Locust Projects Project Room
July 12 – August 16, 2014

For whatever reason, Miami’s art world (and its world world) creaks to a halt in the summer. People flee, or they stay at home and juice. Which makes Meta Gallery all the more frustrating. The curatorial project by Andrew Horton has been clogging my inbox for weeks. Housed in the Locust Projects project room, Horton’s gallery is a rapid-fire assault on our sluggish social calendar. For all of those who want more programing, he’s brought more programing. For those who didn’t, you’re getting the emails anyway.

The rough calendar, which is available here, includes several events a week. While some are open for several days, others are only on for a few hours. If you miss them, they’re over. The month kicked off with Kevin Arrow’s Somewhere Else, in which the artist displayed 400 slides of found travel photography. If you couldn’t make it, you could go to Instagram, follow Kevin (@arrowfuentes) and then peruse his #somewhereelse tag. I bring this up not because I want to give Kevin any more followers (instead follow @miamirail, or help bolster @hunterbraithwaite’s ratio) but because it summarizes how much of the exhibition is experienced: online. In addition to throwing up some drywall and printing a vinyl banner, and displaying his mailing-list clipboard on a table near the gallery’s entrance, Horton understands that you can’t have a gallery without a social media presence and some support from Mailchimp.

The only continuous project is Jacqueline Falcone’s “Streaming.” A monitor in Horton’s office (at about three square feet, Horton’s administrative nook is both a parody of an actual gallerist’s office and not much bigger.) displays occasionally updated text from Falcone. The conditions of the space provide an anything goes mentality, so if someone wants to stage a sing-a-long to The Little Mermaid, like writer and curator Jarrett Earnest did on July 16^th, it would fit perfectly into the programing. Young artists like the recent D.A.S.H. graduate Paloma Izquierdo can use the space to work through ideas, and well-known locals like Domingo Castillo and Felice Grodin, who presented a science-fiction film festival on August 2^nd, can do the same.

While it’s an open opportunity to Miami’s artists, Meta Gallery seems to depend a little too heavily on the whims of a very fickle gallery-going crowd. There’s nothing sadder than a poorly attended opening, and with three a week, Horton is really pushing his luck. The Sci Fi screening was one of the two events that I attended. When I showed up, Horton was alone in the space, but then someone else showed up, and then another, and, as I was leaving, someone else.

Horton writes that Meta Gallery “pries into what a gallery is and highlights its structures, flaws, and flexibility. It hovers between critique and endurance test, asking all parties to reexamine how they relate to their role within the gallery system.” Endurance is the opportune word there. While I applaud his use of the space, his come-one-come-all ideas of curating, and his ability to show up, day in day out, my clogged email box touches on a more insidious side of the project. It mocks and embodies the sheer volume of programing, often lackluster, that nearly inundates the community like so many summertime thunderstorms. Maybe people need time to juice and chill at home.