Swampspace Presents
La Maison du Désir/The House of Desire:
Lea Nickless & Conrad Hamather
Opening Reception Feb 9 6-10
Open Feb 9 - March 9
150 NE 42 Street, Miami Design District
The Industrial Revolution generated a dialogue between artist and technology that continues in La Maison du Désir/The House of Desire, a collaborative installation by artists Lea Nickless and Conrad Hamather. A pop-up boutique with atelier garment collections, “glitter bomb” objects referencing the luxury goods industry, monoprints and a video time-lapse drawing continue the exchange between the digital and the body, technology and art, and the corporal and the spiritual. The exhibition also debuts an atmospheric floor by Keith Frutiger, Atlanta-based designer. Situated at the epicenter of the Design District, an area presently being consumed by high-end luxury shops, Swampspace is the ideal venue for this exhibition where distinctions between desire and need, opulence and ease, value and worth are considered.
About the Artists
Conrad Hamather has been creating sculpture and installation work with a discourse on body and architecture for the last two decades. A faculty member at the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, Hamather teaches in the Department of Fashion Design.
Artist and curator Lea Nickless is interested in the unseen, the subliminal, with what is beneath the surface. She creates garments from eco-dyed silks that she patterns with leaves, seeds and windfall blossoms she collects on her daily walks. Her monoprints and a time-lapse video feature layers of pigment, shape and text.
About Swampspace
What would become of our beloved River of Grass without the water that sustains it. What would South Florida be without the arts that nourish culture and civility. Launched in 2008 from the studio of artist Oliver Sanchez in the Miami Design District, Swampspace Gallery presents monthly exhibitions of innovative talent. On the leading edge of Miami's Arts Awakening, Swampspace defines a brand that is both sophisticated and unvarnished. Ocean Drive Magazine Brett Sokol wrote " Miami's Best Kept Art Secret". Biscayne Times Anne Tschida said " Sanchez is likely the most talented and prolific Miami Artist you've never heard of." But the truth is everyone knows about Swampspace and the wizard behind the curtain. Now at a new deluxe location in the Design District, Swampspace continue to deliver cutting-edge exhibitions for arts lovers of varied lifestyles who come together and share a unique creative experience. Because it is perhaps the preeminent artist run project space in Miami, Swampspace is a recognized destination. Because it is the antithesis of commercial galleries and institutional museums, Swampspace is aptly called the Un-Gallery. Because people are thirsty for culture, they visit Swampspace like mariners to Morocco.
