There's something borderline psychedelic about Freddy Jouwayed's current body of work at the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. It's almost as if the artist has taken of hit of a hallucinogen that translates what he sees into waves of pure color and energy. I kept thinking of a line from an old Cabaret Voltaire song: "We know how to tune into this energy, and to use it."
The Miami-based artist works mostly with ink and acrylic on paper, often torn directly from a notebook and presented with the holes still showing, which gives the work a sense of urgency. The show includes a couple of collaborations with other artists, but it's Jouwayed's 18 intricate, labor-intensive drawings that captivate.
Jouwayed also works as the chief preparator for the Museum of Art|Fort Lauderdale, where he was instrumental in the recent thrill-laden show "Site Specific." I suspect that dealing with all that art on a daily basis has given him the contact high that comes through in his art.
In the gallery adjacent, you'll find a small but equally exciting show by Ecuadorian artist Giannina Coppiano Dwin, who transforms sugar crystals and spices into startlingly real-looking women's undergarments and mandala-like forms that suggest a hybrid of snowflakes and doilies.
Dwin's work is, in its own way, as intricate as Jouwayed's. There's an emphasis on process and the transformation of materials, with the resulting art somehow managing to suggest both fragility and strength simultaneously. It's heady stuff.
