Smokin' Arts: Ten Works in Miami Best Viewed While Stoned

Zhivago Duncan

Maschine

For the past several days, Antonio Manfredi, the director of the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum near Naples, Italy, has been burning artworks to protest the lack of government funds for his institution.

That's just uncivilized. Rather than setting any more paintings aflame, what the cash-addled Manfredi needs to do is crawl out of the basement of the public school housing his museum, torch some kush, and find a more enlightened way to seek financial help than ruining close to $10,000 worth of paintings.

Cultist invites Manfredi to get into the spirit of 4/20 and seek inspiration to create rather than destroy. He should follow the footsteps of Miami artists whose work alters perception while getting us to experience the joy of our surroundings.

Or, in layman's terms: Lighten up dude, spark up a bone and check out these 10 homegrown and visiting artists that will leave you buzzing peacefully and quell your inner firebug.

< At the Fredric Snitzer Gallery Zhivago Duncan's MASCHINE is a Rube Goldberg-type of contraption -- essentially, a remote-controlled spray-painting machine. Titled "Futile," Duncan's solo evokes the struggle between man and technology while distancing the painter from the canvas and speaks to surrendering control. Is it art if it's created by a machine, even if that machine is created by man? Trippy stuff.

Sinisa Kukek's Head & Tail, on view at Spinello Projects, reminds us to beware the type of excess likely to cause you to lose your head. While once playing "quarters" with his buddies and knocking one too many back, Kukek ended the party by swallowing the coins on display and later fishing them out of his feces after they traveled through his entrails for the resulting artwork. On this day of stoner revelry, try to remember to toke take it easy.