As part of our tc:temporary contemporary project space in street display windows on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, the Bass Museum of Art has invited Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Deleget to present a project called "Ponte Duro / Get Hard." In this project, Deleget presented 14 abstract grid paintings; for each painting, the allocation of colors was determined by shuffle playlists on Deleget’s iPod. The paintings were installed in an immersive color-filed environment, where the paint colors for the walls within the display windows was also chosen randomly.

Each painting in the series is titled after a member of the 1960s salsa supergroup Fania All-Stars. This salsa group, which was formed in New York City, consisted of numerous members of Caribbean and Latin American descent, and the group played several notable concerts in the region, including one in Havana, Cuba in 1979. By presenting this body of work in Miami, these works have a new resonance.

But more importantly, with this project as part of our tc:temporary contemporary, the Bass Museum of Art is able to stage an intervention in the overly commercialized strip of Collins Avenue in South Beach. With a myriad of high-end fashion and design windows, often many of which are installed in modern styles with vivid colors, those who walk up and down the street are certainly aware of the such products that are explicitly for sale. By installing Deleget’s paintings in one of these windows, we are able to call attention to the very lack of products for sale and replace that void with ideas and explorations of formal and aesthetic qualities.