Gallery at The Boca Raton

Our art projects originated in 2009 with the installation of 15 monumental sculptures placed throughout the grounds of The Boca Raton & Beach Club. A project at The Ritz-Carlton Key Biscayne was added in 2012, The Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove in 2016, The Waterstone Resort and Marina in 2022, and The W Fort Lauderdale in 2025. Artists on view have included Fernando Botero, Peter Busby, Aurora Canero, Lynn Chadwick, Johan Creten, Carole Feuerman, Patrick Hughes, Jun Kaneko, Javier Marin, Julien Marinetti, Jedd Novatt, Dennis Oppenheim, Mauro Perucchetti, Henry Richardson, Sophie Ryder, and Hans Van de Bovenkamp.

Works on view at The Boca Raton & Beach Club currently include Harry Benson, Stanley Boxer, Dan Christensen, Max-Steven Grossman, Paul Jenkins, Scarlett Kanistaneaux, Alex Katz, Wendy Klemperer, Kx2, Donald Martiny, Jane Manus, Gino Miles, Donald Sultan, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, Tigran Tsitoghdzyan, Boaz Vaadia, and Manolo Valdes. This venue provides museum-quality works for acquisition while adding an educational, aesthetic and cultural enhancement to the property.

Scarlett Kanistanaux’s “Sacred Breath” striking bronze sculpture is a testament to the artist’s profound engagement with themes of serenity and spiritual introspection. Rendered in a minimalist form, this work echoes the peaceful countenance found in historical Buddhist sculptures, yet Kanistanaux reinterprets these ancient motifs with a distinctly contemporary sensibility. The closed eyes and subtly upturned lips of the figure suggest a state of deep meditation, inviting viewers into a quiet, contemplative space. The simplified facial structure eschews elaborate detail, allowing the viewer’s focus to rest on the essence of peace embodied within the form. The smooth surface and subtle curves reflect her commitment to capturing the purity of the subject’s inner world rather than an ethnographic likeness, positioning the piece as a universal symbol of tranquility and self-awareness rather than a direct cultural representation.

From candid behind-the-scenes images of The Beatles during their first U.S. tour, to striking portraits of political figures, Hollywood royalty, and the private sides of public icons such as Princess Diana, Jackie Kennedy, and Frank Sinatra, Benson’s work is not only documentary but deeply intimate. He captures the sublime tension between visibility and vulnerability: between myth and personhood.

This collection brings together some of Benson’s most celebrated, revealing, and historically resonant works, images that have not only chronicled cultural shifts but have often shaped how they are remembered. With his camera as a passport to the corridors of fame, glamour, and power, Benson has documented some of the most recognizable faces and pivotal moments of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1929, Harry Benson began his career as a photographer for the Daily Sketch in London. His transatlantic trajectory was cemented when he was assigned to cover The Beatles in Paris in 1964. That assignment would lead to an invitation to join the band on their inaugural trip to America. Benson’s photograph of the band in a playful pillow fight at the George V Hotel has since become one of the most iconic images in the history of music photography.

Benson’s career blossomed during the golden age of print journalism. He became a trusted contributor to LIFE, Vanity Fair, People, and The New Yorker. Unlike many celebrity photographers, Benson did not rely on staged studio shots, his genius lies in his ability to enter the room, gain trust, and bear witness. He was there for moments of triumph and trauma alike: he was standing next to Robert F. Kennedy when the senator was assassinated, and he documented the civil rights movement, the rise and fall of presidencies, and the shifting fashions of fame.

Together, these images are not only visual time capsules, they are psychological studies. Benson’s camera never condescends or intrudes; it communes.

Zimtsterne by Donald Matiny is a sculptural painting of polymer and pigment on aluminum that introduces the gestural abstraction of post-war American painting to The Boca Raton Beachclub’s otherwise representational matrix.   Suspended from the wall, the piece captures a singular sweeping motion -  a painterly mark liberated from canvas yet bound to bodily presence. Martiny’s works engage with the aesthetics of fluidity and the tactility of the natural world invoking both sand's granular resistance and water's mercurial force.

Towering chromogenic prints such as Falls #36 by Jonathan Smith render cascading water in hyper-detail dissolving the boundary between documentation and abstraction Inviting the viewer into liminal spaces where scale becomes ambiguous and time seems suspended. These images harness the sublime through a modern lens echoing 19th-century romantic landscape photography.  His photographs often exclude any sign of human presence emphasizing the landscape's autonomy and ancient rhythm. These vast photographic fields evoke a connection to a place while offering a contemplative space for viewers to consider their own relationship with nature.

Kx2 is the collaborative moniker of artist-sister duo Ruth Avra and Dana Kleinman whose mathematically inspired sculptural works merge industrial materials with painterly surfaces. From a distance, their works appear bold, minimalist, and architectural.  Upon closer inspection the viewer is drawn into the tactile surfaces of meticulously hand-sanded aluminum and the layered subtleties of acrylic and mixed media painting. While rooted in formal aesthetics, their work embraces themes of ecological awareness and environmental fragility by incorporating up to 50% recycled aluminum in their metalwork and making use of reclaimed materials whenever possible reflecting a belief that sustainability and beauty can coexist within the artistic process.

Deeply committed to the intersection of art and environmental advocacy, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson's work incorporates repurposed materials sourced from local landscapes, specifically, discarded flip-flops and plastics found on Ghana’s southern Atlantic coast.  In his flip-flop wall-hanging series, Turkson recontextualizes these everyday objects, presenting them as “Objects of Value.” The artist’s approach draws parallels with traditional Ghanaian textile arts, such as Kente weaving, creating complex, patterned compositions that speak to continuity and change within cultural traditions. His work challenges conventional perceptions of discarded materials, emphasizing their potential for beauty and storytelling. His process reflects a deep commitment to sustainability, and he positions himself as an archivist of cultural memory, an environmentalist, and a storyteller whose art serves as both a medium of aesthetic pleasure and a conduit for social commentary.

Sponder Gallery is proud to present ALEX KATZ: Figures and Faces–an exhibition in the Tower lobby at The Boca Raton.  Celebrating the iconic work of Alex Katz, one of the most influential figures in contemporary art, this meticulously curated showcase features silkscreens, pigment prints, and linocuts spotlighting Katz’s ability to distill time and space into strikingly minimalist compositions that balance flatness, form, and color.

Katz’s work, emerging as a counterpoint to the gestural dynamism of Abstract Expressionism, embraces simplicity, narrative clarity, and compositional balance. Drawing inspiration from cinematic storytelling and the aesthetics of advertising, his art transcends Pop Art conventions, creating intimate, personal connections through recurring subjects and themes like bathers and swimmers. Works such as Ariel (B&W) highlight Katz’s ability to refine human and natural forms into their essential components, offering a profound meditation on identity, presence, and relationality.

Through his reductive methodology and minimalist aesthetic, Katz transforms the everyday into the monumental. His works resonate as visual essays, distilling the mundane into compositions of profound elegance and complexity. As Katz approaches his 100th year, this exhibition reaffirms his enduring legacy as a masterful chronicler of form, color, and human expression.

Abstract expressionism emerged in the United States after WWII and quickly became one of the most influential movements in the history of art. AbEx artists were influenced by the ideas of psychoanalysis and believed in the importance of tapping into the subconscious mind. They often worked spontaneously, allowing their inner thoughts and emotions to guide the creative process.

Most of the artists on view in Drips, Stains & Pours fall under the second generation of Abstract Expressionism, with the first generation including artists such as Jackson Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler. Much like their predecessors, the younger generation emphasized spontaneous, gestural expression, the exploration of color and material, and often used bold brushwork, dynamic compositions, and non-representational forms. Gesture and movement were central to their aesthetic, and evidence of their spontaneous movements are trapped in swaths of color. The resulting artworks may be viewed as an artifact of their choreographed actions.

Boaz Vaadia was born on a farm in Israel in 1951, and moved to New York City to study art in 1975 on a grant from the America-Israel Cultural Foundation.  His compelling works have won him audiences worldwide.

His materials, slate and bluestone were formed by layers of sediment compressing over millions of years.  He hand carves slices of the stone with a hammer and chisel, (shaping the layers like a topographical map), and stacks the slabs until the graded silhouette of a person, animal or group emerges.  His process parallels natural transformations in stone, and also recalls ancient methods of construction that relied on the cut and weight of the stone rather than on mortar.

He then pairs them with glacial boulders which function as counterpoints to the figures.  These boulders settled in the New York Bay area during the ice age. Most of them are excavated from construction sites within 20 blocks of his studio.