Stratified Gestures—
Dimensions Variable (DV) is pleased to present Stratified Gestures, a group exhibition throughout all the galleries. Participating artists include Karla Kantorovich, Nicole Burko, Yanira Collado, Regina Jestrow, Jamilah Sabur, Bruno Castro Santos, Jenene Nagy, and Gerbi Tsesarskaia. The exhibition opens on November 16, 2024, 6—9 pm.
Stratification is the horizontal layering of materials like rocks, soil, or ice, occurring through the settling of particles, glacial melting, or the slumping of material. Similar to the geologic process, urban stratification involves the evolution of cities, where new buildings are constructed over existing ones, as seen in Rome, where ancient ruins lie beneath modern developments. This concept is also present in economic stratification where society is divided into social classes based on economic status, affecting social relationships and power dynamics.
After visiting several geological landmarks along the American West, the evidence of time through millions of years of layers is quite unfathomable. There is a darkness that comes with the knowledge that all that exists will crumble into one of these layers with time. This stratification of everything was the thinking that led to the impetus for Stratified Gestures. Not just the gestures of mark-making and layer-building in art that mirror nature, but those actions we impose on the layers of strata in nature, the built environment, and the human systems we develop.
Stratified Gestures follows a thread of thinking connecting the work in the exhibition not just to the process of making strata by building layers on a surface, but also the themes of natural, urban, and systematic stratification putting all the work in a visual and conceptual conversation. Through documentation photos, painting, geometry, collage, ceramic, and other mix media, the landscape experienced throughout the American West, once part of an ancient sea, is recreated within the gallery walls, reminding us how time will lead us to the same end every time—humbling us with every layer.
Nicole Burko
Nicole Burko was born in Toronto, Canada, and lives and works in Miami, Florida. Burko received an MFA from Columbia University (2019) in Visual Art and a BFA from New World School of the Arts (2021) in Painting. Nicole Burko’s landscape paintings explore the limits of the natural world, the human body, and psychological depth. Rooted in her own experiences of freediving on a single breath into underwater caverns, her immersive oil paintings create a dialogue between desire, dread, and mortality. Here, there is no safe distance— no comfortable vantage point from which to observe the sublime. Instead, Burko draws viewers to the edge of the unknown, inviting them to contemplate feelings of discomfort and vulnerability as the surface recedes.
Selected exhibitions include Draw at the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami (2023); Super Natural at Baker-Hall (formerly Club Gallery), Miami (2023); Biscayne Bay at the Kampong, Miami (2023); The Wanderers at Tile Blush Gallery, Miami (2019); and Columbia University’s MFA Thesis Exhibition at Wallach Gallery, New York (2019). Burko is a studio resident at Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL.
Bruno Castro Santos
Bruno Castro Santos, born in Lisbon in 1972, lived in the United States from 1990 to 1998, where he completed a Bachelor of Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles. He furthered his academic studies by earning a Master’s Degree in Advanced Architecture Design from Columbia University in New York. After a decade of practicing architecture and teaching in Portugal, he gradually shifted his focus to fine arts, culminating in the completion of an Advanced Fine Arts Degree from Ar.Co in 2012.
Since 2012, Bruno has exhibited his work both collectively and individually in major galleries, institutional, and cultural venues in Portugal and abroad. Notable exhibitions include those at the Lisbon Natural History Museum (2012), the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation in Évora (2012), the Viscondes de Balsemão Municipal Gallery in Porto (2015), the Contemporary Art Center in Málaga, Spain (2015), as well as the Tête Project Space in Berlin, Bekanze Project Space in Miami, and the Phillip & Patricia Frost Art Museum (2023). His work is represented in several institutional collections, including The Benetton Foundation, The Malaga Center for Contemporary Art, the Portuguese Republic Museum, the Rudin Foundation, David Foster Collection, Figueiredo Ribeiro Collection, Esteves de Oliveira Collection, and the Phillip & Patricia Frost Art Museum Collection (USA). Bruno currently resides and works in Lisbon and Miami.
Yanira Collado
In her practice, Collado displays an awareness of language conveyed through a keen analysis of identity, the latter referenced in her use of reclaimed literary texts and textiles, simultaneously opposed by various construction materials: wood, concrete, masonry brick, iron, and drywall. Materials with inherent geographic histories, processes, and economies imply varying degrees of personalized and public memory.
As Yanira describes. “My work attempts to assemble a visual language that reconciles the process in which the history of this information is recorded, stored, and retrieved. I am interested in the labor inherent in these materials and the shapes taken during their transitions, which conjure up invocations, ritual, a transcendence of presence, and in many ways, fragments becoming whole.”
Yanira Collado is an artist who lives and works in Miami, FL. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Collado’s artist residencies include Artpace, San Antonio, TX (2022); Oolite Arts, South Beach, FL (2019-2022); and Joan Mitchell Center, New Orleans (2020, 2022). Collado’s awards and fellowships include a Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grant (2022), a South Florida Consortium Fellowship (2021), Ellies Creator Grant (2019), and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2018). Her group shows include El Triennal – Estamos Bien, Museo del Barrio, NY (2021); Penumbras: sacred geometries, Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2019); Monarchs, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, FL (2018); Connectivity, Deconstruction, The Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum, Florida International Museum, Miami, FL (2018); and Transmissions, The Franklin, Chicago, IL (2015). Collado’s solo exhibitions include Alchemic Chants/ Reliquias Fragmentadas, Emerson Dorsch Gallery, Miami Fl (2021); If they knew these things/ Reliquias ocultadas, Dimensions Variable, Miami, FL, (2020); Penumbras at Under the Bridge Art Space, Miami, FL (2019); Original Condition, a one person exhibit at MDC Museum of Art + Design in collaboration with Bridge Red Studios, Miami, FL (2016); and Untitled at Project Row Houses, Houston, TX (2015).
Regina Jestrow
Regina Durante Jestrow (1978) is a textile artist from Queens, New York, who currently calls Miami, Florida, her home. Her artistic journey began in her formative years, as she learned sewing and crocheting from her mother, igniting a passion that would become a lifelong force. This connection to Fiber arts is the bedrock of her artistic practice. Relocating to Miami allowed Jestrow to delve into quilting. This became a source of solace and creative expression.
In her Miami home studio, the sewing machine, a symbol of comfort and creativity, continued taking center stage. Regina Jestrow’s artistic exploration is deeply rooted in women’s rights and history, combined with a deep appreciation for the patterns and stories drawn from the enduring traditions of American quilt-making. Her art quilts feature a fusion of new and second-hand fabrics, including hand-dyed and manipulated textiles, through various techniques, including natural and reactive dyes, inks, staining, and controlled burning. The resulting pieces reflect the colors and patterns that evoke Miami’s dynamic cultural diversity and landscape. Her affinity for textile arts pushes the boundaries of the medium, resulting in a diverse body of work that includes painting, drawings, sculptural installations, textile wall hangings, and functional objects.
Selected solo projects include ”Vulnerability & Resilience” at The Studios of Key West Sanger Gallery, Key West, FL (2024), “Free-Form Connections” at Dunedin Fine Art Center, Dunedin, FL (2023), “Pieces of the Landscape” at Mt. Sinai Skolnick Tower Surgical Center, organized by Oolite Arts, Miami Beach, FL (2023), and “Americana Quilts: Reinterpretation of Tradition” at Laundromat Art Space, Miami, FL (2022). Selected group exhibitions include “Hand Over Hand: Textiles Today” at Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL (2023), “A-Piece-A-Part” at ArtSpace NC, Raleigh, NC (2023), and “In the Company of Women: At Large” at LnS Gallery, Miami, FL (2022). Jestrow has been awarded artist residencies at The Jentel Foundation (2022), National Park Service Artist in Residence in the Everglades (AIRIE) (2014), and The Studios of Key West (2012). Awarded grants include the South Florida Cultural Consortium (SFCC, 2023), Miami Individual Artists (MIA) Grant (2023) and Stipend (2022), The Ellies, Miami’s visual arts awards, presented by Oolite Arts (2021), and the Artist Access Grant, Miami-Dade County and FUNdarte (2021, 2022, 2023).
Karla Kantorovich
Karla Kantorovich is a mixed media artist from Mexico City-based in Miami, FL. She works with paintings, textiles, hand-made paper, and assemblages, leaning into the importance of texture and dimensionality to explore renewal. Karla’s art is a testament to the transformative power of nature. She brings the outside world into our realms through her work, allowing us to explore the profound togetherness that binds us to the natural environment. By deconstructing and reassembling sustainably sourced materials, Karla creates a visual language that speaks to the ephemeral nature of life, the beauty of decay, and the intricate layers that compose our collective story.
Kantorovich is a Green Space Awardee. She received the Ellies Creator Award 2021 from Oolite Arts, leading to her immersive art installation “AMATE” at Piero Atchugarry Gallery in 2022. She also received an Honorable Mention at the XIX Bienal Rufino Tamayo in Mexico City, exhibiting at the Museo Rufino Tamayo and the MACO Museum of Arte Contemporaneo in Oaxaca, Mexico. She has showcased her work nationally and internationally, including at the XIX International Biennial of Contemporary Art in Florence, the MFA Exhibition at the Frost Art Museum, the Mexican Consulate in Miami, and the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach.
Kantorovich holds a Master of Fine Arts from Florida International University. Actively engaging with the community is of utmost importance to her; she works as a teaching artist aiming to inspire, connect, and provoke meaningful dialogues, embodying the potential for regeneration and growth.
Jenene Nagy
Jenene Nagy is a visual artist living and working in the Inland Empire region of Southern California. She has exhibited nationally and internationally at venues in Los Angeles, Portland, New York, and Berlin. Her work has been recognized with grants and awards from the Foundation of Contemporary Art, the Oregon Arts Commission, Colorado Creative Industries, the Ford Family Foundation and in 2016 a nomination for the United States Artist Fellowship. Nagy’s work is held in several permanent collections including the Portland Art Museum, Schnitzer Family Foundation, University of Wyoming Art Museum, and Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts.
Along with a rigorous studio practice, Nagy is one half of the curatorial team TILT Export:, an independent art initiative with no fixed location, working in partnership with a variety of venues to produce exhibitions. From 2011-12 she was the first Curator-in-Residence for Disjecta Contemporary Art Center in Portland, Oregon.
Jamilah Sabur
Jamilah Sabur (b.1987, Saint Andrew Parish, Jamaica) draws on geology, memory and language as points of reference. Her work considers what it means to see on a planetary scale, re-calibrating our understanding of place, time and history. Her recent solo and group exhibitions include: La montagne fredonne sous l’océan/The mountain sings underwater, Momenta Biennale, Fondation PHI, Montréal, Québec (2021), Observations: Selected Works by Jamilah Sabur, University of Maryland Art Gallery (2020); The Willfulness of Objects, The Bass Museum of Art, Miami (2020); Mending the Sky, New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans (2020); Here Be Dragons, Copperfield, London (2020). Sabur earned a BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore (2009), and an MFA from University of California, San Diego (2014). Her work is included in the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, Pérez Art Museum Miami, The Bass Museum of Art, and TD Bank Group Art Collection
Metaphysics, geology, and memory are recurrent themes in the work of Jamilah Sabur. In her practice, the artist employs a distinct poetics, reframing territory and language. She explores the temporary nature of existence and our fleeting presence in it, a thread that connects us all. A new planetary literacy emerges in her work, where alternate geographies become possible as submerged histories are revealed.
Gerbi Tsesarskaia
Gerbi Tsesarskaia was born in Zsitomir, Ukraine. After graduating from the Marine Technical University of St. Petersburg in 1980 with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, for four years she worked as an electrical engineer at “Elektrosila” Research Institute. In 1985 Gerbi moved to Budapest, Hungary, got married, and made a sharp turn in her career. After learning Hungarian she worked first as an art books seller, then later as a translator-interpreter, as well as a marionette puppet maker at the Budapest National Puppet Theater. In 1990 Gerbi moved to Florida where her husband pursued his doctoral studies at the University of Miami. In 1994 she joined the Ceramic League of Miami. At the CLM she first took, later taught courses in wheel throwing. In 2002 she was accepted to the graduate program at Florida Atlantic University and graduated with an M.F.A. in ceramics in 2005. After a brief period of teaching at FAU she moved her studio to the Bakehouse Art Complex, where she currently works as an independent artist. From August 2009 she has been teaching ceramics courses at the University of Miami and at Miami International University of Art and Design as an adjunct instructor. Gerbi has participated in numerous national and international exhibitions including two world competitions in Korea and Rumania. Her work has been included in many private and two museum collections in Korea and Romania.
