MIAMI.- Special installations by Miami artists, including Leyden Rodriquez-Casanova, Kerry Phillips, Matt Schreiber and Tom Scicluna along with selections from Miami Art Museum’s growing permanent collection and key loans from local collectors, will make up Disappearances, Shadows, and Illusions in MAM’s Upper Level Gallery through September 21, 2008. Several of the works, including Mark Handforth’s Western Sun, shown at the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and Regina Silveira’s Escada Inexplicável 2 (Inexplicable Staircase 2), are new acquisitions being shown in Miami for the first time.

“The works in this exhibition run contrary to the expectation that artworks must embody enduring values and stand the test of time,” MAM’s Assistant Director for Programs/Senior Curator Peter Boswell said. “They use tricks of light, perspective, erasure, and other means to evoke a sense of impermanence and uncertainty. They make us acutely aware of our role as viewers and prompt us to question what we are seeing.”

Artists in the exhibition include Elizabeth Cerejido, Paul Chan, COOPER, Joseph Cornell, Olafur Eliasson, Magdalena Fernandez, Oscar Muñoz, Maria Martinez-Cañas, Martin Oppel, Paul Pfeiffer, Karen Rifas, Bert Rodriguez, Regina Silveira, Lorna Simpson and Wendy Wischer.

Several Miami artists included in the exhibition, including COOPER, Handforth, Scicluna, Schreiber and Wischer will join Boswell in a panel discussion on the key themes of the exhibition. The artists will discuss how they address issues of ephemerality, uncertainty, wonder and authenticity in their works. The panel discussion will take place Sunday, June 8 from 3-5pm in the MAM Auditorium.