Bear/Bare With Me: Altered States
Hosted by Bernice Steinbaum Gallery
2101 TIGERTAIL AVE, Miami, Florida 33133
Feb. Saturday 23 at 5 PM – 9 PM
The word bear/bare has many dictionary meanings (look it up). The word has direct relevance to artists and their dealers. The artist, through their work, lays themselves bare and exposed. The artist is saying, “Look at me, naked, in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.”
Often the artist and their dealer have to bear the brunt of the uninformed viewer’s response to the artist’s work. The dealer has to admonish those that say their “two-year-old child could do this work.”
Often the dealer finds his or herself in a situation in which they feel like a bear. This dealer has found too often that she snarls and growls like a bear with clients who don’t pay their bills; or howls at shippers who do not arrive on time with crates, and finds that she might devour like a bear a supplier that does not have glassine paper.
I hope that this exhibition, Bear/Bare With Me: Altered States bears relevance to artists and to the rest of the art world.
Bernice Steinbaum Gallery
Over 30 years ago, Bernice broke the mold in Manhattan, opening a gallery in Soho that focused on 50% female artists and 40% artists of color – blazing a trail that eventually earned her a Woman of the Year Award from the National Organization for Women. “I didn’t think that I would impact the world. I wanted to impact myself knowing that I had done the right thing and that perhaps in some way I was making a difference,” says Bernice.
In 2000, after closing the doors of her Soho gallery, she was instrumental in founding the Wynwood Arts District in Miami when she turned a rundown crack house into her eponymous, world-class two-story art gallery.
