Addison Wolff, at the Baths, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale

At the Baths is the first solo museum presentation of South Florida artist Addison Wolff (b. 1987, Winter Park, FL; lives and works in Broward County). Wolff’s practice centers on his use of vibrant textured paints on loosely formed ceramics, resulting in tactile vessels that appear on the verge of collapse. His objects challenge the defining elements of sculpture weight and material-prompting us to consider how and why we limit art (and ourselves) through the impulse to categorize.

Wolff extends this open approach to his paintings, where layered images are piled and raked into kaleidoscopic abstractions. Instead of using painting to represent or create perspective, he treats the canvas as a flat plane on which to play with optical illusions, formed through the manipulation of color and surface.

For this exhibition, Wolff’s vessels are displayed on a multi-tiered cedarwood platform inspired by the classical architecture of bathhouses. These spaces have long served as sites of communal gathering and cleansing, where social boundaries temporarily dissolve. Similarly, Wolff’s work resists classification and opens a space for new possibilities. By challenging traditions of material and meaning, he reveals the potential of abstract art to convey both individual expression and shared experience.

At the Baths is organized by Ariella Wolens, Bryant-Taylor Curator.