The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery in Pembroke Pines presents ‘Hyphenated Encounters’ & ‘Discord and Serenity’ Opening September 17th

The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery in Pembroke Pines presents two new exhibition projects opening September 17, 2026: Hyphenated Encounters, a collaborative presentation with Deering Estate featuring the work of Cuban American artist Lilian Garcia-Roig, and Discord and Serenity, curated by RemiJin Camping and featuring works by Barry University MFA students Joy Johnson and Bruna Marcon Weber. Hyphenated Encounters brings together two interconnected curatorial projects—Lilian Garcia-Roig: A Practice of Place, curated by Sophie Bonet, Chief Curator of The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery, and Deering Estate Residency: Lilian Garcia-Roig, Site, and the Labor of Belonging, curated by Liliam Dominguez, Head Curator of Deering Estate. Together, these presentations offer audiences an expansive exploration of place, identity, memory, perception, and the complex inner and outer worlds explored through contemporary art.

Art lovers and aficionados are cordially invited to enjoy the Opening Reception for these new exhibitions on Thursday, September 17th from 6 – 9pm at The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery for an evening of art, conversation, and exploration. Light refreshments will be served, and the event is free and open to the public. The Frank is located at 601 City Center Way in Pembroke Pines, Florida 33025. Opening that evening, Hyphenated Encounters brings together two interconnected curatorial projects presented in collaboration with Deering Estate, while Discord and Serenity will be presented separately in The Frank Third Space. Together, these exhibitions offer audiences an opportunity to explore questions of place, identity, memory, perception, emotion, and the complex relationship between what is seen and what remains hidden.

Hyphenated Encounters: A Practice of Place

Spanning more than three decades of artistic practice, Lilian Garcia-Roig: A Practice of Place brings together a selection of paintings and mixed-media works by Cuban American artist Lilian Garcia-Roig. The exhibition traces the evolution of her sustained engagement with landscape, revealing how close observation, material experimentation, and lived experience have shaped a practice rooted in place. From the subtropical environments of South Florida to the limestone valleys of Cuba, Garcia-Roig’s work invites viewers to experience landscape as something inhabited rather than simply observed.

A recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, Garcia-Roig is recognized as one of the leading voices in contemporary landscape painting. Together, the works on view offer a compelling survey of an artistic practice that continues to evolve while remaining deeply connected to the environments that inspire it. Curated by Sophie Bonet, Chief Curator, The Frank C. Ortis Art Gallery. Hyphenated Encounters will be on view at The Frank in the Main Gallery from September 17, 2026, through January 17, 2027. Admission is free and open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

Deering Estate Residency: Lilian Garcia-Roig, Site, and the Labor of Belonging

Part of the Deering Estate AT program, this exhibition features Lilian Garcia-Roig, who is widely recognized as an on-site painter, though the term only begins to describe her practice. Rather than painting a landscape from a distance, Garcia-Roig paints directly with it, treating each location as a living field of negotiation between memory, perception, and presence. Over time, the tropical landscape has become essential to her visual language. Florida’s banyans, mangroves, sabal palms, and strangler figs offer a natural vocabulary that speaks to her Cuban heritage, one built on entanglement rather than hierarchy, and on lateral growth and survival rather than singular dominance.

During her 2024 residency at the Deering Estate, Garcia-Roig immersed herself in the property’s own tangled terrain, working directly on-site. The resulting body of work reflects a sustained, site-specific engagement, continuing her long practice of letting the landscape shape the painting rather than the other way around. Complementing Garcia-Roig’s work, an exclusive short film created by fellow Artist-in-Residence Jorge Gonzalez Graupera deepens the viewer’s connection to these themes. Curated by Liliam Dominguez, Head Curator, Deering Estate.

Discord and Serenity

Discord and Serenity brings together the work of Joy Johnson and Bruna Marcon Weber, two Barry University MFA students whose analog photographic practices explore the complex interior worlds that exist beneath the surface of everyday life. Working through staged environments, personal objects, domestic spaces, and analog processes, Johnson and Marcon Weber consider how emotions and desires are internalized, concealed, and ultimately expressed. Their photographs transform familiar spaces and objects into sites of psychological inquiry, revealing the tensions between what is visible and what remains hidden, between composure and release, and between the identities we inhabit publicly and the experiences we carry within. In What Can the Space in a Room Hold?, Johnson approaches the subconscious as an interior space—one populated by objects, memories, associations, and aspects of the self that may be revealed or kept behind a closed door. Through personal objects and environments, her photographs invite viewers to consider what their own internal spaces might contain.

Marcon Weber’s Rare Opportunities to Be Alone turns toward the domestic sphere, examining suppressed anger, emotional restraint, and the often-unseen pressures associated with caregiving, family life, and reproductive and domestic labor. Using staged color photographs made on 120 film, she reimagines familiar rooms and household objects as expressions of emotions that are ordinarily contained. Together, the two bodies of work create a dialogue between discord and serenity, asking what happens when private emotions enter visible space—and what photography can reveal about the parts of ourselves that are difficult to articulate. Curated by RemiJin Camping. Discord and Serenity will be presented in The Frank Third Space from September 17, 2026, through January 17, 2027. Admission is free and open to the public Wednesday through Sunday from 11am to 5pm.

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For more information visit www.thefrankgallery.org

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