Beyond Class featured the work of photographer Josh Aronson, and painter Brian Batt. The exhibition addresses a mutual interest in both artist’s bodies of work. Circumventing typical class signifiers to arrive at new perspectives, Aronson uses his photographs to draft an idea and image of the world as would be his ideal for the future. Batt, on the other hand, employs established motifs of our consumer society to reconfigure and readdress meaning. 

Across his portraits of young Floridians, Aronson intentionally avoids class signifiers such as logos and status symbols. Aronson carefully selects his sitters, inviting local Miami young artists and activists who, like himself, work to engage the world in a critical and exciting way. His images overall embody an ideal of togetherness animated by ambitions for a utopian future. 

In Batt’s oil paintings, typical signifiers of class are removed from their contexts. Batt creates ‘intersecting portraits’. Each hand-painted, hyper realistic composite images of vintage magazine cut outs juxtapose and combine seemingly disparate elements. He reorganizes visual cues celebrating individuality and diversity, merging and devising a unique beauty.