Orlando Estrada’s The Infinite Vision in the Ethereal Rainbows Swarming Behind my Eyelids Reveals a Beacon is an exhibition taking place at Bas Fisher Invitational, a nomadic artist-run space currently housed as a shuttered True Religion Jeans outpost in South Beach. The show seems to function like an alchemical seance, opening a portal towards what seems like an inevitable future.
Resting on the floor, The Infinite Vision in the Ethereal Rainbows Swarming Behind my Eyelids Reveals a Beacon of 2021 is an airbrushed painting composed of artificial pearls, coconut fiber, beeswax, and an assortment of BIC lighters at the base of the painting. The painting depicts a kind of hallucinogenic sunset as viewed from the beach. The work is next to another sculpture titled “Mermaid Ivory” (2021) that consists of a 3D Printed skull (with its jaw missing), some anonymous bones and a spillage of Swarovski crystals which create a scene evoking a mermaid’s silhouette whose organic matter has been zapped out of existence.
The centerpiece of the exhibition Tiered Panorama is a massive, rotating, multi-level sculpture composed from a cornucopia of organic and artificial materials and refuse composed to create an island diorama consumed by flames. Upon closer inspection one finds a myriad of objects scattered throughout this island:3D printed sculptures of contorted and altered humans, homes and flames made of post-consumer packaging, branches, glitter, Christmas lights, and in the center we see a tower in flames crowned with a chorus of skulls facing the sky. After some time, I am reminded of that scene in Beetlejuice when Barbara and Adam Maitland–played by Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis—are warped into Adam’s diorama of the entire town only to excavate Beetlejuice’s tomb, revealing the comical layers of foam, plastic, cardboard and cork that make up the model’s core. In the film, the diorama becomes an anchor for the Maitland’s afterlife on Earth, their house is as much a prop in real life as it is in the diorama. The remaining works –Fire Painting #1, Fire Painting #2 and Fire Dancer – all play on and are made from the same fire motifs we see burning up Tiered Panorama. Fire Dancer is a smaller work hung high and could be easily missed upon exiting the gallery, it depicts a kind Cheshire Cat meets Trollface character with hollow eyes.
Miami Beach was the result of several real estate developer’s dream of the future, it was partly dredged from the Biscayne Bay, it’s most southern tip—also known as Fisher Island—was carved out during the construction of Government Cut and the Port of Miami. With every hurricane that makes landfall, we confront the substrate of plastic and non-organic materials that is brought to the surface and left behind after the storm surge has receded. As an exhibition The Infinite Vision in the Ethereal Rainbows Swarming Behind my Eyelids Reveals a Beacon attempts to point to some dystopian future when in fact it’s already a lived reality and we’re just stuck in some kind of collective unconscious of denial. Massive environmental degradation and destruction is here and broadcasted in real time; Foam, plastic, and other material composites are already beneath the surface, in the water and in our bodies.
Orlando Estrada’s The Infinite Vision in the Ethereal Rainbows Swarming Behind my Eyelids Reveals a Beacon is on view at Bas Fisher Invitational in South Beach, Miami through July 23, 2021.
