Mindy Solomon is pleased to present Lo and Behold the inaugural solo exhibition of St. Louis based multidisciplinary artist Damon Davis. Drawing inspiration from deeply personal themes, Davis explores the notion of art as introspection and catharsis.
“This body of work presents three primary themes: family, place, and transition. Over the past decade, my life has been marked by significant losses – the deaths of loved ones, the destruction of my childhood home, breakups, and estrangement from friends and family. Through this experience, I’ve learned that change is inevitable, and grief and death are inherent parts of life’s journey. This exhibition is a partial attempt to understand, confront, and ultimately accept that everything has a beginning and an end, often without clear answers.
Art-making has been a therapeutic practice for me, and this work is the culmination of living and processing my experiences. Additionally, much of my art explores the collective identities and experiences that shape my life – those related to race, gender, class, and more. This show is a deeply personal exploration of my individual identity as a man approaching middle age, grappling with mortality and grief. The diverse range of mediums used in this exhibition – etchings, paintings, assemblage sculpture, and video art – come together to create a rich tapestry that expresses the full spectrum of emotions I’ve encountered over the past few years. My work remains focused on themes of identity, power, and myth, which are woven throughout this show. Myth-building is a dominant element in this body of work, as I’ve created small myths and characters to serve as metaphors for myself and my experiences.”
Davis has utilized many forms of expression to tell his story, such as his ground breaking “All Hands on Deck” activation in Ferguson, Missouri, after the shooting of Michael Brown. Davis worked with store owners, and wheatpasted the plywood-covered windows of participating stores with a series of posters developed from his photographs of hands in the “hands up” gesture. The same gesture Michael Brown was making when shot. In 2016, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego showed the photographs from the project in an exhibit called “Damon Davis: All Hands on Deck.” An original window board from the Ferguson installation is part of the permanent collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Davis has been a Hip Hop artist, record label founder, composer, public speaker, and film director. With all his accomplishments, he remains a quiet, humble, thoughtful creative, using his many talents to bring awareness to social injustice and the power of vulnerability. We are thrilled to be able to showcase this multifaceted individual.
Mindy Solomon is pleased to exhibit Argentinian artist Juan Tessi in his solo exhibition: Todo Ardía (Everything was burning). Juan Tessi’s work is an ongoing exploration of the language of painting as it moves from one pictorial support, format, and approach to another. The body is ever present, intersecting reflections on queer desire and the relation between painting and biological processes. Tessi has also explored the tension between craft and technology, approaching painting both as surface and as object, the results being the creation of very personal poetics always grounded in pictorial processes.
For his exhibition, Tessi is showcasing five paintings that highlight his signature figurative images, each portrayed in a variety of poses and gestures. These works evoke a narrative that intertwines elements of flirtation and otherworldliness, creating a captivating interplay between provocation and delight. Each piece is fresh and unique, with the raw canvas serving as a dynamic backdrop against the carefully chosen lines and colors that Tessi masterfully selects.
In the early 2010’s Tessi created a series of enigmatic abstract paintings by listening to an 80’s diva make-up tutorial and following its instructions. In a later series he peeled off the “skins” of paintings, then attached them to stretched raw linens, holding these “skins” against the fabric through the static electricity generated by plexiglass shapes resting on its surface. For his 2016 solo exhibition at MALBA, Tessi presented a two-stage exhibition. During its first weeks, the paintings were placed in unexpected spots within the building: those where surveillance cameras were pointed to, such as the parking lot, the storage facilities, even an outdoor terrace where the works were exposed to rain, sun and wind. The proper exhibition room held a series of monitors showing what the surveillance cameras were recording. The paintings moved into the exhibition hall only during the last weeks of the show. A series developed between 2016 and 2019 treated the canvases as bodies for ceramic heads, which concentrated all of the painterly gestures outside the canvas itself. In recent years Tessi’s exploration has concentrated on the interactions between primed and raw linen areas, line and colored surfaces, abstraction and figuration as well as playful references to the history of western, non-western, contemporary and archaic iconographies.
In an essay about Juan Tessi’s work, curator Javier Villa places his work in a lineage that belongs neither to the “monotheistic” tradition of European Modernism, nor to the impulse towards “anthropophagy” of other Latin American avant-garde movements, meaning art that devoured inheritances and influences from colonizers. Rather than banning the past or engulfing its perceived enemies, Villa sees in Tessi’s pictorial strategies a similar approach to that of ancient Meso American cultures: to incorporate others’ deities into one’s own pantheon in order to become stronger. Tessi’s painting takes temporal and stylistic jumps, from one work to the next or even within each painting, with the self-assurance provided by the ethics of his inclusive pantheon”.
Situated within the context of Contemporary Art, Queer art, and Latin American Post Modernism, Tessi brings a refreshing vision from Argentina to the Miami landscape.
Mindy Solomon is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Basil Kincaid: Sacred Acts of Nothingness. This exhibition follows his blockbuster, sold out 2022 show All in One Feeling. In this current show Kincaid reflects on the inherent line within his work and his focus on the practice of drawing.
“Drawing has been with me since before memory — a silent, essential language I began speaking at the age of three. Yet only now, decades later, am I offering this practice to the public as its own form, on its own terms.
Sacred Acts of Nothingness is the first solo gallery exhibition of my drawings, but they’ve long been the unseen heartbeat of my studio. These works are not preparatory sketches nor ancillary gestures. They are full expressions — meditations rendered in oil pastel, colored pencil, and crayon — born from a desire to be radically present with myself and the materials.
When I draw, I surrender. I arrive at the page without a vision, only the intention to listen. In that space of listening, I enter a kind of dreaming — where spirit, memory, and subconscious intelligence emerge unbidden. It is not about control. It is about revelation.
Each mark is a trace of attention. Each color, a vibration of feeling. This process does not aim to depict the world but rather to touch it — from the inside. The work flows from breath, rhythm, and an internal pulse that connects to something older, quieter, and vast. It is ritual without performance. It is play without pretense.
To me, drawing is an act of devotion — not to an external muse, but to the intimate unfolding of self. It is a practice of being, of becoming, and of holding space for what cannot always be named. The so-called ‘nothingness’ of these drawings is sacred precisely because it holds everything: stillness, intuition, memory, and transformation.
In this exhibition, I invite the viewer into this meditative field. To linger. To listen. To see not only with the eyes, but with the body, the heart, the ancestral ear. The drawings do not demand comprehension. They offer presence.”
Kincaid will also present two stunning large-scale and medium-scale embroidery works that exemplify his mastery of multimedia art. These pieces beautifully illustrate the connection between his drawings and other bodies of work, showcasing a seamless integration of techniques and themes. We are excited to welcome him back to an appreciative Miami audience.
Mindy Solomon Gallery specializes in contemporary emerging and mid-career artists and art advisory services. The gallery represents artists working in painting, sculpture, photography, and video in both narrative and non-objective styles. The gallery program explores the intersection of art and design through an ongoing dialog between two and three-dimensional objects, while embracing diasporic voices. Utilizing the gallery space as a platform for inventive exhibitions, museum visitations, and public lectures, Solomon invites a sense of community and aesthetic enrichment.
Solomon founded the gallery in 2009 in St. Petersburg, Florida, where she established her reputation as a contemporary art dealer. She is a Board member of the Miami Art Dealers Association and is currently located in the Allapattah neighborhood in Miami.
