VERO BEACH, Florida — Gert and Uwe Tobias missed out on the fanfare of Art Basel this year; while the smart set were reveling in hedonism, the Transylvania-born twins spent the week hard at work, three hours outside of Miami. Between rounds of golf and going to bed at a “reasonable hour,” they spent most of their time installing their latest exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery at Windsor, in the much lesser-known Florida area of Vero Beach.
Following last year’s solo show of Beatriz Milhazes, this marks The Gallery at Windsor’s second annual exhibition in a three-year collaboration with Whitechapel. The virtual opposite of Art Basel or Whitechapel Gallery’s London homebase, Windsor is a remote, gated community accessible only to its wealthy members and their guests, and is by far the most isolated venue the Tobias brothers have ever presented work in. The installation they’ve created — small-scale collages of dark, dismembered body parts and folkloric monsters, or contrasting large-scale, vibrantly colored woodcuts of butterflies and birds — required considerable planning. At their family compound in Cologne, the brothers built a scale model of the Florida gallery and filled it with miniature replicas of their works, to find out how best to capitalize on the space. Unlike most printmakers, the Tobias Brothers’ work has the frequent habit of extending beyond the frame and into the gallery itself. The result of this three-dimensional remote mapping is a physical journey for their viewers that alternates between the sinister and the playful.
The limited-edition poster the Tobias brothers created for the show is a butterfly-cum-coat-of-arms, the wings adorned with the artists’ initials in a type of tropical climate heraldry, as well as an ode to this bizarrely secluded gallery. Whitechapel director and curator Iwona Blazwick, who likes to think of the serene, beachside landscape as a destination art retreat, realizes the unique dual nature of her audience. In addition to artworld professionals who deliberately make the trek to see the show (we spotted MoMA director Glenn Lowry at the exhibition opening, taking a detour on the commute home from Miami) there are Windsor residents and vacationers who “have never had any contact with any professional art,” she told ARTINFO. “It’s quite a challenge, really,” she added, speaking of the curatorial process, “but ultimately what we’re always dedicated to is maintaining the integrity of the art and the artists’ vision.”
To see the work of Gert & Uwe Tobias at Windsor Gallery, click the slideshow.