Curated by Bonnie Clearwater

In 1996, MoCA, North Miami launched a program meant to raise the profile of emerging local artists. The first installment was a solo project by Mark Handforth. Since then, Handforth’s work has garnered international recognition, yet he has chosen to remain in Miami, participating in the city’s increasingly dynamic contemporary art scene. This fall, the museum will host its second exhibition of the artist’s work, promising a presentation appropriately larger in scope and ambition, including forty sculptures made since the mid-1990s. Viewers will be afforded the opportunity to connect with the humor and pathos that Handforth brings to vernacular urban materials—from lampposts and street signs to fluorescent light fixtures and metal trash cans—and to enjoy the romantic levity he so slyly smuggles into the formalism of abstract sculpture. A catalogue with an essay by curator Bonnie Clearwater (who brought Handforth to the museum fifteen years ago) and an interview with the artist by Tom Eccles accompanies the show.

— Anne Ellegood