Map out your art agenda during Miami Art Week and beyond with See Saw Gallery Guide, featuring CULTURED's show recommendations and critics' picks.
“Homecoming” by José Parlá
Where: Pérez Art Museum Miami
When: Through July 6, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: This highly anticipated exhibition marks the Miami native’s return to the canvas after a harrowing, Covid-induced coma in 2021. It features a new series alongside a site-specific mural that brings his tactile style to life. Each piece showcases the artist’s signature layering of paint, plaster, and collage, capturing the transient history of a city through brushstrokes that echo local narratives of displacement and adaptation.
Know Before You Go: Stepping into “Homecoming” is like entering Parlá’s world. One of the museum’s galleries is reimagined as his studio, complete with paint-covered tables, vinyl records spinning, and archival memorabilia tracing his Cuban roots.
“Multitasking” by Sebastian Restrepo
Where: [Name] Publications
When: Through Dec. 14, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: In “Multitasking,” Sebastian Restrepo turns ordinary moments into captivating snapshots of intimacy. The Florida-based artist’s drawings and paintings are windows into his domestic world. This debut solo showcases Restrepo’s talent for capturing life’s subtle gestures, reflecting both his daily routines and universal themes of connection and solitude.
Know Before You Go: Miami-based critic Monica Uszerowicz calls Restrepo’s work a “domestic iconology,” where familiar objects—fences, cats, trees—carry layers of meaning.
“The Garden of Forking Paths” by Lucy Bull
Where: Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
When: Dec. 3, 2024–March 30, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Lucy Bull has world-building down to an art. Her latest works—some more than 10 feet wide—pulse with a cosmic energy that feels both intimate and endless. The 16 canvases on view here are portals to a place where color and form blur reality, inviting viewers to see, then see again.
Know Before You Go: The ICA Miami’s stairwell becomes part of Bull’s vision through a site-specific commission curated by Gean Moreno that transforms the space into a journey through the artist’s imagination.
“Alien: A Survey of the Asian Diaspora”
Where: David Castillo Gallery
When: Dec. 3, 2024–Feb. 8, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Marketed as the first-ever exhibition in Miami to survey the Asian diaspora, “Alien” is a groundbreaking exploration of a continent’s cultural impact in a globalized world. Curated by the artist Yesiyu Zhao, this show brings together the voices of over 20 AAPI artists, each using their practice to unravel the nuanced layers of alienation, identity, and belonging.
Know Before You Go: “Alien” digs into a diaspora’s complex layers through postcolonial theory, cyberfeminism, and more. From intimate reflections on identity to bold depictions of displacement, each piece asks viewers to question the boundaries that we believe define us.
“Unveiling Masters in the City”
Where: Opera Gallery Miami
When: Dec. 3, 2024–Jan. 2, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Celebrating Opera Gallery’s 30th anniversary, this show nods to Miami’s unique role in the global art world and the gallery’s steadfast dedication to South Florida’s creative community. Tracing the scene's evolution from Art Miami’s early influence in the 1990s to Art Basel’s game-changing arrival, the presentation captures Miami as a cross-cultural nexus where art reshapes, connects, and redefines.
Know Before You Go: Featuring an impressive lineup of 31 artists, from Andy Warhol and Alex Katz to George Condo and Mickalene Thomas, the exhibition is a dynamic salute to Miami as a cultural capital and Opera Gallery’s 22-year love affair with the city.
“Portraits from Here to There” by Alec Soth and Jason Schmidt
Where: The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse
When: Through April 26, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: “Portraits from Here to There” offers a rare glimpse into the artistic process, pairing Jason Schmidt’s intimate portraits of art-world heavyweights—think Marina Abramović and Jenny Holzer—with Alec Soth’s introspective, filmic vignettes from series like “Sleeping by the Mississippi,” “Niagara,” and “Broken Manual.” Together, their work captures faces, spaces, and the storytelling that lies between.
Know Before You Go: Schmidt’s series invites viewers inside the creative sanctuaries of more than 700 artists, while Soth’s snapshots, inspired by the evocative films of Wim Wenders, allow for immersion in dreamlike sequences—where the narrative is as much about what isn’t shown as what is.
“In Dialogue” by Ulla von Brandenburg
Where: The Bass Museum of Art
When: Through July 6, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Two great minds meet in this Bass Museum show juxtaposing Ulla von Brandenburg’s polychrome universe with a colossal mural from the late Lebanese-American artist Etel Adnan. Known for reviving forgotten moments and cultural quirks, Von Brandenburg blends film, textiles, and sound into an all-encompassing experience, harmonizing with Adnan’s 14-by-21-foot fresco in a lively duet of color and form.
Know Before You Go: Drawing on the spirit of icons of abstraction like Sonia Delaunay, the show explores how shapes and spaces tell stories, bridging generations and geographies.
“You Guide Me Through” by Patrick Dean Hubbell
Where: Nina Johnson
When: Through Jan. 11, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: With this new solo show, Patrick Dean Hubbell channels his Diné heritage into a contemporary, vibrant exploration of self. Crafted with natural pigments and repurposed materials, each piece invigorates the natural world’s textures, drawing on Navajo traditions to convey stories of love, loss, and survival through striking gestures and earthy hues.
Know Before You Go: This is more than painting: It’s a conversation with history. As a father, cattle rancher, and artist, Hubbell’s work is raw, textured, and achingly honest, capturing personal growth and Indigenous memory.
“Psychomachia” by Austin Lee
Where: Presented by Jeffrey Deitch
When: Dec. 3–Dec. 9, 2024
Why It’s Worth a Look: Since his arrival in the art scene in the 2010s, New York-based artist Austin Lee has taken inspiration from new technologies and analog emotion. Inspired by the 14th-century frescoes of Giotto, his new solo presentation draws viewers into an allegorical battle of virtue and vice—a concept that feels especially relevant in today’s hyperconnected world.
Know Before You Go: Lee’s Garden Love, 2024, and other pieces merge VR-based drawing with airbrush on canvas, turning a Miami Design District white cube into a dreamlike exploration of human psychology.
“Neither one nor the other, but a wound” by Camilo Godoy
Where: Dot Fiftyone.Gallery
When: Through Jan. 31, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Bogotá-born, New York-based artist Camilo Godoy examines documents from the 17th to the 19th centuries that condemned the dancing practices of Indigenous communities in what is now Colombia. Curated by Angelica Arbelaez, the show sees Godoy turning the lens on himself and enacting the movements described in these texts.
Know Before You Go: Working across video, photography, sculpture, and performance, Godoy, who was the New Museum’s artist in residence this past year, reclaims the importance of identity—and its interpretation—beyond rigid categories. This is his debut Miami solo show.
“Phantom Limb” by Gonçalo Preto
Where: Andrew Reed Gallery
When: Through Jan. 4, 2025
Why It’s Worth a Look: Portuguese artist Gonçalo Preto’s work delves into the depths of human consciousness, using light, focus, and subtle tension. Like traces of half-remembered dreams, his large oil canvases offer glimpses into the ephemeral nature of memory and perception.
Know Before You Go: A highlight of the exhibit, An Abundance of Caution, 2024, showcases Preto’s mastery of soft value transitions. A ghostly, brain-like form with bulging eyes hovers on a pale canvas, its tendrils fading into abstraction.
