borderline
Harumi Abe, Gabriela Ayza Aschmann, Tony Chirinos, Filio Galvez, Liang Lansi, Leah Mendez, Alejandra Moros, Gustavo Oviedo, Johnny Robles, Victor Urroz, Ana Vergara
November 20–December 15, 2024
A collaboration between Miami Art Society, Queue Gallery, and Supermarket Gallery at the Goodtime Hotel
It’s always fabulous when you get to practice what you preach! The opportunity to collaborate with MAS and Queue is one I would happily accept again, having been a fan of both initiatives for years. JP and Catherine’s work ethic, their visions, and individual commitment to putting on killer and engaging exhibitions made me feel at home.
When I say I do what I do for the community, it matters to me that my colleagues and peers feel included. Ideating, writing, scheduling, complaining, installing, and daydreaming together felt like pre-Art Week camp.
In addition to the other galleries, the artists we all chose overlapped at one point or another—I see it as a living example of how tight-knit arts ecosystems are a bit like coral. We’re fragile yet tough, seemingly insular yet bountiful, and purposeful beyond what others may perceive as “the end.”
I really would do it again.
borderline borrows its title from the 1983 Madonna single, a biting plea for normalcy from a hot and cold lover that’s evolved into a nostalgic dance classic. In this exhibition, “borderline” refers to the nature of the artists’ work, and participating galleries’ approaches to tastemaking in an evolving culture that now exists somewhere between tangible and digital. The works chosen for this exhibition toy with expected uses of familiar media—at the thresholds of reimagined, rebellious, and provocative.
In Mary Lambert’s 1984 music video for Borderline, Madonna sings, “Come on baby, set me free. You just keep on pushin’ my love over the borderline,” as she leans longingly against a streetlight. This scene takes place outside a baby-pink bar with faded signs reading “Cold Beer” and “Pool Room,” where we find her lover playing pool.
The scene captures a familiar sense of desire and frustration while visually mirroring the aesthetic of the goodtime hotel’s library, home of this collaborative exhibition. Surrounded by pink velvet couches and decorative palms, one can only imagine sitting with the same ambiguous angst and anticipation, cocktail in hand, waiting for a supposed lover—a feeling we have all known.
Whether through reappropriated eBay photographs, photo-ethnographies of cockfights and criminalized dog breeds, or palm trees rendered in various shades of pink and rose, the works unfold like surreal odysseys and uncanny visual diaries. Baked clay resembles the softness of a body at rest, aerosol meditation guides linger like faint prayers in the air, and painted horizon lines recall the push “over the borderline.” Within both the exhibition and the very room it inhabits, there is a feeling that recalls Madonna’s glorious longing—a shared longing for our city of romanticized sunsets and toxic lovers.
Statement written by Catherine Mary Camargo (Queue Gallery), Maria Gabriela Di Giammarco and Mario Andres Rodriguez (Supermarket Gallery)
Flyer by Catherine Mary Camargo (Queue Gallery)
