Lennox Miami Beach, 1900 Collins Ave
Paradise is a large-scale sculpture in which a live tropical ecosystem is situated inside of a saltwater-filled prism. The water refracts and distorts our perception, as if the landscape within were a vision in a crystal ball. The sculpture points to the growing precarity of the relationship between ocean and land. “Paradise” references the historical trope of the disappearance of the ideal landscape, and with it, the mysterious technology that is the peaceful habitation of humans with their ecosystem. Drawing from biblical descriptions of Eden, Plato’s dialogue about Atlantis, and the complicated admiration of contemporary colonial societies for the indigenous cultures they displace, Paradise is a glittering mirage that holds the key for those with eyes to see. While the aesthetic points to the high engineering of NASA, the form of the sculpture is a reference to the ding of bronze-age China, a shamanic ceremonial vessel that brought the elements earth, air, water, and fire into harmonious relationship, so that the ancestors could be served and the future could be secured.
Brookhart Jonquil uses concrete materiality to engage aspects of the world that lie beyond our ability to directly perceive. Often reflecting or doubling, his compositions of glass, mirror, water, and fluorescent lights create a perceptual world beyond the physical. By emphasizing the movement of light, gravity, and lines of force in dynamic equilibrium, his sculptures make tangible the immaterial interactions that are the foundation of our physical experience. Through wide ranging research that includes physics, ecology, martial arts and mathematics, his work reveals the underlying principles that create harmony and stability in dynamic systems, whether that be a society, an ecosystem, or an individual mind. Scientific modes of thinking take on poetic life as they turn toward the impossible task of Utopian perfection, and the questions of lived experience, agency, and interdependency. Brookhart Jonquil was born in Santa Cruz, California in 1984. He lives and works in Miami. Jonquil’s projects have been commissioned by the Bass Museum of Art, the De la Cruz Collection, MoCA Tucson, Vizcaya Museum, and the Cornell Art Museum.
