Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary | Art Wynwood 2021

This Palm Beach Modern+Contemporary / Art Wynwood curation is Cynthia Corbett Gallery's celebration of optimism, revival and life. The artworks chosen resonate with the promise of America's positivity and resilience. Despite their different nationalities, these artists all share a reverence for quality, masterful techniques, and the innovative spirit that is so widespread in American society. We invite you to explore and enjoy our showcase of the Gallery artists that you know and love.

Lauded by Annabel Sampson, Deputy Editor of Tatler as “the next David Hockney” painter Andy Burgess, who hails from London but lives in Arizona, continues to expand upon his fascination with contemporary architecture. A new series of paintings on panel and canvas colourfully re-imagines iconic modernist and contemporary houses. Burgess selects the subjects for his paintings with the discernment of the portrait painter. Buildings are chosen for their clean lines, bold geometric design and dynamic forms. Burgess approaches his subjects with a fresh eye, simplifying and abstracting forms even further and inventing, somewhat irreverently, new color schemes that expand the modernist lexicon beyond the minimalist white palette and rigid use of primary colours. Real places are sometimes re-invented, the architecture and design altered and modified, with new furniture and landscaping and a theatrical lighting that invests the painted scene with a dream-like quality and a peaceful and seductive allure.

In 2021 Andy Burgess will be creating a series of site-specific artworks for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London. The project, initiated by CW+ – the official charity of the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust – and facilitated by Cynthia Corbett Gallery, which represents Burgess internationally, aims to improve and enhance the NICU environment for patients, relatives and staff.

Working together with the NICU team, Burgess will be reminiscing on the hospital’s neighbourhoods and its iconic views, sights and buildings in collaboration with hospital staff. The selected London scenes will be transformed by the artist in his unique, abstract, geometric style and printed on medically compliant vinyl – to then be installed in corridors and waiting areas of NICU.

“This project inspires me tremendously and I’m excited to be embarking on this creative journey with the hospital and CW+,” explains the artist, Burgess. “I am delighted to have been identified for this unique opportunity and to be working with NICU staff to contribute to the improvement of the environment in this innovative way.”

Burgess, who has made a name for himself exploring the relationship between modernist architecture and contemporary painting, aims to instil the artwork with feelings of positivity and calmness, while staying true to his British and London heritage and his love of early 20th century art, architecture and collage. He will be creating a multi-layered narrative, incorporating his signature open primary colours and clean lines.

Klari Reis uses the tools and techniques of science in her creative process, constantly experimenting with new ways to apply materials and methods. She is driven by curiosity and her desire to explore and document the natural and unnatural with a sense of wonder and joy. Formally trained as an architect, the artist from her base in San Francisco (in proximity to one of the largest concentrations of life science/technology companies in the world) collaborates with local biomedical companies and is inspired by the cutting edge of biological techniques and discoveries.

The unifying theme of Klari Reis’s art is her mastery of a new media plastic, epoxy polymer, and the fine control she brings to its reactions with a variety of dyes and pigments. Her compositions display brightly coloured smears, bumps and blobs atop aluminum and wood panels. A skilled technician with a studio for a laboratory, Reis uses science in the service of her art.

Klari Reis's work has been exhibited worldwide and public collections include Microsoft Research in Cambridge, UK; Next World Capital’s offices in San Francisco, Paris, and Brussels; MEG Diagnostic Centre for Autistic Children in Oxford, UK; Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London; the Stanford University Medical Center Hoover Pavilion in California; and Elan Pharmaceuticals, Genentech, Acetelion and Cytokinetics in South San Francisco.

Behind the bright colours and clean lines of these neon and Plexiglass light sculptures, French artist Nicolas Saint Grégoire’s art is more complex than it seems at first. Art Couture is a series of illuminated sculptures by Saint Grégoire. This series pays tribute to Yves Saint Laurent who has been a major influence on Saint Grégoire's practice.

Each illuminated sculpture comprises Plexiglass and neon, and is inspired by dresses created by Saint-Laurent as part of his 1960’s haute couture Pop Collection which Saint-Laurent created in homage to such artists as Mondrian, Wesselmann, Braque, Picasso and Warhol.

Driven by the common quest for harmony of line and colour, Nicolas Saint Grégoire, mentored by the late Pierre Bergé, President of the Pierre Bergé – Yves Saint Laurent Foundation, started his research in 2008/09 and was given exclusive access to the Yves Saint Laurent archives. The resultant work entitled Mondrian Dress 1, 2008 was inspired by the 1965 Day Dress created by Saint-Laurent in homage to artist Piet Mondrian.

Mondrian Dress 1, 2008 was presented by Cynthia Corbett Gallery in Paris, London, Miami, New York, Chicago, Basel and Milan. The success of this work was confirmed by Mondrian Dress 2, 2009 inspired by the same collection, which was reproduced by key French magazines and newspapers such as Le Monde, Beaux Arts and Belles Demeures. The foreign press has equally echoed the Mondrian Dress 2: it was published in Country Life, Easy Jet Magazine, Lawfully Chic - Mishcon de Reya’s Cultural Blog, and featured on Net-a-Porter.

Nicolas Saint Grégoire developed this concept further and created a series of light sculptures exclusively inspired by Yves Saint Laurent dresses, which in turn were inspired by famous artworks. In order to represent the dresses faithfully, Saint Grégoire designed his works sketching directly from the original pieces in the archive, using the same sketching tradition Yves Saint Laurent did many decades before.

Fabiano Parisi began his career as a photographer following a degree in Psychology, coming to photography through a project photographing derelict asylums, which sparked his interest in the abandoned buildings which are the subject of his art practice today. He has two ongoing series: The Empire of Light and Il Mondo Che Non Vedo (The World I Do Not See). The latter title is taken from a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa, a hint at the poetic qualities of Parisi’s work. What is so striking about Parisi’s work is his use of light, his relationship not just to history but to the theme of the ruin in Art History, and the composition and surface of his work. The power of Parisi’s work lies in the strength and command of his image-making, never straying from a strictly symmetrical approach, which allows the viewer to assume his viewpoint within the building, the wide-angle lens giving a sense of depth and breadth, without compromising on detail.

Parisi uses only natural light, shooting early in the morning. The colours and chiaroscuro are at their best at this time of day, and are left untouched by digital image manipulation software. Parisi’s photographs have an honesty and integrity that is part of what makes them so inviting. The artist often selects buildings with frescoed walls, which create an illusion of a painterly surface in his photographs and a textural sensibility that belies the photograph’s flat surface. His method highlights the patina of these forgotten places. The artist prints his work himself onto carefully chosen papers that enhance and maximise his colours and tones. Parisi has a strong relationship to Art History; the subject of the ruin was prevalent in the 18th and 19th Centuries, and interest is still strong today as evidenced by Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition ‘Ruin Lust’. From painters such as Piranesi to Turner to Constable, Parisi is part of an important genre in art.

Parisi participated in the 54th Venice Biennale, Italian Pavilion and in Fotografia Festival Internazionale di Roma in 2012 at the Macro Museum. In 2010 he was the winner of the Celeste Prize International for photography in New York; in 2012 he was shortlist for the Arte Laguna Prize, Venice where he was award a special Prize and in 2012 & 2014 he was shortlisted & announced finalist for the Young Masters Art Prize (a not-for-profit initiative presented by The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London).

In a contemporary art world that condemns beauty as camouflage for conceptual shallowness, championing high aesthetics is nothing short of rebellion. Dutch photographer Isabelle Van Zeijl takes female beauty ideals from the past, and sabotages them in the context of today. Van Zeijl aestheticises contemporary beauty in her work to visually discuss art historical links and a new way of seeing female beauty. Her work is both timeless, universal and uniquely placed in the art historical canon while offering the female gaze.

Van Zeijl is invested in her images. By using subjects that intrigue and evoke emotion, she reinvents herself over and over and has created a body of work to illustrate these autobiographical narratives. Her work takes from all she experiences in life - she is both model, creator, object and subject. Going beyond the realm of individual expression, so common in the genre of self-portraiture, she strives to be both universal and timeless, with a subtle political hint.

Isabelle Van Zeijl has shown work continuously and internationally over the past fifteen years, represented by galleries located in The UK, USA, The Netherlands, Belgium, and exhibiting at emerging and established international art fairs in New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, London, Germany, Belgium, Sweden and Italy. She was nominated for the Prix De La Photographie Paris, and The Fine Art Photography Awards. She was also one of the winners of The Young Masters Emerging Women Art Prize, London. Her work is held in private & public collections in the USA, UK, Belgium, Germany, France and The Netherlands.

London-based Deborah Azzopardi acquired her worldwide fame for the joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Deborah’s unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt. ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovett goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. Never before has the erotic dream been painted by a woman so well. ... Distinctive, memorable and provocative, Azzopardi’s Pop Art shows what happens to the protagonist as her canvas acts like a storyboard for movies. Azzopardi’s definitely got the ‘When Harry Met Sally....’ – “I’ll have what she’s having” ... down to a fine art, in paint. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with her artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings are in great demand, and we are pleased to bring to the marketplace such rare gems as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic Sshh (2008) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter.

Deborah Azzopardi considers the artwork of the famous French artist and illustrator René Gruau as her major inspiration. Gruau started his career as Christian Dior’s artistic director and was in a way responsible for the tremendous success of the New Look in 1947. Gruau’s women, languid, coquettish and elegant as well as his refined and economic use of line often become Azzopardi’s point de départ, while she develops her characters in a more outspoken manner.