Fort Lauderdale Artists Present Surreal Video Works at Miami Art Week

We've already told you about some relatively well-established Broward-based artists who are showing works during Art Basel and about the free shuttles between BroCo and Miami Beach. But there's more. As usual, the most offbeat happenings sound like the most fun. There's the Burning Man-themed Edge Art Fair, and there are also these works from more peeps with Broward ties: 

The venerable husband-and-wife duo Jen Clay and Sam Lopez De Victoria are representing the 954 in Miami this week with their onslaught of hyperinnovative and highly exhilarating surrealistic video performance projects. The Fort Lauderdale-based artists are projecting video art for the pop-up Now or Neverland, an outdoor event organized by the Miami Urban Contemporary Experience (MUCE).

From today through December 6, Lopez De Victoria will show his Odin's Exchange, a video culled from his larger oeuvre series, Yggdrasil, at the Now or Neverland event held at Little Haiti's Chef Creole Performance Park. Odin is a videogame-based work that might remind viewers of the look and feel of 1980s Atari games. In it, the artist explores themes of Norse mythology in a tropical-urban, Miami-like environment.

He explains, "This work is literally of the mythical story about Odin, the father of Thor, when he has sacrificed one of his eyes to gain wisdom and he is looking down at the lost eyeball." 

You can watch the video via a free download here.

In addition, Jen Clay will show her trippy stop-motion animation "Another Other" at Neverland. In it, costumed characters take over public spaces. "This piece is part of an ongoing series that is heavily influenced by children's educational TV shows like Sesame Street," she says.

By combing through items dear to the artist's heart, such as fabric works for costumes and puppets, audio and sound distortion, and stop-motion film, Clay looks to the unlikely side of things. "I do this as a way to explore the common and mundane, people and places that go unnoticed because it is so familiar, and then I make it seem a little unsafe or unknown."

Check out the Now or Neverland event information, which is available here.

For underground-music lovers, Clay is also partaking in the avant-garde and punk rock shindig curated by Miami badasses and collective Audio Junkie at their fifth-annual Art Basel Distraction musical showcase. See her psychedelic goodness "The Future You, Let's Be Friends," on display as the backdrop to various bands and performances happening from today through December 7. The weeklong Distraction showcase takes place at the Jelly Suite in Wynwood (164 NW 20th St.). 

"I think when we feel ambivalence, then we can actually reconsider ourselves and those things that seem normal and typically safe," Clay says of her work, which intends to push boundaries and alter her viewers' comfort zones. 

Catch the full lineup and event details for the Art Basel Distraction by clicking here.