Locust Projects presents Synesthetics, a group exhibition curated by local architect and artist Felice Grodin. Grodin has assembled five artists from all over the world and the US including Lawrence Blough from New York, Monica Tiulescu from Washington, Sylvan Lionni from England, Marcia Lyons from New Zealand and Samantha Salzinger from Miami. Each artist combines notions inherent in the practices of art and architecture, in an experimental exhibition that includes site- specific installation, sculpture, painting, photography and video to create five very different and exciting works.  

The Greek translation of Synesthesia translates to ’together + perception’ or “joined sensation”. It has been described as a neurological occurrence that mixes and matches the different senses so that perceptual experience and information are one.  Borrowing from this occurrence, this exhibition explores the notion of blending phenomenon in both a rigorous and visceral way. Unlike the endless linking of hypertext or excessive piling of imagery and data often associated with “the age of information,” the work exhibited will consist of studied and specific subject matter both in concept and execution.

"Miami is a young city with emerging cultural practices - architecture, art and the natural and urban landscape.  My goal of this exhibition is to explore the possibilities of relating these distinct forms - if only for a suggestive moment.  What is the connective tissue and how does each work retain its own poetic voice?” says Synesthetics curator Felice Grodin

Each artist will bring to fruition five ambitious projects that span their respective medium. Lawrence Blough, founder of Graftworks, was a finalist in the MoMA/P.S.1 Young Architects Program.  For Locust he will construct a full- scale exterior installation that will serve as a canopy over the gallery driveway and entrance. His design serves as a tectonic analogue by utilizing computer based CNC milling technology inspired by the botanical structure of the water lily Victoria Regia.  Monica Tiulescu is an architect who has created a site-specific sculptural installation constructed of generic PVC piping. She has constructed a synthetic repetitive landscape that functions as a growing and responsive organism that is generated on a system of rules utilizing the animation software MAYA.  In a similar vein, Sylvan Lionni’s painstaking paintings are generated digitally and executed by both machine and hand. They are shown in multiples to form an obsessive series that hovers between still geometric abstraction and transformational networks. Samantha Salzinger will exhibit several landscape photographs that blend handcrafted miniatures with digital techniques, blurring the distinction between the real and the artificial.  Finally, for the project room, Marcia Lyons, a video and sound artist, will import the environment of Antarctica by creating a live feed connection via the internet. From several camera’s and microphones placed on site, she visually transforms both data and atmosphere - two worlds meeting virtually through cyberspace.

Featuring artists of different disciplines - installation, sculpture, painting, photography and video, “their processes evolve and exist simultaneously both in the digital domain of new technology and the physical world that exists around us" explains Grodin.