Genuine Cognitive Pathways
Dimensions Variable (DV) presents a group exhibition titled Genuine Cognitive Pathways. The exhibition opens on November 19, 2026, and runs through January 20, 2027.
The exhibition takes its title from the language of artificial intelligence, where cognitive pathways name the living route from perception to meaning that generative systems are said to approach but never inhabit. Such a system composes by predicting the next probable element, assembling forms from how they have combined before rather than from any grasp of what they mean.¹ It returns a plausible average of everything already made and said. Its fluency is real; its origin is not. It has no route of its own.
What such a system lacks is not information but a body. Perception begins in the body, which grasps light, weight, and texture before any of it becomes language. And making does not impose a preconceived form onto passive matter; it follows the grain and flow of the material, a movement in which the maker and the made come into being together.² The work is not the execution of a plan. It is the record of a route taken through resistance.
This is the pathway the exhibition means to make visible. Each work here proceeds by a means that cannot be shortcut or synthesized—knowledge produced by walking a terrain, by a material worked slowly against the resistance of the hand, by memory pressed into an object, by a craft carried from one generation to the next and held in the body as what we know but cannot fully say.³ The generated image arrives without any of it. The image was never the value; the irreducible human pathway was—the thing no system trained on the past can travel.
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Notes
- Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Shmargaret Shmitchell, “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?,” in Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (New York: Association for Computing Machinery, 2021), 610–623.
- Tim Ingold, “The Textility of Making,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, no. 1 (2010): 91–102.
- Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009 [1966]), 4.
Salua Ares
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, and recently based in Miami, Salua Ares has been developing her artistic practice through hybrid approaches that move between photography, video, installation, text, and object. Her work focuses on what fades as much as on what is revealed within the dynamics of the contemporary world, exploring frictions between past and present, memory and invention, the visible and the latent.
Words have become increasingly present, as she investigates the dialogue between text and image, or text and matter. And she often explores monochromy and the restraint of composition as a counterpoint to the many forms of excess we are daily exposed to.
In 2023, she held her first solo exhibition at the Museum of Image and Sound of São Paulo (MIS-SP), after being selected for the museum’s “Nova Fotografia” open call. The exhibited works have since become part of the museum’s permanent collection.
Salua holds a degree in Economics from INSPER (São Paulo, 2007) and in Photography from Escola Panamericana de Arte (São Paulo, 2017).
Jenny Brillhart
Jenny Brillhart was born 1972 in Keene, New Hampshire. She received a BFA from Smith College in Northhampton, MA. She then went on to study at The Art Students League, NY and in 2003 she graduated from The New York Academy of Art with an MFA in painting. Jenny has shown widely in the U.S. and Europe. She lives and works in Blue Hill, Maine.
Richard Garet
Richard Garet is a contemporary multimedia artist born in Montevideo, Uruguay in 1972. He holds an MFA from Bard College, NY.
Richard Garet’s works have been included in prominent institutional collections such as MoMA in New York, the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), the Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Los Angeles, CIFO (Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation) in Florida, and the SPACE Collection (formerly Sayago & Pardon Collection) in Irvine, California. Additionally, Garet’s works are held in numerous prestigious private collections across the United States. Richard Garet’s work has been awarded nationally and internationally by institutions such as South Florida Cultural Consortium, FL; Prix Ars Electronica, Linz; Ministry of Education and Culture of Uruguay; CIFO Grants & Commissions Program, FL; The Clocktower, NYC; Foundation of Contemporary Arts, NYC; Issue Project Room, NYC; New York State Council of the Arts, NYC; and Taliesin West, The Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, Scottsdale, Arizona. Relevant projects include The Changeover System, NGA, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Soundings: A Contemporary Score, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Perpetual Motion, curated by Barbara London, PAMMTV, Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; South Florida Cultural Consortium, Hollywood Art Center, Hollywood, FL; Media Under Dystopia Whisper Edition: A Public XR Metaverse, MUD Foundation, FL; Beyond the Sounds of Silence, Lowe Art Museum of The University of Miami, Miami, FL; Plural Domains: Selected Works From CIFO Collection, Harn Museum of Art, Gainesville, FL; Bioderivas, Museo de la Naturaleza y el Hombre, Tenerife, Spain; Queens International, Queens Museum of Art, Queens, New York; 5×5 Real Unreal, Museum of Art Acarigua-Araure, Venezuela; EAC: Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo, Montevideo, Uruguay; Fine Arts Museum of Montreal; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona (MACBA), Barcelona, Spain; Art Museum of Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico; and El Museo del Barrio, NYC.
Felice Grodin
Felice Grodin lives and works in Miami Beach, Florida. Grodin received a Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University (1992) and a Master of Architecture with Distinction from Harvard University (1997). Her work highlights the transformative and unstable state of our ecosystems. She depicts speculative futures and abstract landscapes that invite the viewer to mediate on their space and environment. Solo exhibitions include “Yellowjacket_2524” at Dimensions Variable (2024) in Miami, “IM/Movable Assets” at the Miami International Airport (2019-20), “Felice Grodin: Invasive Species”at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (2017-2019), and “Mezzbug (Offspring 3.0)” for Special Projects through Untitled Art Fair (2018) in Miami. Selected group exhibitions include: “Natured Studies” at Void_Melbourne (2024), “Draw: Point to Point” at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum (2023) in Miami, “Elemental – Terra, Tide & Time” at The Frank Gallery in Pembroke Pines (2022), and “Tension in 3 Dimensions” at the Deering Estate (2019) in Miami.
Grodin was recently an artist-in-residence at the Oolite Arts Studio Residency (2019-22). Other residencies include the AIRIE Residency (Artists in Residence in Everglades) with her collaborative A.S.T. (2021). Grodin is a founding member of A.S.T. (Alliance of the Southern Triangle) which is an initiative speculating on interconnections between climate change, real-estate development, contemporary art, geopolitics, infrastructure, and technology. Additionally, Grodin was awarded a Wavemaker Grant through Cannonball (2015), for her group exhibition “Residential Properties” that took place at The Fountainhead Residency in Miami. Her work is included in The Joann Gonzalez Hickey Collection in New York, Girls’ Club Collection in Ft. Lauderdale, as well as the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
Mark Herrera
Mark Herrera is an artist who works in painting, sculpture, and multimedia. His work captures the beauty and hope inherent in the human spirit—our struggle for harmony within ourselves, our community, and our planet.
Born in Queens, NY, as a first-generation American with Colombian parents and raised in Hialeah, Florida, Herrera’s multifaceted lens of identities has deeply influenced his practice as an artist.
His history as a worker in various blue-collar jobs, such as lawn service, construction, mechanics, and disaster relief, and his current work as an enlisted member of the military and past work as pastor leaves visible traces in his choice of materials, compositions, and subject matter. With poetic combinations of ordinary objects, Herrera centers the lives of everyday people whose contributions to humanity are rarely noticed or celebrated.
Herrera attended Harding University, where he received a BA in Fine Arts in 2000. He is currently an MFA candidate and Fellow of the Ratcliffe Art + Design Incubator at Florida International University in Miami, where he bases his practice.
Moira Holohan
Moira Holohan (b.1976, New York, NY; lives and works, Miami, FL).
Raised in Manhattan, Holohan studied at iconic New York art schools such as the Arts Students League of New York, Cooper Union, New York Studio School, or the National Academy of Design School of Fine Art. Holohan was greatly influenced by some of her earlier training including her high school teacher Marc Schlesinger who assisted Lee Krasner, a renowned artist from the New York School. Holohan was an artist assistant to John Coplans (1995) and to Fred Tomaselli (1998). Holohan received a Masters of Fine Arts Degree at Hunter College, NY and a Bachelor Degree at Bard College, NY.
Holohan lives and works in Miami, FL. She was an artist in residence at Annex Arts in Castine, ME with a final exhibition, Subsurface(2019) and had a solo exhibition Green, at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden(2019) Holohan was one of the cofounders of meetinghouse, an exhibition space merging disciplines of art, design and architecture. She served as the Director of Art from (2015-2018). Since 2020 Holohan has been an associate artist at the Bakehouse, Miami, Fl.
Select group exhibitions include; A Thread of Execution, Dimensions Variable, Miami, Fl , (2017) Aesthetics & Values, FIU Frost Art Museum, Miami, Fl , Screen Dance Miami, Perez Art Museum, Miami, Fl (2016 ) Flow State: Thisishappening, Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami, Fl (2014 ) Pattern State: Fringe Project, Miami, Fl (curated by Amanda Sanfilippo) (2014) Miami Light and Texture, Miami, Fl (curated by Kathryn Mikesell) (2014) Cortaditos, MDC Museum of Art & Design, Miami, Fl (2013 ) New Work Miami 2013, Perez Art Museum Miami, Miami, Fl (2013), co-curated by PAMM associate curators René Morales and Diana Nawi. Practices Remain, Regina Rex, Queens, NY (2012), DCG 2012, David Castillo Gallery, Miami, Fl , (2012); Practices Remain, Norwegian Wood Building, Miami Fl (2012); Split, General Practice, Miami, Fl, curated by Carlos Rigau (2011); Re-Framing the Feminine, Girls Club Web Project, Fort Lauderdale, Fl (2010); and Sky/water…Reproduction, de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space, Miami, Fl, curated by Carlos Rigau (2009 ).
Yanet Martinez
The artist is a visual creator born in 1983 in Villa Clara, Cuba. She began her formal art education at the Oscar Fernández Morera Academy of Fine Arts in Trinidad, Cuba, where she studied from 1998 to 2002 with a specialization in Painting. She later pursued Scenic Design from 2003 to 2008 at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Continuing her academic development, she completed a Master’s Degree in Art Studies from 2018 to 2020 at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Throughout her artistic career, she has held four solo exhibitions and participated in more than forty group shows, both in Cuba and internationally. Among her notable exhibitions are A Drop of Poison in Sydney and at the Berne Davis Art Center in Fort Myers (2025), Climbing While Pretending to Reach the Stars at Galería Nina Menocal in Mexico City (2024), Carmen Sends Me at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Americas (MOCA) in Miami (2023), Continuous Stops in Mérida, Mexico (2022), and Mujeres in da House at Casa del Tiempo in Mexico City (2022). She also participated in Docum3nta M, El Charco y la Curva, and Sonnet of Fidelity, all held in Mexico City between 2021 and 2022. Her earlier exhibitions include Imán IV (2019), during the National Abstract Art Encounter at Collage Habana Gallery, and Gestural Suggestions (2018) in Santiago de Cuba.
Gavin Perry
Gavin Perry, born in Philadelphia, PA is a painter, sculptor and musician. He studied printmaking and painting at the Tyler School of Art, graduating with a BFA in both. He currently lives and works in Miami, Florida.
Perry has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Perez Art Museum Miami and at the CAC Malaga, Spain. In 2012, Perry was a finalist for the first annual Pratt Prix, an award for contemporary painting, in Paris, France. He is a recipient of the prestigious 2009 South Florida Cultural Consortium fellowship award. Perry has had his work critically reviewed in various publications including Flash Art; Art in America; Art Papers; Art Nexus; the Miami Herald; and the New Times Miami.
Recent exhibitions include Concrete Jungle (curated by William Cordova) at Bridge Red Studios Miami 2019 and Jawbreaker, a 2018 exhibition at Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, TX.
Rocio Rodriguez
Rocío Rodríguez, born in Chihuahua, Mexico, is a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her practice blurs the boundaries between painting and sculpture, challenging conventional forms and expectations. By removing the stretcher and foregrounding the materiality of canvas, Rodríguez transforms what is traditionally a support into a sculptural element in its own right.
Her work embraces impermanence; each installation is unique and cannot be replicated in the same way. As an immigrant, Rodríguez understands adaptation intimately; her art reflects this fluidity, responding to context with resilience and openness.
Donna Ruff
Donna Ruff was born in Chicago, Illinois, and lives and works in Miami, Florida. Ruff received an MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2000. She works in mixed media on handmade paper and on found printed matter, such as newspapers, books, and historical documents. Ruff questions how written and photographic narratives are constructed by removing and transforming printed text and image to recontextualize the portrayal of world events. Selected solo exhibitions include ”Terra Incognita,” (2023) Deering Estate, Miami, Florida; “Based on a True Story,” (2023) Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, California; “The Subject Speaks its Own Importance” (2020) Rick Wester Fine Art, New York, New York. Selected group shows include “Fit to Print” (2021) Print Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; “Spheres of Meaning” (2019) Patricia and Philip Frost Art Museum, Miami, Florida; and “The Times” (2016) FLAG Foundation, New York, New York. Ruff is the recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, a Miami Individual Artist Grant, and the Ellies Creator Award. Public collections that include her work are the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Morgan Library, Smith College, New Mexico Museum of Art, The Philip and Patricia Frost Art Museum, the Library of Congress, and the Deering Estate. Her work is held in numerous private collections globally.
Onajide Shabaka
Onajide Shabaka was born in Cincinnati, Ohio and currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. Shabaka was awarded an MFA from Vermont College of the Fine Arts. Through a well-developed research-based walking practice working both outdoors and in the studio, Shabaka explores the environment and its biology allowing site-specific histories and the human-influenced environment to reveal hidden or untold narratives.
Solo exhibitions: “La Florida: Improbable Stories,” Tempus Projects, Tampa, Florida; “Her touch smooths rough waters,” MOCA Plaza, N. Miami, Florida, “Alosúgbe: a journey across time,” Emerson Dorsch, Miami, Florida. Group exhibitions: “Florida Prize,” Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, Florida;“Post Hip Hop,” Sikkema Jenkins Gallery, New York, New York; “Fossilized and Realized: Tar Pits Video Festival,” La Brea Tar Pits & Museum, Los Angeles, California. Artist Residences: Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, Florida; Project Row Houses, Houston, Texas; Everglades National Park, Florida. Art Collections: FIU Frost Museum of Art, Miami, Florida; Miami- Dade Art in Public Places; Arturo Mosquera Family Collection. Grant awards: M.I.A. Grant, Miami Dade Cultural Affairs, Miami, Florida; DVCAI Residency Grant, Miami, FL; Florida; Wavemaker Grant Locust Projects, Miami, Florida; Oolite Arts Ellies Grant, Miami, Florida.
Claudia Vieira
Claudia Vieira is a multimedia artist based in New York City, expanding her practice in Miami, FL. Born in Porto Alegre, Brazil, she earned a BA in Social Communications before shifting to Fine Arts, obtaining a BFA in Studio Art, a certificate from the New York Studio School, and an MFA in Sculpture and New Forms. For over two decades, Vieira has explored the transformative potential of continuous lines through large-scale drawings, site-specific installations, and live performances. Her work, rooted in the performative act of drawing, meditates on movement, time, and presence. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Queens Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, and the Kyoto Arts Center in Japan. A solo exhibition at Praxis, New York, featured her large-scale drawings and immersive live performances. Vieira has been recognized with numerous awards, including the XIV Salão da Bahia from the Museum of Modern Art in Brazil, the Projectiles Contemporary Art Prize from FUNARTE/the Brazilian Ministry of Culture, and the Urban Artists Initiative from NYFA/New York Foundation for the Arts.