STEPHEN ARBOITE

N’NAMDI Contemporary, Miami is proud to present Dreamscapes: The Metaphor Has Shifted to Healing​, a solo exhibition by Stephen Arboite. Rendering an intimately ontological approach to unpacking his journey of self-discovery, Arboite creates a dynamic body of work with seemingly distant, yet familiar faces and forms. Employing dreams as a metaphor for individual and communal healing, Arboite explains how dreams “are gateways into an alternate reality that exists within the human psyche; manifestations of our deepest desires, fears, and emotions.” Oscillating between grand landscapes and mythological portraits, Arboite wields a combination of relational gestures and textures to narrate a soul-yearning story anchored with a surrealist nod to everyday reality.

With an emphasis on the historical uses of coffee, Arboite draws parallels from his Haitian background by using coffee as a “spiritual medium” to emote scenes from his psyche. This series of paintings act as a bridge to conjure belonging – a sense of community emerges while navigating a path of healing for others seeking for a greater sense of self. Arboite beckons viewers to introspectively examine their understanding of themselves through a psycho-spiritual lens. In this, his dreams become our reality and shift us to a place of honesty and healing.

Stephen Arboite. Dreamscapes: The Metaphor Has Shifted to Healing

With “Dreamscapes: The Metaphor Has Shifted to Healing,” artist Stephen Arboite presents a series of soulful and spiritual works focusing on a metamorphosic journey, inviting viewers along on an emotional and introspective path to self-discovery and healing.

The paintings are representative of the past 10 years of Arboite’s artistic practice and are as much rooted in the present. They are continuations of investigations he started to pursue while a student, when he first discovered coffee as a medium. Initially chosen based on a lack of resources, the coffee soon led the artist on a powerful journey to explore his Haitian heritage and various discourses on the Caribbean diaspora.

“Throughout that process I found that the material itself, the coffee itself, and how it dried, had a really intuitive quality,” says Arboite. “The same intuition that drew me to that, led me to the path I am on right now. All these materials I use yield a certain weight, a certain power, a certain energy. I think it is deeper than what is on the surface. I am interested in those nuances. Why do we have the inclination to use certain materials over others? The more I investigated coffee, the more I realized the proximity to Haiti. The first Black republic and the country that exported more than 70% of the world’s coffee at one point. Coffee led me onto a path of understanding my history. This was parallel with me understanding certain spiritual aspects such as vodun and other African ceremonies.”
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10 Breakthrough Black Men Artists As Polled By Black-Owned Art Galleries

Black Art in America
by Shantay Robinson

Evidently influenced by his Haitian heritage, Stephen Arboite, intends to depict those things about the human anatomy that cannot be seen. Using a stain technique that includes ground coffee, metallic powders, and organic pigment, Arboite portrays the spiritual essence of his subjects. Whereas the spirit is largely manipulated in African spiritual practices, his artworks perform a sort of ritual that allows the aura to be seen up front and center. As the ability to see the inside or the acute periphery of human being that make up the spirit and the soul is quite challenging, Arboite imagines the dynamic energy that the spiritual essence free of embodiment might look like. Taken apart from the physical form, spiritual essence flies free from captivity, but Arboite captures this elusive thing and shapes it on canvas revealing the dynamism of human energy and making a statement that speaks for our genuine and inherent vitality.
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Roots of the Spirit

Roots of the Spirit Exhibition which opens January 15th, 2020 at Artserve, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, reflects upon the power of black cultural expression that is now clearly emergent and trending in the contemporary global art market. Consulting curator, Ludlow E Bailey, is “extremely excited to witness the recent renaissance in black visual artistic production, as these developments are connected to the worldwide interest in black culture, and the rising investment value of contemporary African Diaspora Art globally”.

According to Mr. Bailey, “Roots of the Spirit Exhibition, will be a beautiful visual interpretation of the metaphysical infrastructure of African Spirituality”.
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Using Coffee, This Miami Artist Paints Striking Impressionistic Works

Luxe Magazine (Lifestyle) Art + Culture
By Monique Mcintosh

Thanks to synthetic paint, modern-day artists may employ every hue imaginable in their work. Yet creating color proves a far more intimate process for Stephen Arboite, a Miami painter who uses coffee to compose ethereal, fragmented portraits.

Splashed with washes of sepia and delicate layers of collaged tissue paper, his depictions of androgynous figures appear to be made with traditional art supplies instead of everyday materials. Steeped in history, these subjects and their matter relate to the personal narrative of their innovative maker, a New Yorker born to Haitian parents. “My work is inspired by many cultural and social references dealing with my upbringing here in the United States as well as my cultural roots,” he says.
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SUGARCANE MAGAZINE - STUDIO VISIT: STEPHEN ARBOITE

Above: Stephen Arboite. Photo by Dario Calmese.

Stephen Arboite has just completed a stay at the Fountainhead Residency in Miami, FL, where I arranged to meet him for a studio visit. We discussed many things and came to know the kind of fullness of his practice which is shared with you here. 
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