upheaval in his country. His artistic life has been an unexpected intermingling of ideas informed by an acute sensitivity to the past, and stenciled as part of a personal inventory onto places where he has lived and made his artistic working territory.
His earliest influences came from his travels within the Amazon and from a teaching assignment in an Afro-Caribbean community called Borbures, a small coastal village in Venezuela next to a vast rainforest. He spent two years with the villagers, learning about their music and exploring the overgrown terrain. Providing a lifelong influence to his work, their stories opened his eyes and curiosity to the myths that served this community.
Later, he spent some years in Mexico where legends stoked imagery within an other-worldliness of constructed creature-plant forms. This was where he began to determine his visual identity. From his Mexican period, he became interested in the influences of Colonialism, religion, and mythology and how these factors had a role in shaping the character of societies.
Mikel Elam (https://mikel-elam.format.com) is a visual artist working primarily as a painter. His work focuses on storytelling through memory and dreams using the fragments of face and figure to convey information and ideals about world culture.
Mikel attended the University of the Arts, Philadelphia. He received a Bachelor's degree in Studio Arts/Painting. He went on to study at School of the Visual Arts in New York City. Mikel's work has been featured in international publications and media. He also worked as a traveling assistant to Jazz musician Miles Davis, and assisted Mr. Davis in achieving his visual arts aspirations as a painter.
miniMAC is a project of MAC (Mount Airy Contemporary). MAC has been curating shows in northwest Philadelphia since 2009.
