Aruga Fine Arts presents Schooner, a group exhibition with works by Arden Asher Taste, Betty McGhee, Chloe Wilcox, CJ Shaw, Connor Crawford, Corina Dorrego,  Jacob Mattingly, Kati Kirsch, Liam Murray, Liliana Locayo, Maite Iribarren Vazquez, Maxwell Runko, Scott Reeder, Tess Manhattan, Trinity Bavaria, Rosabel Ferber, Scott Reeder, and Violet Handforth.

The group of seventeen artists from Miami, New York, Munich, and Vienna use painting, sculpture, installation, and video to reflect upon leisure, tourism, financial speculation, and catastrophe. Schooner’s opening reception will be held on December 3rd from 7-10pm at 219 E Flagler St. Miami, Florida 33131

In January 1926, in an effort to relieve a housing and infrastructure crisis brought on by what is now known as the Florida land boom,

The Prinz Valdemar, a 241-foot steel-hulled Danish schooner that had been converted into a floating hotel, attempted to enter Biscayne Bay. It ran aground at the mouth of the Miami harbor, capsizing and blocking the main shipping channel.

For six weeks, crews struggled to remove the massive hull, effectively sealing off the port to maritime traffic.

Miami’s two major railroad companies, already overburdened by the speculative frenzy, faced increased demand now that the port had closed. Both lines imposed embargoes on all freight except food and fuel, severing the flow of building materials that had sustained the growth and bursting the city’s first real-estate bubble. Investors fled, construction stalled, and unfinished suburbs sat motionless under the tropical sun.

Months later, in September 1926, the Great Miami Hurricane swept across Biscayne Bay, drowning the city and scattering the material remains of capital’s half-realized dreams.

In Schooner, artists dip into the lure of the tropics as a place for leisure then dovetail into its moments of disappointment, catastrophe, and unrealized dreams. During art week in Miami, crowds flock for the promise of financial investment, great parties, and balmy weather; I like to think of the city as a floating hotel.