View With a Room: This Unassuming Storefront Gallery Is All About Universal Language

For years, a starkly lit, white-walled storefront in Normandy Shores has been one of Miami's best places to see smart, unconventional art.

Since its first show in 2012 in cofounder Diego Singh's apartment, Central Fine has quietly emerged as one of Miami's most high-profile art galleries. The artist-run space consists only of four people: Singh, Tomm El-Saieh, Betty McGhee, and Hunter Osking, all local artists. Yet the gallery has participated in Art Basel Miami Beach three times and is on the way to a fourth appearance.

Several artists it has exhibited have graced major international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Germany, and its Miami-based artists have earned museum shows locally and abroad. Tomm El-Saieh's floral abstract paintings greeted visitors at the opening of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami's permanent location in 2017, while Loriel Beltran earned a solo show at the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College. Both artists now have representation from blue-chip New York galleries, Beltran at Lehmann Maupin and El-Saieh at Luhring Augustine. (The latter has also exhibited Singh and the Central Fine cohort as a collective.)
Originally from Argentina, Singh believes the gallery's success stems from a strategy of "tight relationships" with specific galleries and institutions. It's worked closely with ICA, for instance. In addition, the space links with its gallery partners in New York to help it save on the expense of traveling the global art fair circuit. (Art Basel's Miami Beach show is the only one in which Central Fine has made an appearance.)

Still, even Singh seems to think Central Fine's success is a bit of an outlier.

"It's kind of a word-of-mouth situation," he says, "I really don't know how it happens because I personally don't go out much. I don't have a car, and I don't go to openings or anything. So I'm painting full-time in my studio, and then between that and the gallery, I don't have time for anything."

It helps that Central Fine's program is strong, driven by Singh's affinity for blending language into art in unforeseen ways. Beltran often embeds letters and linguistic symbols into the layers of paint that make up his striped, colorful works. Georgia Sagri, an artist originally from Athens who was the first artist to show with Central Fine, also incorporates words as a conceptual basis for her work. A recent show from 2022 centered on the Greek word "iasi," meaning "recovery," and related to the artist's recuperation from fatiguing performance art pieces.

El-Saieh's work also upends conventions, albeit those of his native Haiti. The artist's paintings incorporate traditional Haitian visual motifs while abstracting them in a way that's novel for the country's artistic heritage. The son of a prominent Haitian gallerist, he also puts on shows at the gallery focusing on Haitian artists like Frantz Zephirin and Myrlande Constant, as well as his brother Viktor El-Saieh.
"I'm very interested in language and psychoanalytic theory — specifically the work of Lacan," Singh says. "And I was always interested in how certain artworks can act as manifestations of another type of speech, something that goes beyond narrative or branches out into poetry or politics. The potential of language to become a live thing was also something that interested me very early on in my own work."

Singh's paintings, though also abstract, incorporate Lacanian ideas about universal communication. Specifically, he's interested in "lalangue," the preverbal babble babies use before they learn words, and he seeks out artists who work in this universal, subconscious context.
Chemu Ng'ok, a Kenyan painter currently exhibiting at the gallery, is a fine example of their approach. Her work is figurative, depicting various individuals and groups in what she calls "psychological landscapes." These figures are coded as African or Black, yet they also feel set outside of that context into a more mythic or surreal space. Many are painted with green or blue shaded skin and wrapped in garments that feel traditional or nomadic. They wander through mysterious, dreamlike realms, appearing like apparitions in a desert. Ng'ok's color choices, archetypal naming conventions (Mother, Indigo Child, Witness), and fluidic, blobby painting style also give the show a feeling of surrealness.

"I was really interested in how she addressed the figure. Because it felt timeless in a way. And she actually has a painting in the show right now called Timeless Placeless," Singh says. "Some people who came to see the show that didn't know anything about her were asking me about her age. They assumed she was 65 or 70. They thought she painted like an older person, and they couldn't find the place where the works were coming from or what she was talking about. They were enigmatic."

Chemu Ng'ok's "To Witness." On view through Tuesday, July 16, at Central Fine, 1224-1226 Normandy Dr., Miami Beach; 786-899-0977; centralfine.com.