There is actual art out there within the walls of Miami’s white cubes and there is a strong possibility that it will make you feel something other than a hang-over. Where is it going to be? Within the confines of the new 10,000 square foot space now occupied by Yeelen Gallery, in Little Haiti.

Yeelen will be exhibiting the American artist and consummate academician James B. Clover this September, opening reception with the artist will be on September 13th 2014. This opening will mark the artists first solo exhibition in the U.S. in over 25 years.

As far back as the late nineteenth century, artists have abandoned strict realism in favor of pared-down, primitive forms to convey the essence of the real. Noisy imagery and the visible world, for them, hid truth and distorted elements of spirituality, limiting our access to them. Fast forward another twenty, thirty, even fifty years, when artists, through their own unique styles, were still attempting to access an undisclosed utopia through rhythm, shape, and color contained in abstraction. If you question this principle, just go stand in front of a Mark Rothko. The first time I did was at the home of Agnes Gund, Museum of Modern Art president emerita. Something about those big blocks of orange made me want to weep, and, oddly, I wasn’t the only one.

Like the artists that came before him, Clover is going for the jugular. His latest series of work-deviating from the minimalist sculptures of which he is better known-use basic iconography and scales of color to harken back to creation. Repetitive forms dance across the surface of his compositions like those in a carnival or ones seen in brief flashes of mystically woven child-like dreams.

Text by Seanica Howe