Essay

Creation and Destruction in Miami’s Urban Landscape—Alexandra Martinez

March 13, 2025

The historic Deauville Hotel came down in an instant. Seven decades of history turned to dust almost as quickly as the iconic Miami Modern building was allowed to fall into disrepair after a 2017 electrical fire. Despite protests from the Miami Design Preservation League and concerned North Beach residents, it was too late–the building was imploded on 2022. Local artist and filmmaker, Barron Sherer, was one of the few physically present for the unceremonious demolition. He claimed to be a reporter, setting up his 16 mm film camera to document the building’s last breath, and to his surprise, did not receive any pushback from nearby officials. Sherer centered the footage at his recent solo show at Bridge Red Studios, which he presented using two projectors on a slow motion loop, one undoing and repeating the other. The result was a centerpiece that perfectly tied in the rest of the exhibition as a Lynchian nightmare–a hellish purgatory for a city doomed to repeat its mistakes, and the viewer, much like the city’s citizens, forcibly along for the ride.

Barron Sherer, Doh! Ville , , Installation, Two Channel mm Projection. Color, Silent with Sound Accompaniment,

Barron Sherer, Doh! Ville , 2024, Installation, Two-Channel 16mm Projection. Color, Silent with Sound Accompaniment, 2:00. Installation view at Bridge Red Studios.

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Underneath Sherer’s psychedelic and ethereal New Works, Rosemarie Chiarlone’s LANDscape stripped back to the natural building blocks (literally) of a city’s urban creation. Using cinder blocks she originally found near her home, Chiarlone arranged her own urban environment– speaking to the fragility of both natural and constructed environments. Chiarlone initially inherited about 10 cinder blocks from a contractor that was working in her neighborhood.

“I loved them so much,” Chiarlone recounts. “Then I ordered more.”

But, they wouldn’t deliver the blocks to her yard, owing to the street. So her husband and Chiarlone lugged each back to her front yard every day for two weeks. She played with them, like a young child setting up legos to create a new world.

Rosemarie Chiarlone, LANDscape, 2024, Installation view at Under the Bridge.

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“I had never worked with them before, so I needed to go through the process,” said Chiarlone. “Eventually I kept buying more and more and more, loading up my car.”

Chiarlone eventually fell in love with the blocks–the way their shapes informed their efficiency, purpose, how dirt would seep into the crevice of dried cement, and how each one, though mass-produced, still maintained its own unique character.

Once set up at Under the Bridge, viewers became birdseye observers of Chiarlone’s created world. Here, it’s easy to be reminded of the patterns and harms repeated in our own urban core–the erasure of natural land for housing developments, the razing of soil for profit.

Miami, a city constantly reshaped by waves of migration and gentrification, serves as a poignant backdrop for her work. The demolition of Miami’s historic neighborhoods and the displacement of communities raise questions of a city’s priorities: Is it the goal to showcase the history that was once there, the actual land that everything sat on or sits on, or is it the new e-commerce wealth?

Cinderblocks are traditionally reinforced using rebar, embedded within concrete to provide strength. But Chiarlone chose to arrange the rebar horizontally through the cinderblock’s holes, looping the concrete blocks like gems on a string. One pull and it all falls apart.

“The blocks are not attached, everything’s in motion, in flux,” she states. This impermanence invites viewers to consider whether old and new communities can coexist harmoniously. “Can the two existences, the new and the old, coexist as a community? Do they want to coexist? Is there a desire for it, or is it impractical? Is it affordable?”

On the outskirts and perimeter of the sculpture, Chiarlone incorporates natural elements–seashells she’s found during her routine walks along the Miami Beach shoreline, themselves which were once homes to mollusks. Chiarlone challenges the viewer to consider what is at stake in the ongoing transformation of urban spaces. As cities grow, buildings are torn down, and natural areas become overrun by concrete, the memories tied to these spaces begin to fade, leaving only traces of their former selves.

Chiarlone’s practice calls attention to the human imprint on nature, but also to the soft, enduring presence of what was once there. Her landscapes suggest that memory, like the land itself, is never completely wiped away—it lingers in the quiet spaces between construction and destruction, waiting to be rediscovered, even in moments of seeming loss.

Rosemarie Chiarlone, LANDscape, 2024, Installation view at Under the Bridge.

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Barron Sherer, OMW! , 2020, Single-Channel Digital Video, Color, Sound, 2:07

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Upstairs from LANDscape, Sherer’s New Works provides a parallel exploration of the relationship between memory, media, and the urban environment. Sherer’s work, including his commissioned piece OMW! (2024) for Dimensions Variable, delves into a paracinematic exploration of everyday life through digital media. Through his ongoing engagement with film and digital media, Sherer aggregates seemingly trivial moments from daily life—selfies, family photos, cat pictures, and mundane glimpses into pop culture—into something far more poignant. These ephemera, captured through the lens of his cellphone and analog film techniques, form a tangible digital memory. The work is a direct response to the transient and often disposable nature of social media content, using analog techniques to ground it in a more tactile, meaningful format.

As Sherer explains, the work “aggregates documentation of film handling in the studio, everyday life, family, cat pictures, and selfies commixing with degeneration of pop culture iconography,” thus placing everyday moments within the broader narrative of social and cultural memory.

Commissioned by Dimensions Variable, OMW! highlights Sherer’s fascination with how personal narratives—whether through the lens of film or the ever-shifting world of digital imagery—are embedded in the spaces and moments we occupy.

In a conversation about his process, Sherer discusses how his film-based work captures fleeting moments of urban existence, merging old and new technologies to create an emotional and sensory experience. Sherer’s work thrives on psychogeography, a concept that explores how emotions and memories are mapped onto physical spaces. Throughout the pandemic, he wandered the city, taking notes on his phone, marking places and times of day where light and environment aligned perfectly. His chosen medium, 16mm film, added a tactile and unpredictable quality to his documentation.

Barron Sherer, Roll-Out, 2024, Installation, 16mm Transferred to Digital Video, Two-Channel CRT Monitor Display. Color, Silent, 02:24

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“I had to wait for the right sunlight,” Sherer explains. “When time changed, I had to rethink when to go back. I was always taking notes.”

Much of New Works functions as an archive of unfinished ideas and visual sketches. Pieces that took years to conceptualize finally found their form, such as the two monitors placed on the floor—an installation he had envisioned nearly four years ago depicting unusually quiet scenes in a city known for its dense population.

To maintain the ethereal stillness of his pandemic-era footage, Sherer developed techniques to shoot in emptied urban spaces even as life returned to normal. He waited for federal holidays when the streets were deserted and utilized long zoom lenses to capture intimate moments from a distance.

Many of his images are imbued with a sense of loss and transition. One piece documents the demolition of the historic Deauville Hotel. Sherer, granted a privileged vantage point, captured its collapse in a single take, choosing a composition that balanced the blues of the morning sky with the orange glow of dawn.

“It’s one of the few pieces where I really had a concept before I executed it,” he notes. “Everything else just sort of emerged from the process.”

The exhibition features hand-processed film reels, chemical experiments using household ingredients like vitamin C and soda ash, and text pieces drawn from fragmented Google documents. In one film, Sherer repurposes the last five seconds of every roll he shot from 2021 to 2023, compiling them into a cohesive visual diary.

Barron Sherer, Daylight Spool No. 8 (Drifting) , 2024,16mm projection recorded to Digital Video File. Color, Silent with Sound Accompaniment, 25:11

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Sherer’s work highlights the performative elements of analogue film–the act of projection, the manipulation that occurs and the new life that can exist within the work as a result. One project involved manipulating projections in real-time using photographic prisms, creating kaleidoscopic compositions that were later transferred onto film. The resulting piece is a mesmerizing blend of analog and digital techniques, preserving the improvisational nature of its creation.

For Sherer, the spaces we inhabit, and the elements that surround us are alive. In one experiment, he collaborated with a technician to generate a soundtrack by scanning his film with an optical reader—translating light into sound waves. The result is a whirring, organic hum, as though the trees and buildings themselves are speaking.

As Miami continues to erase its past in favor of new development, Sherer’s work, though reflecting Miami’s past, acts as a harbinger of what could come as a result of overdevelopment and climate crisis. When the waters rise and the cinderblocks topple, what will the Gumbo Limbo trees and the Mangroves have to say for how they were treated? Perhaps, we’re not worthy enough yet to know.

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This project is supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Photography by Francesco Casale.

Alexandra Martinez

Alexandra Martinez is a Cuban-American writer and filmmaker whose reporting spans such topics as immigration, the affordable housing crisis, and art-washing. Her reporting has been featured in Burnaway Magazine, Hyperallergic, and Art News, among others. Alexandra’s directorial debut on the intersection of healthcare and homelessness, “El Soldador” premiered at the Miami International Film Festival in 2024. She received a B.A in Film Studies from Columbia University and lives in Miami with her young daughter, where she enjoys tending to their native pine rockland garden.