2021 EXPOSED ARTIST DIRECTORY

Karen Rifas is known for large-scale architectural installations in three media: leaf and cord installations, cord and mural installations, and colorful solid geometric shapes in two and three dimensions. Rifas’ 20-year collaboration with choreographer and dancer Dale Andree animates her installations in a way that expresses how Rifas, once a dancer herself, thinks about space. Her exhibition at MDC Museum of Art + Design, curated by Jeremy Mikolajczak, presented 19 years of her installation work in the Oolite Walgreens Window, private residences, galleries, and museums in the form of her scale models for them. She told George Fishman, who wrote about the exhibition in the Miami Herald, “My work is about understanding space — imagining, utilizing it and enhancing it.[…]In my work I try to encompass.”

Karen Rifas (Chicago, b. 1942) has shown nationally and internationally since the 1980s. She is the second recipient of The Michael Richards Award, presented by Oolite Arts. Her show at The Bass Museum of Art in 2018 was extremely well-received. In 2020, the Bass Museum of Art commissioned a series of banners by Rifas for their Art Outside initiative. Her work is represented in many public and private collections, including Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico, The Bass Museum of Art, Fairchild Tropical Gardens, Oolite Arts, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami-Dade Art in Public Places Trust, and Perez Art Museum Miami.

Rifas lives and works in Miami, FL. Her work is represented by Emerson Dorsch Gallery.

emersondorsch.com