Media Contact: Emmett Young
emwiyoun@fiu.edu | 305.348.4799

The Frost Art Museum’s Target Wednesday After Hours Celebrates Two New Exhibitions

Lydia Azout, Templo Mayor, 2006, Weathering steel, steel, and copper, 2'- 10" x 31' - 8" x 20'-2"

Miami, FL (August 29, 2012)- The Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University presents Out of the Ordinary Geometry by Lydia Azout and the FIU Faculty Show, featuring Tori Arpad-Cotta’s long, lovely portage and R.F. Buckley’s Reflections on Water, on Wednesday, September 12, 2012 from 6pm-9pm, during Target Wednesday After Hours. The event is free of charge and open to the public.

Out of the Ordinary Geometry by Lydia Azout. Throughout her career as a sculptor, Lydia Azout has focused on the basic elements of form and shape as symbolic of the powers of nature, especially the feminine forces she regards as reflections of creativity, cosmic order and harmony. Often working with monumental structures which she makes out of wood, steel and other materials, Lydia Azout boldly faces the challenges of size and space as she explores the object’s potential to express something beyond its geometric references and delve into a world that acknowledges the spiritual through a contemporary aesthetic. Her installation for the Frost Art Museum calls for the viewer to momentarily suspend the demands of the everyday to interact on an emotional basis with the sculptural forms. The large-scale, site-specific work is multi-media and constructed out of different types of steel and projections to produce a confrontation with the materials, potentially extend the human experience beyond that of the merely functional or obvious, and enter into a relationship directed at perception and personal response. According to the artist, “This exhibition is about the cosmos, Sacred Geometry, the unknown, the mysterious and the magical.” This exhibit, curated by Rebeca Schapiro, runs through October 21.

Tori Arpad-Cotta, long, lovely portage (detail of Egyptian paste), 2012

The FIU Faculty Show features two outstanding artists from the Art & Art History Department, Tori Arpad-Cotta and R.F. Buckley. Arpad-Cotta’s exhibition, long, lovely portage, continues her attention to place and practice, with an installation of projected video, hand-bound books and cast Egyptian paste in which presence and absence mingle.

R.F. Buckley, Standing Water, 2012, Forged aluminum, 13'-0" w. x 10'-0"h. x 1.6"

The rhythms of South Florida waterways and substance of its sand and soil provide the locale for a meditation on the space between things. Buckley describes his exhibition, Reflections on Water, as being about aluminum and light; light and its refraction and interaction with aluminum. “My attempt with aluminum is to present a touchstone to access a few of our stored memories and experiences with water. The most recent iteration attempts to recall reflected light off of water, the movement of water and the fluidity of its changing states."

The FIU College of Architecture + The Arts, the Wolfsonian-FIU and the Frost Art Museum will also be highlighting what each has planned for the upcoming year in the Fall Arts Preview during this Target Wednesday After Hours.

About the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University
The Frost Art Museum opened its current 46,000-square-foot state of the art building in November 2008. Over 125,000 people have visited the Museum in its new building since its opening in November, 2008. Admission to the Museum is always free. The Frost is an American Association of Museums accredited museum and Smithsonian affiliate and is located at 10975 SW 17thStreet, across from the Blue garage and adjacent to the Wertheim Performing Arts Center on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. and Sunday noon-5 p.m. Closed on Mondays and most legal holidays. For more information, please visit http://thefrost.fiu.edu or call 305-348-2890. Follow us on Twitter and Like Us on Facebook.

About FIU
Florida International University is one of the 25 largest universities in the nation, with more than 42,000 students. Nearly 130,000 FIU alumni live and work in South Florida. Its colleges and schools offer more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. As one of South Florida’s anchor institutions, FIU is worlds ahead in its local and global engagement, finding solutions to the most challenging problems of our time. FIU emphasizes research as a major component of its mission. For more information about FIU, visit FIU Online.