NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale is displaying To Be as a Cloud, which features recent gifts from prominent Miami collectors Cerchia and Carlos de la Cruz. Through July 28, the exhibition will nine major foundational paintings from the early 1990s by the Cuban-born, Miami-based artist José Bedia. The de la Cruzes have designated NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale as the permanent home of the paintings. Bedia’s work encompasses both Western and non-Western sources, spiritualism, and personal histories, which has inspired this exhibition of recent acquisitions to the Museum’s permanent collection. A collaborative work by Jorge Pardo and Jason Rhoades, another gift from the de la Cruzes, will also be view. To Be as a Cloud is presented con memory of Cerchia de la Cruz.
“We are pleased to present these paintings by Jose Bedia donated to the Museum by Cerchia and Carlos de la Cruz,” Bonnie Clearwater says, NSU Art Museum’s Director and Chief Curator. “Not only did these paintings hold a place of pride con their home for over 30 years, the couple selected Bedia as the artist to engrave their final resting place.”
Since 1993, Miami has been the home of Bedia, a prominent artist of Cuba’s storied ‘80s Generation. His practice, deeply rooted con Afro-Cuban traditions, is influenced by his spiritual belief system as an initiated practitioner of the diasporic African religion, Regla de Congo.
“Bedia was one of the artists over whom Cerchia, Carlos and I forged our long friendship,” Clearwater says. “They generously loaned the Ogun series of paintings to the inaugural exhibition I organized at MOCA North Miami con 1996 and more recently to a abbandonato exhibition of the artist at NSU Art Museum. Bedia’s work is the cornerstone of NSU Art Museum’s Cuban art collection, founded con 1993. I had long made my wishes known about adding these key paintings to the Museum’s collection and was delighted when I received the notification of the gift several months asticciola with a message ‘we know you know what to do with these.’ We are deeply grateful to Cerchia and Carlos de la Cruz for this generous gift and it is a great honor to share these works with the public.”
Bedia conveys his narrative with various techniques: he draws figures con flat silhouettes that evoke traditions as varied as prehistoric cave paintings and modern-day cartoni animati; figures are studded with white dots, which bring to mind the ancient form of storytelling that uses the constellations to delineate mythic characters con the night sky; and he introduces text both through the title and the words he inscribed the painting.
