Dali Museum to open new exhibit featuring world renounced artist

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – A new exhibit at the Dalí Museum features a collection of photographs that highlight how artists used different photographic techniques to question how things are perceived.

It’s called “The Subversive Eye: Surrealist and Experimental Photography from the David Raymond Collection” and officially opens on Saturday, Nov. 16. 

The exhibit showcases more than 100 works by more than 50 artists from around the world who are part of art collector and artist David Raymond’s collection.

“I think that art tends to want to be seen,” Raymond said. “I believe that anything that’s a full realization by a creator has a life of its own. “You’re doing them (the works) an injustice if you don’t give them the opportunity to be viewed by others.” 

Raymond continued, “They’re going to come home to me in a year and go, ‘We had the best time. Time to chill out.”

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The Dalí’s newest exhibit celebrates the one-hundredth anniversary of the start of surrealism and its influence on photography between the 1920s and the 1940s. 

He’s not orthodox about what is surrealist,” Jennifer Cohen, the Dalí’s Director of Curatorial Affairs, said.

“He really trusts his own eye to see really in a much broader way what we might define as surrealist and experimental photography,” she said. 

In the mid-2000s, Raymond donated most of his collection to the Clevland Museum of Art.

“After he donated his collection, he found he couldn’t stop collecting, and his eye, I think, has become even more refined over time,” Cohen said. “We’re really so privileged to have the benefit of his subversive eye on our walls.”

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The exhibit also includes an interactive area that challenges those visiting to create surrealist photographs.

“We’re really passionate about creating, especially an exhibit like this, which could be perceived as overly intellectual by some, but to really welcome people in our doors and to say, ‘you know, this might have been an innovative Avant-Garde practice in the 1920s. Well, you know what? You too hold that power today,’” Cohen said. 

Raymond started taking pictures when he was eight years old.

David Raymond viewing his Subversive Eye exhibit at the Dali Museum.

“As I got older, I found myself in the art world. I started buying and selling works of art, and the moment in my life that changed everything was being in a library in San Francisco and coming upon a book called ‘L’Amour Fou,’ which was an exhibition catalog for a group of surrealist photography,” Raymond said.

Raymond added that the experience with the book was transformational.

“I opened that book, and I said, ‘I’ve just found my family,’ and that set me on a trajectory to start collecting surrealist and Avant-Garde photography,” Raymond said.

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Raymond said he hopes visitors see more than just pictures on a wall.

“I really am drawn to this work because it challenges the way I see the world. I’m hoping that going through this exhibition, people can have their preconceived ideas of what is real be disrupted,” Raymond said. “I think in this day and age, we all need to be shaken up a little bit and pause.”

Some of the artwork featured at David Raymond’s Subversive Eye exhibit at the Dali Museum.

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This is the first exhibit launch at the Dalí since Hurricanes Helene and Milton. 

Cohen said the museum fared well during both storms. During the storms, they already had Raymond’s collection ready for the exhibit.

“David Raymond actually hails from Asheville, North Carolina. So, this hurricane came, hit us, then hit him, and we held his collection safe the whole time. So, it was sort of profound,” she said.

The exhibit runs through May 4.

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