For Art Basel Miami Beach 2024, Ortuzar is pleased to present a selection of paintings and sculptures by Ernie Barnes, Nancy Dwyer, Suzanne Jackson, Claudette Johnson, Raymond Saunders, Julia Scher, Sylvia Sleigh, Joan Snyder, Linda Stark, Anita Steckel and Takako Yamaguchi.

Suzanne Jackson and Joan Synder’s paintings reflect each artist’s ability to push the boundaries of their chosen medium, using materiality and abstraction to evoke layered narratives and emotional resonance. Jackson’s evolution with acrylic paint begins in Triptych for Steven (1974), where she dilutes the paint to create an aqueous, watercolor-like effect in an effort to challenge its inherent flatness. In a work created four decades later, Silencing Tides, Voices Whispering (2017), Jackson transforms the medium into sculptural, translucent forms, showcasing her exploration of depth and physicality within abstraction. Similarly, Joan Snyder’s Red Field (1993) exemplifies her shift in the 1990s toward a more intuitive and visceral approach, blending spontaneity and intentionality. In Red Field, a meadow of vibrant fuschia flowers fills every inch of the canvas and surrounds two monumental gaping orifices, which the artist created from strips of velvet and built-up layers of acrylic paint.

Much of the work in the presentation deals with the artist’s relationship to her own body, as exemplified by pieces by Takako Yamaguchi and Linda Stark. The two works from Takako Yamaguchi’s “Garment” series offer a nuanced exploration of self-representation, featuring closely cropped, symmetrically arranged and finely-rendered images of her clothed body. Through meticulously detailed depictions of every stitch, button and pleat of fabric, Yamaguchi’s self-portraits emphasize the body as both a physical and symbolic site. Linda Stark’s work further extends this interrogation of feminine archetypes. In her shaped oil painting That Girl (1997), she pays homage to the iconic 1960s “bubble flip” hairstyle and the women who wore it, while also infusing this symbolically charged image with a renewed feminist perspective.

Other works address American history and popular culture, as seen in Raymond Saunders’ Untitled (1968), an expressionistic reinterpretation of Emanuel Leutze’s canonical painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851). Through gestural mark-making, Saunders conjures and obscures this iconic moment, leaving only traces of Washington’s profile. For Anita Steckel, documenting her experience as an American takes shape in Me as the Statue of Liberty (1973). A lifelong New Yorker, Steckel casts herself in the role of Lady Liberty, blending her likeness with a potent national symbol. By merging her own figure with this emblem of freedom and immigration, Steckel critiques and reclaims the mythologies surrounding American ideals, adding a feminist perspective to the conversation about representation in iconic cultural imagery. The gallery will also present a series of rare, early graphite drawings of football players by Ernie Barnes. In these works, the players lunge, tackle, and seem to dance across the page, animating the lyricism of the human body in moments of athleticism and play.

The presentation will include Julia Scher’s Lelantos (2023), part of a series of white marble owls with necks turned varying degrees. According to the artist, their qualities are permutations of a real owl, a human, a cat, and a pre-existing owl sculpture that sits atop the P.S. 110 Florence Nightingale elementary school in Lower Manhattan, viewable from the Williamsburg Bridge. As symbols of wisdom and watchfulness, their biological properties are of particular interest to Scher, serving as metaphors for ostensibly benevolent surveillance technologies and their more ominous usages.