PAST EXHIBITIONS

Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “DEMI | Tabula Rasa”, a solo exhibition of paintings by Cuban-born, American painter Demi.  Born in Camaguey, Cuba in 1955, Demi is a renowned Cuban-born American artist. She lives and works in Miami. The exhibition is on view from May 4 until June 29, 2024.

Demi’s primary subject matter is children. She depicts a vibrant and intimate universe centered around children, yet her vision is neither sugar-coated nor innocent. Demi paints luminous and powerful children whose lives have been exposed to the vagaries of the adult world. She paints the big world through the eyes of small children. Her children are survivors.

The title of the show, “Tabula Rasa”, translates from Latin as “a clean slate”. It is the idea that children are born pristine in their original state and are free of any built-in information. All their knowledge comes from later perceptions, sensory experiences, and life events. So what happens when small children suffer through tragic events? And how deeply do those events impact their lives forever

Demi has firsthand knowledge of the plight of children whose fates are forever altered by devastating events. Her father was executed in Castro’s Cuba when Demi was still a small child. Demi had to live in exile, eventually settling in Miami, where she later attended Miami-Dade College. The artist signs as “DEMI”, as a sobriquet that suggests her life was cut in half by exile, and emphasizes individuality and ambiguity.

The exhibition is comprised of the artist’s recent works, some of which were painted during the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-2022), and represent a shift in the artist’s oeuvre. According to the artist, the pandemic’s lockdown restrictions induced a strong desire in the artist to go beyond the constraints of stretched canvas, and Demi decided to paint on large-scale unstretched linen creating murals like tapestries. Two of the three murals painted during the lockdown, “Light versus Darkness” and “The Big Storm”, have been exhibited at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C., as part of the prestigious Organization of American States (OAS) program. “The Big Storm” is included in the Museum’s permanent collection. The third mural, “The Fall”, is exhibited for the first time in this exhibition.

“For me, this exhibition “Tabula Rasa” has a lot of personal meaning, and is also a new beginning. In 2022, my two sisters died – one from COVID, and the other from cancer. I felt completely destroyed as a person and as an artist.  My two sisters represented for me my muses. They never grew old. In my mind they were part of a terrible event in my life as a child. As I have said before, my paintings blossom from the inner depths of my childhood memories. My two sisters were representatives of my childhood on this earth. When they died, I stopped painting… except for finishing up the large murals. With this exhibition, I have a new beginning.” – Demi

El Nuevo Herald

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Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “Black & White”, a group exhibition featuring works by Jose M. Arellano (USA/b. Cuba), Ronald Dupont (Belgium), Jorge Enrique (USA/b. Cuba), Luis Garcia Nerey (USA/b. Puerto Rico), L’Atlas (France) and Joe Segal (USA).  Curated as an artistic dialogue between monochromatic artworks, the exhibition explores the profound impact of black and white (and all shades of grey in between). Through an array of paintings and sculptures spanning diverse mediums such as oil on canvas, acrylic on board, tar, resin, spray paint, carbon fiber, and wood, the show encompasses a spectrum of styles including realism, abstraction, kinetic “reverspective” (reversed perspective), and street art.

By stripping away the distraction of color, black and white imagery forces us to focus on the formal values of the artwork – contrast, texture, movement, the subject matter, and concept. This limited palette introduces a simplicity and directness often lost if the image is in full color. Black and white, and its infinite number of gradations, somehow conveys emotion in a way that color images simply cannot.

Meer | Black & White | 17 Feb — 26 Mar 2024 at the Aliona Ortega Fine Art in Miami, United States

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Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “The 2023 Best of Miami-Dade Show”. 

Last year was inaugural for Aliona Ortega Fine Art as we opened our first exhibition in May 2023. We were off to an exciting year ahead during which the gallery held two solo exhibitions, and two group exhibitions, new artists joined the gallery, and the gallery received good press reviews.

The year ended on a high note for us! We were happy to be named the Gold Winner and the “Best Art Gallery” in Miami Herald’s 2023 Miami-Dade Favorites contest.   We thank everyone who voted for us. 

“The 2023 Best of Miami-Dade Show” is a group exhibition of selected works by the gallery’s leading and recently added artists.  The vernissage is on Saturday, January 13, 2024, 5-8 p.m. at our gallery in Wynwood.

The show remains on view through February 13, 2024.

Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “Songsforstarlings”, a solo exhibition by English artist Richard Butler.  Comprised of Butler’s recent paintings, the show opens to the public on Saturday, November 4th, 2023, 6-9 p.m., with the artist present at our gallery in Wynwood. The exhibition remains on view through November 30, 2023 (Show dates extended).

“When I was a child in rural England, starlings would flock in the thousands on telephone wires. It presaged the beginning of winter, and it invoked a certain sense of melancholy. I would like to think the paintings do the same — a certain sense of beauty, yet sadness at the same time,” says the artist Richard Butler.

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Richard Butler: Songsforstarlings at Aliona Ortega Fine Art by Wendy M. Blazier at Whitehot Magazine

Luis Garcia Nerey | Somewhere over Water

Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “Somewhere over Water”, a solo exhibition of recent works by Luis Garcia Nerey. Garcia Nerey is a conceptual multimedia artist whose oeuvre shifts between abstract and representational art. His work investigates the subjects of identity, migration, exile, as well as individual and collective memory. 

Garcia Nerey’s paintings always start as abstractions, and often times stay that way – purely abstract. Yet, sometimes, as the work progresses, figurative forms emerge on which the artist builds by applying layers of acrylic, oil, or tar. Sometimes the artist uses elements of collage that he works into his paintings. Resulting works vary in their representational or non-representational qualities and finishes: from exposed mixed media on canvas, to mixed media on panel under a layer of resin, to matte surfaces achieved through multiple steps of polishing and mattifying the epoxy resin to perfection. It is that variety that constitutes the selection of works in “Somewhere over Water”.

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Julien Graizely | Jonathan Huxley | Yukio Imamura | Koldunova + Klyosov | Alain Le Boucher | Joe Segal

The scorching sun, the alluring colors of the Atlantic Ocean, and the torrential tropical rains which characterize the Miami summer set the stage for our new show. Aliona Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “Sun–drenched”, a summer exhibition featuring artworks in brighter colors and playful moods. The show comprises paintings by Julien Graizely (France), Jonathan Huxley (UK), and Yukio Imamura (Japan), sculptures by Alain Le Boucher (France) and Joe Segal (USA), and photography by artistic duo Koldunova+Klyosov (Russia/Ukraine). “Sun–drenched” is on view from July 8 through August 26th, 2023, at our gallery in Wynwood Art District, Miami, FL.

UPDATE: Show dates are extended until September 16, 2023.

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Jorge Enrique | Miss.Tic | Purvis Young

Aliona Ortega Fine Art opened its inaugural exhibition Wall | Street: Works by Jorge Enrique, Miss.Tic, Purvis Young,  at the gallery in Wynwood, which remained on view from May 5th through June 24th, 2023.   

The street is both setting and subject of the exhibition Wall | Street, which presents paintings, photography, sculpture, and site-specific interventions by three important contemporary artists: Cuban-born Miami-based artist Jorge Enrique (USA, lives in Miami, b. Cuba 1957), renowned Paris graffiti artist Miss.Tic (Paris, France 1956-2022), and self-taught “street” artist Purvis Young (USA, Miami, Florida 1943-2010).

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François Bard | Richard Butler | Dayron Gonzalez | Jérôme Lagarrigue | Victor Sydorenko

Waltman Ortega Fine Art is pleased to present “Unmasked”, a group exhibition of five contemporary figurative artists François Bard, Richard Butler, Dayron Gonzalez, Jérôme Lagarrigue, and Victor Sydorenko.

UNMASKED invites us to contemplate the fundamentals of human existence. What is revealed behind the mask (which is perhaps the most powerful psychological symbol)  is the silent distances within Francois Bard’s portraits, the melancholia in Richard Butler’s faces, the dramatic angst of Dayron Gonzalez’s figures,a quiet beauty in Jérôme Lagarrigue’s toughness, and an ethereal poetry in Victor Sydorenko’s work.

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