Freshly relocated from Wynwood to Little Haiti, the Emerson Dorsch Gallery wows this month with eye-catching new paintings by Elisabeth Condon.
“It’s weird to be shocked by a flower or a bird, but it works!” laughs gallerist Tyler Emerson-Dorsch. The shock she’s referring to is bound to be a common reaction to the latest series of paintings by Elisabeth Condon, which will be shown in a new exhibition called “Unnatural Life” at the gallery Emerson Dorsch. Over the past decade, Condon has garnered a devoted following for her sprawling abstract canvases, but suddenly (and surprisingly) figuration has emerged in her work—a small bird or a patch of beguiling flora amidst her usual otherworldliness.
“She is completely committed to the art of painting, to the very materiality of paint itself,” says Emerson-Dorsch. “There’s something a little familiar there to an art historian, something I can immediately grab on to. Yet she’s always pushing her own boundaries to go into new territory.” Condon’s new work is both familiar and wonderfully different— a tag that could apply just as well to Emerson-Dorsch’s gallery, which she and her partner (and husband), Brook Dorsch, recently moved from Wynwood to Little Haiti.
They remain devoted to a roster of primarily Miami-based artists—including sculptors Robert Thiele and Frances Trombly and painters Jenny Brillhart and Mette Tommerup—but their neighbors are definitely new: an artfocused bookstore launched by Exile Books’ Amanda Keeley and a letterpress print shop run by artist Tom Virgin, as well as Panther Coffee and Clive’s Cafe. Says Emerson-Dorsch, “It’s going to be a little hub.”
