Top Must-See Pieces at the ICA Miami

Lucy Bull: The Garden of Forking Paths showcases the dynamic abstractions of Los Angeles-based painter Lucy Bull (b. 1990). Swirling studies of exuberant colors that half-form into faint shapes like clouds in one’s imagination, Bull’s paintings are atmospheric experiences. 

In Most Attractive, 2019, feathery shapes, tubular coils, and triangular edges spiral out from a dark center into a hazy, glinting, textured field of turquoise, pink, and white.

Image: Lucy Bull, Most Attractive, 2019, oil on linen, 50 x 60 1/8 x 1 ½ inches, (127 x 152.7 x 3.8 cm)

Reminiscent of a still life of scarves– if they were all made of smoke– 4:28, 2024 depicts three vaguely circular shapes– one bright red, the other two bright yellow– surrounded by roiling swathes of shifting colors, ranging from light blue to dark blue shot through with pink, green patterned with yellow highlights, and red mixing with yellow, pink, and orange.

Image: Lucy Bull, 4:28, 2024, oil on linen, 100 x 76 x 1 1/4 inches, (254 x 193 x 3.2 cm)

A survey of pioneering Japanese pop artist Keiichi Tanaami (1936–2024), Keiichi Tanaami: Memory Collage ranges from formative early drawings to collages, silk screen prints, and paintings. Deeply impacted by WWII as a child, Tanaami’s brightly colored, psychedelic, visually layered works explore how desire and violence impact society. 

In Ultra-Man, 2018, a red-suited cyborg with a silver helmet stands in a stylized ocean, the black sky behind him filled with spacecraft, while various robotic and animalistic figures cavort around him.

Image: Keiichi Tanaami, Ultra-man, 2018. Pigmented ink, acrylic silkscreen medium, crashed glass, glitter acrylic paint, acrylic paint on canvas, H146 x W200 x D4 cm (diptych) 

In Gikei-Zukan (G), 1980, an illustration of the human nervous system, its body color shifting from red to yellow, stands between two hands playing cat’s cradle, with a black and grey post-apocalyptic background crafted in fine lines. A vibrant, circular close-up of a fly on a green leaf against a pink sky appears at its feet.

Image: Keiichi Tanaami, Gikei-Zukan (G), 1980. Silkscreen print on paper, 60 x 44.5 cm. 

Influenced by anthropology, philosophy, mythology, and ecology, French artist Marguerite Humeau (b. 1986) has created an immersive installation of mysterious biomorphic sculptures with a video component. The exhibition’s title, “sk-ey,” is an ancient, proto-Indo-European term for shedding or splitting, alluding to mutation. 

Image:\*sk\*/ey-, works in progress in artist’s studio, Marguerite Humeau, 2024. 

The video sets the stage, describing a human-made eternal sun, a great migration, and the transformation of earthbound life forms into nomadic sky people. Using wood, cast rubber, handblown glass, and embroidered silk, Humeau has created an arid desert landscape populated by cloaked floating figures. 

Image:\*sk\*/ey-, works in progress in artist’s studio, Marguerite Humeau, 2024. 

Influential Afro-Brazilian artist Rubem Valentim (1922 –1991) merged European geometric abstraction, African and Polynesian artistic motifs, and Afro-Brazilian religious iconography, creating visually striking works of color and form. His pieces evolved from canvas paintings to bas-reliefs and free-standing objects incorporating woodwork. Crossroads: Rubem Valentim’s 1960s focuses on his work from the 1960s.  

Reminiscent of tapestries or ceremonial blankets, Pintura nº2. 1964 has a bright red background, bisected by a thick black stripe, with a central green square bordered in blue, highlighting red geometric figures. A row of smaller figures sits at the top of the square, with lines of alternating colored circles connecting the large square to two smaller squares filled with shapes at the bottom.

Image: Rubem Valentim, Pintura 2. 1964. Tempera no canvas.

Pintura 2. 1960 has a bold, deep green, wide central stripe, filled with a pattern of white half-circles and triangular shapes, bordered with black and white stripes.

Image: Rubem Valentim, Pintura no2. 1960. Oil on canvas.

Named for the Roman god of beginnings and endings, Ding Shilun: Janus showcases the artist’s haunting, ethereal visual fables. Influenced by folklore and art history, Shilun (b. 1988) mimics the water-based pigments of traditional Chinese Gongbi painting, using numerous thin layers of diluted oil paint. 

The Weight of The Oath depicts a bandaged young man with one wing, wearing orange pants wrapped with barbed wire, collapsing onto a bed. A nurse whose transparent torso reveals their bones and heart feels his neck for a pulse, while a sobbing young man with green hair, chain mail, and dragonfly wings half-sits behind them, arms outstretched to hold goblets of red wine, one of which is spilling.

Image: Ding Shilun, "The Weight of The Oath," (2022). Oil on canvas. 74 3/4 x 70 7/8 in. 

In Smile Reveal, 2024, a skeleton reclines on its side, superimposed over the ghostly figure of a person lying on their back with their knees up, one hand running through their dark hair. Behind them, a faded female figure in a grey dress, haloed with grey butterflies, holds up a person in leopard print pants and a yellow shirt, their red hair extending out like budding plant stems.

Image: Ding Shilun, Smile Reveal, 2024, Oil on linen, 74 3/4 x 70 7/8 in