TAMPA MUSEUM OF ART PRESENTS JEFF WHIPPLE EXHIBITION

Thursday, 16 November 2006 19:25

Tampa, FL – The Tampa Museum of Art will present a special exhibition by preeminent regional artist Jeff Whipple during Art Basel, Miami Beach, December 7 – 10, 2006.  The exhibition, entitled The Spasm Between the Infinities, is a unique art installation combining video, lighted sculpture and painting, that will be showcased at the South Seas Hotel, located at 1751 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach.  The multi-media installation includes videos projected onto screens in front of the hotel on Collins Avenue, as well as paintings and sculpture in the lobby, corridor and pool area of the hotel.  The exhibition videos will be illuminated from 6 p.m. to 12 a.m., and open throughout the day for all Miami Beach visitors to enjoy.  “This artwork examines the beauty and horror of having a limited spasm of life.  The video uses actors, animations and special effects projected on seven screens.  The imagery is highly symbolic but also very weird and often really funny,” according to exhibition creator Jeff Whipple.

“This partnership allows the museum to further its mission of advancing the visual arts for the broadest possible audience.  All of the artwork will be presented in the artist’s distinctive personal style utilizing his iconographic motifs and images,” says Ken Rollins, Tampa Museum of Art interim executive director.  The Spasm Between the Infinities promises to provide an exciting addition to the variety of events surrounding Art Basel, Miami Beach.  The exhibition examines the transitory nature of life, the brief spasm of time between birth and death, with distinctive designs symbolizing human life in search of value and meaning in a limited time frame.

The Spasm Between the Infinities will transform the beautiful exterior and interior of the art deco South Seas Hotel, located two blocks east of the Miami Beach Convention Center, into an art installation.  A video artwork will be projected onto several sculptural screens at the hotel’s entrance.  Two 8-feet high by 12-feet long hand-painted transparent murals will be installed in the lobby windows on each side of the entrance, and will be illuminated with backlighting.  The ocean side exterior of the hotel will have dozens of illuminated light sculptures installed at varying heights around the pool and in the palm grove adjacent to the pool area, and numerous interior spaces will display Whipple’s paintings and sculpture.  All aspects of the installation will be inter-related, reflecting Whipple’s unique visual vocabulary.

Notable art professionals are eagerly anticipating this upcoming exhibition that will be available to the Art Basel audience of international collectors, curators, museum directors, and art enthusiasts.  “It is so nice that the Tampa Museum of Art is introducing a Florida painter, filmmaker and playwright of such repute to the global audience of Art Basel,” says Bernice Steinbaum, owner of the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, Miami, FL. According to Mark Coetzee, director of the Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL, “An installation of this nature will, in effect, allow the Tampa Museum of Art to join other major institutions in the dialogue about contemporary art… an opportunity exists here to raise awareness of new media work within the art world on both a national and international level.”

Whipple is a regionally important artist. As a painter, sculptor, filmmaker and playwright, he has enjoyed a distinguished career.  Whipple is the only Florida artist ever to receive Florida Arts Council Fellowships in both painting and the literary arts.  In March of this year, Whipple presented the seventh installation of the City of Tampa’s Lights on Tampa project in the courtyard of the Tampa Museum of Art.  A portion of that installation remains on view at the museum and can be viewed nightly.  For more information about Whipple and his work, visit www.TampaMuseum.com.

The Tampa Museum of Art, located is downtown Tampa, is accredited by the American Association of Museums. The museum’s collection, of approximately 7,000 objects, includes Greek and Roman antiquities, as well as 20^th- and 21^st-Century objects with a special emphasis on photography from 1970 forward, and works on paper from 1900 forward.  Such luminaries in the collection include a first century A.D. Roman torso of Aphrodite, and paintings and drawings such as Ralph Goings’ Collin’s Diner and Jose Bedia’s Semana Santa.  Other collection highlights include prints by Vik Muniz and Judy Pfaff, and photography by Cindy Sherman, Chuck Close and Abelardo Morell.