First U.S. Museum Exhibitions and Major Surveys Headline ICA Miami’s Winter 2025 Season

Featuring Landmark First Posthumous Surveys for Richard Hunt, Joyce Pensato;
First Major U.S. Institutional Solo Shows for Andreas Schulze, Masaomi Yasunaga;
Monumental Site-Specific Commission by Igshaan Adams

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) today unveils its winter 2025 season with five solo presentations that reflect the global diversity of contemporary art practice, spanning generations and encompassing painting, sculpture, ceramics, fiber, and immersive installation. Opening in December, the season features the most comprehensive museum survey to date for American painter Joyce Pensato alongside the first U.S. posthumous survey for renowned sculptor Richard Hunt. Building on its commitment to providing first institutional platforms for both rising and established artists, ICA Miami’s winter season features two first major U.S.  solo museum presentations: a survey of the playful yet incisive work of German painter Andreas Schulze, and a sculptural presentation of works by ceramicist Masaomi Yasunaga. The season also includes  a monumental site-specific stairwell commission by South African artist Igshaan Adams. Together, these exhibitions reflect ICA Miami’s mission to spotlighting genre-defining artists across generations.

“This dynamic mix of presentations reflects ICA Miami’s ongoing commitment to deep historical research, and to creating institutional platforms for artists and their work, often for the first time,” said Alex Gartenfeld, ICA Miami’s Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director. “From Richard Hunt’s engagement with modernism to Joyce Pensato’s fusion of expressionism and pop iconography, to the material innovations of Masaomi Yasunaga and Igshaan Adams, and to Andreas Schulze’s surreal, psychological paintings, each exhibition foregrounds an experimental vision of art history and practice. Collectively, they represent a global perspective on contemporary art.”

Joyce Pensato
December 2, 2025 – March 15, 2026

The most comprehensive museum exhibition to date for American artist Joyce Pensato (b. 1941, Brooklyn; d. 2019, New York), the presentation features some 65 works across five decades, including rarely seen works from the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. The exhibition tracks the development of Pensato’s work, beginning with early  drawings of Batman from 1976 and vivid gestural oil paintings from the 1980s, all the way to her monumental tableaux featuring larger than life cartoon characters. The exhibition charts Pensato’s developing visual language, and her unique synthesis of popular culture with the art historical languages of Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism. The survey highlights canonical Mickey Mouse images, an inquiry into early 20th century icons Felix the Cat and Groucho Marx, and a critical engagement with the gaze of 21st century digital cartoons, resulting in a reflection on both the history of American culture and the transformations of technology over the past century. Joyce Pensato is curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director; Gean Moreno, Director, Art + Research Center; and Stephanie Seidel, Monica and Blake Grossman Curator; with assistance from Donna Honarpisheh, Associate Curator, Art + Research Center.

Richard Hunt: Pressure
December 2, 2025 – March 29, 2026

The first posthumous museum survey of renowned sculptor Richard Hunt (b. 1935, Chicago; d. 2023, Chicago), this exhibition features a selection of twenty-five sculptural works, exploring Hunt’s pioneering practice from the 1950s through the 2010s. An influential yet deeply under-recognized figure in American sculpture and modernism, Hunt examined nature and reflected upon modernity using welded steel, wood, and aluminum. The works on view trace Hunt’s evolution from early linear compositions to hybrid forms that engage themes of resilience, movement, and public memory—particularly through tributes to the Civil Rights movement. Hunt also transformed the American public landscape, producing more than 160 public sculptures nationwide, more than any other artist to date. This exhibition underscores his mastery of motion and scale, offering a renewed perspective on his lasting influence and contemporary relevance. The exhibition is curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director; and Gean Moreno, Director, Art + Research Center.

Igshaan Adams: Lulu, Zanele, Zandile, Savannah (Stairwell Commission)
December 2, 2025 – November 1, 2026

South African artist Igshaan Adams (b. 1982, Cape Town) presents a major new site-specific commission created for ICA Miami’s three-story stairwell, featuring four cascading tapestries and a constellation of suspended wire sculptures known as “dust clouds.” Composed of vivid threads, beads, and repurposed materials, Adams’ textiles shimmer with chromatic intensity and invite multiple vantage points as they descend through the museum’s central axis. Blending Sufi spiritual practices, ornamentation, and craft traditions, Adams’s work explores themes of embodiment, hybridity, and transformation. The suspended wire forms evoke both meteorological and mystical energy, referencing the vibrational force of dance and ritual movement. Igshaan Adams: Lulu, Zanele, Zandile, Savannah is organized by Gean Moreno, Director, Art + Research Center.

Andreas Schulze: Special

December 2, 2025 – March 8, 2026

Andreas Schulze marks the first solo U.S. museum exhibition on the German painter (b. 1955, Hanover), installed across four of ICA Miami’s ground-floor galleries. Featuring approximately a dozen paintings and three sculptures, including some of the earliest by the artist from 1982 to the present, the exhibition surveys Schulze’s distinctive visual language, marked by exaggerated perspective, stylized figuration, and a tension between structure and the surreal. Each gallery is thematically organized around concepts of domesticity, landscape, and existential reflection; and includes an immersive presentation of Schulze’s iconic automobile paintings. Andreas Schulze is curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director and Associate Curator Amanda Morgan.

Masaomi Yasunaga

December 2, 2025 – March 22, 2026

ICA Miami presents Masaomi Yasunaga – a major U.S. museum exhibition dedicated to the artist. Born in Osaka, Japan in 1982, Yasunaga is celebrated for his richly textured and highly varied vessel sculptures which often appear ancient or archeological. Installed across two ground-floor galleries, the immersive, site specific installation highlights Yasunaga’s unorthodox approach to material transformation and suggests themes of loss and discovery. Over the last decade, Yasunaga has inverted and disrupted ceramic procedures, allowing him to use glaze rather than clay as his primary sculptural medium. While questioning the fundamental materials and methodical order of ceramic production, Yasunaga has achieved the rare distinction of single-handedly introducing entirely new technical possibilities to millenia-old ceramic production.

Masaomi Yasunaga is curated by Alex Gartenfeld, Irma and Norman Braman Artistic Director and Amanda Morgan, Associate Curator.

Image captions (top to bottom): Joyce Pensato, I Must Be Dreamin’, 2007. Enamel on linen. 90 x 72 inches, 228.6 x 182.9 cm. Photo: Larry Lamay. © The Joyce Pensato Foundation. Courtesy of Petzel, New York; Richard Hunt, Opposed Linear Forms, 1961. Welded chromed steel. 134.6 x 213.4 x 137.2 cm, 53 x 84 1/8 x 54 1/8 inches.Courtesy of White Cube; Igshaan Adams, Zanele, 2025 (detail) © Igshaan Adams. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery, Casey Kaplan and blank projects. Photo: Mario Todeschini; Andreas Schulze, Untitled, 1982 © Andreas Schulze / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Courtesy the artist and Sprüth Magers. Photo: Ingo Kniest.

Exhibition Support
Exhibitions at ICA Miami are supported by the Knight Foundation. Additional support for ICA Miami’s Stairwell Commission program is provided by Howard and Shelly Kivell.

Sustainability Commitment

ICA Miami is committed to reducing its climate footprint by adopting best practices for sustainability and partnering with organizations that focus on conservation. As part of this effort, ICA Miami has adopted sustainable shipping methods for all exhibitions and implements carbon offsets for select major exhibitions. ICA Miami is also the first museum in Florida to support the use of renewable energy and the growth of the sector. The museum matches 100% of its electricity consumption through the procurement of Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs). In 2020, the museum was among the original grantees for the first Frankenthaler Foundation funding for sustainability efforts in the arts.

About the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami (ICA Miami) is dedicated to promoting continuous experimentation in contemporary art, advancing new scholarship, and fostering the exchange of art and ideas throughout the Miami region and internationally. Through an energetic calendar of exhibitions and programs, and its collection, ICA Miami provides an important international platform for the work of local, emerging, and under-recognized artists, and advances the public appreciation and understanding of the most innovative art of our time. Launched in 2014, ICA Miami opened its new permanent home in Miami’s Design District in December 2017. The museum’s central location positions it as a cultural anchor within the community and enhances its role in developing cultural literacy throughout the Miami region. The museum offers free admission, providing audiences with open, public access to artistic excellence year-round.

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami is located at 61 NE 41st Street, Miami, Florida, 33137. For more information, visit www.icamiami.org or follow the museum on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook and explore the ICA Channel for inside looks at ICA Miami exhibitions and the practices of the most exciting artists working today.

Latin Amazonian Artists: Voices of the Forest in Contemporary Art

The Amazon is not only the world’s largest rainforest—it is also a living archive of stories, traditions, and cosmologies that have shaped Latin America for centuries. Today, a new generation of artists from the Amazon region, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are redefining what it means to create art in dialogue with this vast territory. Their works move beyond the stereotypes of exoticism and folklore, positioning Amazonian art as a vital force in contemporary global culture.

Between Ancestral Memory and Contemporary Aesthetics

For Amazonian artists, creation is never separated from life. Art is deeply connected to rituals, oral traditions, and spiritual practices that have been passed down for generations. The rainforest is not a backdrop but a protagonist—trees, rivers, animals, and ancestral spirits become subjects of paintings, textiles, installations, and performances. This integration of memory and territory challenges Western notions of art as separate from everyday life.

Themes: Ecology, Identity, and Resistance

Latin Amazonian artists often address urgent themes such as deforestation, extractivism, and climate change. Their works are not only aesthetic but also political, calling attention to the destruction of the forest and the erasure of Indigenous knowledge. At the same time, they explore identity, colonial histories, and the resilience of communities who have long been marginalized.

• Ecology and the Sacred Forest: The Amazon is seen as a living being, and many artworks embody this worldview.
• Colonial Legacies: Centuries of exploitation and displacement are confronted through painting, photography, and performance.
• Cultural Continuity: Art becomes a way to preserve language, symbols, and traditions under threat of disappearance.

Artists and Practices

Several figures have become central to the recognition of Amazonian art in the global arena:

• Denilson Baniwa (Brazil) – A multidisciplinary artist from the Baniwa people, he merges Indigenous iconography with digital media, critiquing colonial narratives while reimagining Amazonian futures.
• Carmézia Emiliano (Brazil) – One of the first Makuxi women to gain international recognition, she paints vibrant scenes that reflect her community’s traditions and daily life.
• Rember Yahuarcani (Peru) – A painter and writer from the Uitoto nation, he incorporates ancestral myths into contemporary forms, creating a visual dialogue between memory and modernity.
• Olinda Silvano (Shipibo-Konibo, Peru) – Known for her kené designs (ancestral geometric patterns), she expands traditional textile practices into large-scale murals that bring Indigenous visual culture into urban and global spaces.
• Claudia Andujar (Brazil) – A Swiss-born photographer who has dedicated her life to documenting and defending the Yanomami people, her work stands at the intersection of art and activism.

From the Amazon to the World

In recent years, Amazonian artists have gained visibility in international exhibitions, biennials, and art fairs. Their work is no longer confined to ethnographic or anthropological contexts but is recognized as a crucial part of contemporary art. By doing so, they question the boundaries between center and periphery, tradition and innovation, craft and fine art.

A New Artistic Cartography

The emergence of Latin Amazonian artists signals a shift in how we think about art in the 21st century. Their works remind us that the Amazon is not a “distant” or “exotic” space but a central territory for global survival—ecological, cultural, and spiritual. Through painting, photography, textiles, and multimedia, these artists weave together ancestral knowledge and contemporary critique, offering new ways to imagine our relationship with the planet.

Latin Amazonian art is not folklore—it is resistance, memory, and prophecy. In the hands of these artists, the forest speaks. Their works carry the pulse of rivers, the strength of communities, and the resilience of cultures that have endured centuries of erasure. As their presence grows on the global stage, they remind us that to look at Amazonian art is not only to appreciate beauty but to listen to a call for survival—of the forest, of its people, and of the world.

Although not Indigenous themselves, Sandra Gamarra (Peru/Spain) and Claudia Andujar (Brazil) have developed bodies of work profoundly connected to the Amazon, engaging with its cultures, landscapes, and struggles through a lens of deep respect and critical reflection.

Marc Chagall: The Painter of Dreams and Memory

Marc Chagall painted what others kept silent about: exile, memory, love, and dreams. From his humble beginnings in Vitebsk, Belarus, to the vibrant streets of Paris, and from the devastation of war to the luminous stained-glass windows of Jerusalem, Chagall transformed life into floating poetry. His art was not only a visual language but also a diary of the soul, where reality and imagination danced together in radiant colors.

Roots in Vitebsk: Jewish Childhood and Popular Traditions

Chagall’s story begins in Vitebsk, a small town in Belarus where Jewish culture and folklore marked his early life. The images of his childhood—houses, musicians, animals, and rituals—would remain central motifs throughout his career. These roots gave his work an authenticity deeply tied to memory and tradition, allowing him to transform personal heritage into universal poetry.

Paris and the Avant-Garde: A New Visual Language

When Chagall moved to Paris, he entered the heart of the European avant-garde. There he encountered Cubism, Fauvism, and the revolutionary languages of modern art. Yet Chagall never simply imitated; he absorbed these influences and created something entirely his own. His canvases combined bold colors, fractured perspectives, and fantastical elements, crafting an aesthetic that was both modern and deeply personal. Works such as The Village and I illustrate how he redefined painting as a space where dreams and reality could coexist.

War and Exile: The Wound in Color

The outbreak of World War II brought displacement and suffering. Chagall, a Jewish artist in Europe, was forced into exile, carrying with him the trauma of war and persecution. Yet rather than succumbing to despair, he transformed his wounds into color. Paintings like Agnus Dei reveal how he transmuted pain into symbolic and spiritual images. His art became a testimony of resilience—a way of remembering while also transcending tragedy.

Love as Resistance

For Chagall, love was not a private sentiment alone; it was a force of resistance against chaos. His depictions of Bella, his wife and muse, often show the couple floating above villages or embracing in impossible, dreamlike spaces. These works symbolize not only intimacy but also the power of love to defy violence, exile, and death itself. In Chagall’s art, love was both memory and promise—a thread of hope woven into his entire body of work.

Spirituality in Glass and Murals

Later in life, Chagall expanded his vision beyond the canvas. His stained-glass windows and monumental murals brought light and color to sacred and public spaces across the world. From the cathedrals of Europe to the synagogue windows in Jerusalem, his work fused spirituality with artistic innovation. The transparency of glass, bathed in sunlight, became a perfect medium for his floating figures and luminous visions.

Legacy: The Painter of Dreams

Chagall’s legacy lies in his ability to universalize personal experience. He painted exile and memory, but also love, joy, and dreams—emotions that transcend borders and time. His art speaks of resilience and tenderness, reminding us that even in the darkest moments, imagination and beauty can survive.

Marc Chagall was, above all, the painter of dreams. He left us a visual universe where the ordinary and the extraordinary coexist, where memory floats, and where love, in its purest form, resists oblivion.

Less is More: A History of the Minimalism Art Movement

In a world often defined by excess, complexity, and emotional expression, a radical art movement emerged in the 1960s that dared to strip everything away. Minimalism, as it came to be known, was a powerful revolt against the dominant, emotionally charged style of Abstract Expressionism. It was not merely a style but a philosophy, championing purity, objectivity, and the fundamental idea that less is more.

This movement sought to remove personal expression, metaphor, and illusion, forcing viewers to engage with art in a new, direct way—not as a window into another world or the artist’s soul, but as a simple, undeniable fact of the physical world.

The Seeds of an Idea: Precursors to Minimalism

While Minimalism solidified as a movement in 1960s New York, its roots stretched back decades. Key influences included:

• The Geometric Abstraction of Kazimir Malevich and his seminal work Black Square (1915), which he called the “zero point of painting.”
• The Bauhaus school in Germany, which emphasized functionality, simplicity, and the unity of art, design, and architecture.
• The Ready-Mades of Marcel Duchamp, who presented ordinary, manufactured objects as art, challenging definitions of authorship and aesthetic.
• The De Stijl movement and artists like Piet Mondrian, who reduced painting to its most essential elements: straight lines, right angles, and primary colors.

Perhaps the most direct influence was the Russian Constructivist movement, which embraced industrial materials and geometric forms to create art for a new, modern world.

The Birth of “The New Sculpture”: 1960s New York

The 1960s art scene was ripe for revolution. A new generation of artists grew tired of the dramatic, introspective gestures of artists like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. They sought a new kind of clarity.

Artists like Donald Judd, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris, and Anne Truitt began creating work that was startlingly direct. They rejected the term “Minimalism,” preferring descriptions like “ABC Art,” “Primary Structures,” or “Object Art.” The term “Minimalism” was initially used by critics, often dismissively, but it stuck.

The core tenets of their work were:

• Geometric Forms: Simple cubes, rectangles, slabs, and boxes.
• Industrial Materials: Instead of traditional bronze or marble, they used aluminum, plywood, Plexiglas, and sheet metal. Carl Andre famously arranged firebricks or metal plates on the floor (Equivalent VIII, 1966).
• Prefabrication: Artists often designed works but had them fabricated by industrial workshops, removing the visible trace of the artist’s hand.
• Repetition: Using repeated, identical units to create a whole, rejecting compositional hierarchy.
• Literal Space: The artwork did not create an illusion; it existed in the same space as the viewer. A Carl Andre floor piece had to be walked on. A Donald Judd box protruded from the wall into the gallery, demanding physical engagement.

Dan Flavin revolutionized the concept of sculpture by using commercially available fluorescent light tubes to define space with colored light, transforming the very atmosphere of a room.

Key Ideas and The “Why” Behind the Work

Minimalism was deeply intellectual. Donald Judd’s seminal 1965 essay, Specific Objects, became a manifesto. He argued that this new work was neither painting nor sculpture but a new, singular category—a “specific object” that simply existed in three-dimensional space.

The movement was influenced by a desire for truth to materials—letting aluminum look like aluminum, not something else. It also drew from philosophical ideas of phenomenology, which emphasizes direct, sensory experience. A Minimalist work doesn’t represent anything; its meaning is derived from the viewer’s immediate, physical encounter with its scale, material, and presence in a shared room.

Criticism and Legacy

Minimalism was met with fierce criticism. Detractors saw it as cold, empty, sterile, and even authoritarian. They asked, “Is this even art?” The famous complaint that “a child could have made this” missed the point entirely—the value was in the concept, not the technical skill of the hand.

Despite the criticism, Minimalism’s impact was profound and enduring. It paved the way for subsequent movements like:

• Land Art (Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt)
• Post-Minimalism and Process Art (Eva Hesse, Richard Serra), which reintroduced emotion and the evidence of the artist’s process.
• Conceptual Art (Sol LeWitt), where the idea became more important than the object.

More broadly, Minimalism the relationship between the viewer, the object, and the space it occupies. Its principles of simplicity, functionality, and integrity of materials spilled far beyond the gallery, influencing architecture, interior design, product design, music, and even lifestyle philosophy.

Today, walking through a modern art museum, the serene, imposing geometric forms of Minimalist works remain as powerful and challenging as ever. They stand as quiet, monumental reminders of the radical power of reduction.

The Foundational Figures

These artists are considered the essential pioneers whose work is most directly associated with the birth of Minimalism.

1. Donald Judd (1928-1994)
   • Role: Arguably the most influential theorist and practitioner. He rejected the term “Minimalism” but his work and his 1965 essay “Specific Objects” became the movement’s de facto manifesto.
   • Key Work: His specific, repeated geometric forms (or “boxes”) made from industrial materials like galvanized iron, Plexiglas, and aluminum, mounted on the wall or placed on the floor. He insisted his works were not sculptures but simply “objects” or “specific objects.”
2. Frank Stella (b. 1936)
   • Role: His early paintings were a crucial bridge from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. His famous quote, “What you see is what you see,” became a rallying cry for the movement’s literalness.
   • Key Work: His “Black Paintings” (1958-1960), which featured symmetrical patterns of black stripes separated by thin lines of bare canvas. They emphasized the painting as a physical object rather than an illusion.
3. Carl Andre (b. 1935)
   • Role: Radically redefined sculpture by arranging industrial units (bricks, metal plates, timber blocks) directly on the floor, eliminating the traditional pedestal and allowing the viewer to engage with the work in their own space.
   • Key Work: Equivalent VIII (1966), a rectangular arrangement of 120 firebricks, which famously caused public outrage for its stark simplicity.
4. Dan Flavin (1933-1996)
   • Role: Revolutionized sculpture by using a single, mass-produced medium: commercially available fluorescent light tubes.
   • Key Work: His “icons” and “monuments” dedicated to various figures, which used colored light to define and alter the architectural space of a room, making the light and space the actual artwork.
5. Sol LeWitt (1928-2007)
   • Role: A foundational Conceptual artist whose work is deeply tied to Minimalist principles. He prioritized the concept or idea behind the work over its execution.
   • Key Work: His “Structures” (a term he preferred over “sculptures”), especially his open-grid modular cubes, which were often fabricated by assistants based on his precise instructions.
6. Robert Morris (1931-2018)
   • Role: A key theorist and artist who explored the relationship between the art object and the viewer’s perception through simple, geometric forms.
   • Key Work: His large, gray polyhedron sculptures and his important 1966 essays, “Notes on Sculpture,” which articulated the phenomenological experience of Minimalist art (how we perceive it through our bodies in space).
7. Anne Truitt (1921-2004)
   • Role: A pivotal but sometimes overlooked pioneer. Her work pre-dated that of many of her male counterparts, creating simple, painted wooden columns that stood on the floor, blurring the line between painting and sculpture.
   • Key Work: Her “Daybook” series of painted wooden structures. Her work demonstrated that Minimalism could have a subtle emotional and perceptual depth.

Other Key Early Contributors

• Agnes Martin (1912-2004): Though associated with Abstract Expressionism and often called a Minimalist, she is more accurately a precursor. Her subtle, hand-drawn graphite grids and pale color fields on large canvases pursued tranquility and perfection of form.
• Tony Smith (1912-1980): A sculptor and architect whose large-scale, geometric modular sculptures explored form and scale in public spaces.
• Josef Albers (1888-1976): While predating the movement, his rigorous series Homage to the Square (begun 1950) was a massive influence, exploring the perceptual effects of color and form within a strict, repetitive format.

This group of artists collectively moved away from representation, emotion, and the artist’s personal gesture, instead focusing on the viewer’s direct experience with impersonal, geometric, and industrial forms in real space.