Ceramic, 220 in. x 324 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: John Polak.
in the Morganroth Reception and Wendy G. Surkis & Peppi Elona Lobby at Sarasota Art Museum
Staccato
2017/2022
Ceramic
40 x 270 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Todd Merrill Studio
INSIDE OUT
Inside Out invites you to discover works of art throughout our Museum Campus, in addition to those showcased through rotating exhibitions in our galleries. This dynamic program gives contemporary artists from around the world the opportunity to share thought-provoking work outside of the gallery setting, in order to spark new conversations about art and ideas amongst museumgoers of all ages and backgrounds. When you explore our Museum Campus, you will find sculpture and installations on Klein Plaza and the Great Lawn, as well as in unexpected spaces like Bistro, McGuire Hall, Schmidt Loggia, McCague Arcade and the Surkis/Elona Lobby. Come experience and interact with art in our iconic buildings and campus, inside and out.
Inside Out is made possible, in part, with generous support from:
Edward and Elizabeth Gardner Foundation Trust
Jane and Phillip Humann
Mark and Irene Kauffman
Roxanne Permesly
Donna Pickup
Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A)
Coming Together
2020
Ink on vinyl
Thomas McGuire Hall
Ink on vinyl
Courtesy of the artist and GAVLAK Los Angeles / Palm Beach
Photo: Rich Schineller
Jose Alvarez (D.O.P.A) (b. 1961) was born in Venezuela and currently resides and works in South Florida. Alvarez’s work spans various media, including performance, works on paper, and large-scale vinyl installations – all grounded in the exploration of common human experience.
Coming Together was created for Sarasota Art Museum in 2020 — all in the midst of an unprecedented global pandemic that produced feelings of isolation and disconnection for many.
In the act of creating this mural, I thought of the museum as a place of healing. A place that contains within it the possibility of transformation, a place that acts as a vessel of sorts to lift our spirits, celebrate our connections as humans and bring in the possibility of hope. That’s the reason that I named it Coming Together. Not just as an obvious response to our current world atmosphere but actually as a proposal to encourage us to lose ourselves in the objects and activities that we as humans create in order to give our lives meaning. I’ve tried to fill one’s direct and peripheral vision upon entering the space. Continuing my visual inquiry of both the fantastic and the philosophical, I’ve utilized a very bright and welcoming color palette. I try to invite the visitors to contemplate the dance played out in front of them. Ultimately, the painting creates a type of fantastic visual reverie destined to transport the viewer to a higher place. A place of “non judgement” and acceptance. A visual oasis in the midst of an urban setting. A visual testament of our collective story of survival and recovery.
Claire Ashley
Chromatic Blush: Wee Bairn
2024
Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza
For over a decade, Chicago-based artist Claire Ashley has used inflatables as a medium that spans painting, sculpture, installation, and performance. Through her work, she challenges conventional ideas of beauty, taste, and fine art, while melding painterly abstraction, monumental installation, and slapstick humor. Her playful, lumpy, and luminous creations have functioned as both self-portraits and broader commentaries on femme bodies and societal norms.
Building on her evolving artistic practice, Ashley has expanded further into new media, integrating her existing creations with cutting-edge Augmented Reality (AR) technology. In June 2024, she debuted her first AR piece as part of Augmented Chicago: Inaugural Realities at Millennium Park, celebrating the park’s 20th anniversary.
Chromatic Blush: Wee Bairn brings Ashley’s characteristic organic shapes and biomorphic forms into the digital realm. These vibrantly colored, glowing, and moving images come to life when viewed through a smartphone or tablet. By scanning a QR code, viewers unlock a dynamic, interactive experience in which two animated, glowing ovular shapes morph, move, and interact like living organisms. These AR creatures have their origin in two small works in Ashley’s larger exhibition titled eponymously. Once triggered by AR technology, the 3D animations breathe life into the painted forms, transforming them from static, physical objects into fluid, ever-changing entities that live in the digital realm.
Chromatic Blush: Wee Bairn creates an immersive environment that challenges perceptions of the visual field and explores questions about the future of humanity and living organisms. Accompanied by a soundscape composed by her longtime collaborator, Joshua Patterson, this work invites viewers to engage with its vibrant, pulsating presence, charged with playful, raunchy energy. Ashley imagines a future where hybrid organisms emerge from the Anthropocene, inviting us to envision new possibilities for evolution in an increasingly complex world.
Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, Ashley received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her BFA from Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen, Scotland. She currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Department of Contemporary Practices and the Department of Painting and Drawing. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, museums, site-specific installations, performances, and collaborations such as the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, United Kingdom; Beacon Arts Center, Scotland; the Louis Kahn Library at Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas; and the Chicago Cultural Center, among many others. Her work has been featured in Studio International, VICE, Hyperallergic, Artforum Sculpture Magazine, Art Papers, and The Boston Globe.
Learn more about Claire Ashley’s exhibition at Chromatic Blush at Sarasota Art Museum.
Chakaia Booker (American, born 1953)
Square Peg
2003
Rubber tires, wood, and steel
Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza
Renowned for her colossal, abstract sculptures made with discarded rubber tires, Chakaia Booker transforms the mundane into the magnificent. With industrial materials such as wood, steel, and rubber, Booker’s works dynamically address socioeconomic anxieties, racial identity, cultural heritage, globalization, consumerism, and environmental degradation, among other pressing concerns.
Square Peg — a monumental sculpture weighing over 2,000 pounds — can be seen as a visual convergence of the disruptive and harmonious elements of our world. The phrase “forcing a square peg into a round hole” is frequently used to describe people, ideologies, or methods that simply do not fit, a notion Booker subverts by uniting component parts to fashion a greater, complex whole. The inorganic, manufactured rubber and organic, natural wood are purposefully entangled, creating a composition of interdependent fragments that spring outward from and overtake the crescent-shaped frame. The work’s impressive physicality emphasizes Booker’s use of materials too often taken for granted within society.
Booker obtained a BA in sociology from Rutgers University in 1976 and an MFA in sculpture and painting from The City College of New York in 1993. She also studied African dance, ceramics, weaving, basketry, and tai ’chi.
Booker’s works are held in more than 40 public collections and have been exhibited nationally and internationally. She was included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005. Public installation highlights include Millennium Park, Chicago (2016-2018), Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas, New York (2014), and National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project, Washington, D.C. (2012). In 2013, Chakaia Booker presented eight sculptures at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune building for the biennial Season of Sculpture’s off-year “Conversations with Artists” program.
Rubber tires, wood, and steel.
Rubber tires, wood, and steel.
Rubber tires, wood, and steel.
Rubber tires, wood, and steel.
Samo Davis
Happiness in ROYGBIV
2021
Courtesy of the artist.
Conservatory
Inspired by the relief from nature within our confined lives of 2020, Happiness in ROYGBIV reflects on the artist’s fascination with growth and the fantastical imaginings of a world outside. Natural forms in a manufactured material become organic through the imperfection of hand mixing colors and perfection of techniques. The additive process for construction uses the repetition of the ROYGBIV mnemonic to create the variety of individual colors throughout the trees form. The crown’s alien like crystal ball leaves allowed the artist to explore reflection, imperfection, and understanding of the purpose of “leaves”. Influenced by Iris Apfel’s extraordinary color palette and motto “More is more, less is a bore”, Davis’ tree consists of over 8,000 pom poms, 1000+ glass and resin balls, 10 skeins of yarn, and 35 lbs of plastic, as well as bottles and other items found throughout the artist’s home. Davis’ tree projects a renewed sense of joy and serves as a beacon of brightness within the trying times we experienced 2020-2022.
Plastic, pom poms, resin, yarn, clay, recycled materials.
Courtesy of the artist.
Photo: Sarasota Art Museum
Molly Hatch
Staccato
2017/2022
Ceramic
Courtesy of the artist and Todd Merrill Studio
Bistro
Molly Hatch’s signature plate paintings—large-scale installations of hand-glazed ceramic plates—reimagine historical decorative arts through a contemporary lens, while bridging the gap between decorative and fine art. The piece Staccato diffuses an 18th century Chinese export pattern from Owen Jones’ book The Grammar of Chinese Ornament over a gridded installation of 108 hand-painted earthenware plates. The glazed surfaces collectively become a fragmented canvas for a delicate, painterly re-rendering.
1 Michael Woodson, “Fine Art Meets Fine Dining | This Artist Creates One-Of-A-Kind Ceramic Art,” Artistsnetwork, Accessed October 26, 2022, https://www.artistsnetwork.com/magazine/molly-hatch-creates-ceramic-art/.
2 Molly Hatch, A Passion for China: A Little Book About the Objects We Eat From, Live With and Love (September Publishing, UK, 2017), 11.
Staccato
2017/2022
Ceramic
40 x 270 in.
Courtesy of the artist and Todd Merrill Studio
John Henry
Complexus
2007
Painted Steel
On loan from the City of Sarasota
Great Lawn
John Henry (1943 – 2022, Lexington, Kentucky) is acclaimed for his monumental sculptures composed of floating beams and primary colors.
Standing 70 feet tall, Complexus was completed in Henry’s signature style: a grand statement of mass and color constructed with refined, geometric forms. While the sculpture is composed of basic shapes, Henry orients them in a complicated puzzle of floating and leaning pieces, creating a visual paradox – the sculpture appears both grounded as a large steel structure, yet also airy, as pieces float amongst the background of the sky.
Painted steel
Jillian Mayer
Slumpies
2025
Fiberglass, polyurethane plastic, wood, and acrylic
Courtesy of the artist
Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza
Jillian Mayer explores our ever-increasing relationship with technological devices and the impact device usage has on our bodies through her interactive sculpture series, Slumpies. Blurring the line between fine art and functional objects, Slumpies invites viewers to sit, climb, slump, and curl up, using these sculptures much like furniture. In doing so, visitors explore how Mayer’s objects provide support for the various postures we assume while using technology. With bulky, abstract forms and brightly colored palettes, the construction of these sculptures stands in stark contrast to the sleek aesthetic of today’s increasingly tech-driven world. Experience Mayer’s Slumpies and discover thoughtful, human-centered design and a place of comfort for bodies using devices.
Fiberglass, polyurethane plastic, wood, and acrylic. Courtesy of the artist.
Fiberglass, polyurethane plastic, wood, and acrylic. Courtesy of the artist.
Fiberglass, polyurethane plastic, wood, and acrylic. Courtesy of the artist.
Fiberglass, polyurethane plastic, wood, and acrylic. Courtesy of the artist.
Olivier Mosset
Untitled
2019
Acrylic on masonry
Courtesy of the artist
Marcy & Michael Klein Plaza
Acrylic on masonry
Courtesy of the artist
Acrylic on masonry
Courtesy of the artist
Olivier Mosset (b. 1944, Switzerland) is one of the most influential artists to emerge from the radical art revolutions of the 1960s and perhaps the most powerful in the ongoing discourse on “the death of painting.” Seeking to reject the mere commodification of art—objects transacting as base currency—and hoping to elevate the practice with greater spiritual, aesthetic, and intellectual meaning, Mosset and his cohorts playfully disrupted notions of authorship and ownership. Trained in the beaux-arts tradition, Mosset’s work disrupts illusionistic conventions in art and returns to the foundation of painting with pure color and form.
Mosset represented Switzerland in the 1994 Venice Biennial and has influenced generations of artists, such as Odili Donald Odita, whose work can be seen in the Loggia. Coming of artistic age in the 1960s, Mosset was steeped in avant-garde gestures designed to actively resist the commodification of art. As a member of BMPT,a mid-1960s, Paris-based art group composed of painters Daniel Buren, Olivier Mosset, Michel Parmentier, and Niele Toroni, Mosset aimed to create artwork that referred to nothing but itself. Mosset continued to focus on pure color, shape, and authorship after BMPT disbanded, as seen with the prints featured here and the site responsive painting installation on the façade of the Vocational Shops building designed by Paul Rudolph in 1959. Mosset has collaborated with architects such as Jean Nouvel, subtly enhancing architectonic features with his reductive monochromes. In this case, the metal casements of previous doors became the frame for a painting, playing on the notion that a painting is always a portal to another dimension or plane. A young boy, upon visiting Mosset’s collection of the minimal artists who have been influenced by him remarked “You know, where there is less to see, you look more carefully.”
Leah Rosenberg
28 Colors (Sarasota, FL)
2019
Latex and acrylic paint
Courtesy of the artist
Museum Lobby and stairwell
For Leah Rosenberg (b. 1979, Michigan), color and process play a primary role in her body of work spanning painting, sculpture, printmaking, food and performance.
In 28 Colors (Sarasota, FL), Leah Rosenberg surveyed our hometown on foot and chose twenty-eight colors to represent specific aspects of Sarasota. On view you will see Purple Hyacinth of the Van Wezel, Sea Star of manatees at MOTE, Vermillion of circus stripes, Tangy Orange of the Sarasota High School team colors, and Oregano of palm tree leaves, among twenty-three other colorful interpretations. The shape of the installation responds to the architecture of the building, transforming from solid stripes in the Lobby that then begin to sway and segment into playful confetti in the stairwell, and ultimately fall back into a structured pattern that mimics the original brick masonry.
Latex and acrylic paint
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal
Latex and acrylic paint
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal
Latex and acrylic paint
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal
Christian Sampson
Vita in Motu
2019
Solar Projection, Color Motion Picture, a durational site-specific installation with dichroic film, acrylic and glass
Courtesy of the artist
Museum Third Floor – Jonathan McCague Arcade
The site-specific installation Vita in Motu conscripts the architecture of the building, and the solar system, as collaborators to create an ever-changing dazzling color and light show, reminding us of our place in the universe and that color is light, constantly in flux, and subject to one’s perspective.
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal
Photo: Coke Wisdom O'Neal