New works were created and exhibited in Brusand, Norway, at Nordisk kunst Plattform, a unique and original alternative space run by artistic/curatorial team Elizabeth Croft and Jan Kjetil Bjorheim. The workspace is a disused train station building, each room papered in a patterned vintage wallpaper. Travel was supported by an Artist Access Grant from Tigertail Productions in Miami.

Wasted Youth, 2009

Rainbow Plaza, a 18′ x 40′ mural by Michelle Weinberg, is part of the exhibition “Polychrome Affinities”. Large-scale works by Weinberg, Guerra de la Paz and Magali Wilensky were created for the Miami-Dade Main Library’s 2nd Floor exhibition space.

In conjunction with Miami Contemporary Artists: Creating a Scene, the IPO Archive is on view. IPO, the ground-breaking company that’s forging a new economics of art or the 21st Century, has staged some memorable events in Miami, its headquarters. Among them, IPO Launch at Scope Fair 2004, Bored Room at Miami Light Project in 2005, Satellite Office at 801 Projects in 2006, and numerous products throughout its history. Participate in Interdisciplinary Pollinating Overlap, IPO’s trademarked questionnaire designed to encourage collaboration among artists.

This 30″ x 60″ sample, composed of glazed ceramic tile and marble, is on view at Arts Park in Young Circle, Hollywood. Unswept Floor has been commissioned by the Greater Hollywood Arts Foundation for installation on the park premises. The eventual installation will be a permanent part of the Park’s facility, and it will represent refuse dropped casually by park visitors and passersby. The design is a contemporary interpretation of the ancient mosaic Unswept Room at Hadrian’s villa in Rome.

In conjunction with the annual Design Industry Foundation Fighting Aids (DIFFA), these decals for dinner plates are in production! Part of a collaborative effort with artist Bob Baileyand designer Mark Christofi.

Artists Neil Bender, Elisabeth Condon and Michelle Weinberg focus their polymorphous painting and installation strategies at the crossroads of an individual and collective cityscape. Their private manias—for signage, crooked geometries, interlocking modules, apocalyptic wallpapers, and imaginary terrains – are united by a common obsession with pattern, vivid color, the jetsam and flotsam of commercial and popular culture, and a constantly shifting pictorial space. Bender’s flowers and body parts fuse with Bataillian lushness. Weinberg’s Indian miniature-like urban vistas destabilize the familiar, and Condon’s spontaneous gestures and Seussian trees propagate a florid, backyard exoticism. These three distinct artistic sensibilities open hallucinatory channels and invite viewers to access the way in which contemporary life is stylized and fantasized via pictures.

Picturopolis opens to the public upstairs at the Newton Building, at 3901 NE 2nd Avenue, on Saturday, April 14, 2007, 7-10pm in conjunction with the Design District Second Saturday event, and remains on view through Sunday, April 29th. Sponsored by DACRA through an open call to artists, Picturopolis represents recent work by Bender, Condon and Weinberg. The collective exhibition encompasses drawing and painting on numerous surfaces, collages and wall installation that will mimic the geography of the urban landscape –from garden to cityscape, and the social structures they inspire.

Visit Picturopolis, 2007 gouache on paper, 18″ x 14″