Tag Archives: Art Basel 2014

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH DAY 4: REFLECTIONS ON DEPARTURE

Paris, LA’s final day at Art Basel was spent perusing missed booths at the Miami Beach Convention Center’s main fair, and soaking up the last few rays of sunshine on the beach. There was perhaps no better way to bookend a whirlwind tour of art and culture on both sides of Biscayne Bay, stretching into late night and early morning parties.

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The Saturday and Sunday crowd was noticeably more casual than at Wednesday’s VIP preview, and a number of works had been replaced with others, having been bought off the wall by collectors earlier in the week. Still, a number of standouts remained. Katharina Fritsch’s bright orange Octopus drew viewers into Matthew Marks’s booth, where a stunning new Ellsworth Kelly aluminum wall sculpture was displayed near polyurethane objects by Fischli/Weiss and a photograph by Thomas Demand. Luhring Augustine displayed one of Rachel Whitread’s Untitled (Stories) sculptures, a cast of the negative space around books on a shelf, which the artist later used in her poetic Vienna Holocaust Memorial.

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Some works humorously reappeared, referenced by other artists. Doug Aitken’s Exit (Large), on display in Regen Projects’ booth, appeared in an Eric Fischl painting not far away. Jeff Koons’s Balloon Rabbit appeared suspended upside down from a totem pole in a Jason Rhodes sculpture, on display at David Zwirner’s Basel booth.

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Fergus McCaffrey presented a colorful survey of Jack Early works, particularly homoerotic paintings of crotch close-ups on children’s wallpaper, featuring cheerful hand-holding soldiers. A canary yellow phonograph in the center of the gallery played Early’s “Biography in 20 Minutes”, recounting how the artist chose the wallpaper for his first bedroom, further referencing his memories of queer childhood and early budding sexuality. Another arresting survey show was Alison Knowles’s The Boat Book, sponsored by James Fuentes of New York. A series of wooden frames painted and draped in silkscreens, prints, photographs and maritime diagrams, The Boat Book looks like an unfolded large-scale scrapbook, memorializing the artist’s fisherman brother.

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Urs Fischer’s Small Rain drew curious crowds to the Sadie Coles HQ, London booth. Nearby Galerie Buchholz’s booth featured a stunning mechanistic sculpture by newcomer Simon Denny, with the familiar Snapchat ghost logo embedded like a 3D phantom in a plastic cube atop a computer server. Artist Sean Raspet also drew crowds to Société gallery’s booth in the Nova section with a wall of plastic tanks filled with a manufactured green polyether substance.

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Hauser & Wirth exhibited an impressive new teardrop-shaped sculpture by Mark Bradford. Other fair favorites included Jose Dávila, whose marble and glass slabs precariously pitched outward on colorful red and orange straps were shown at a half dozen galleries from Latin America, Europe, and the United States. Sherrie Levine’s minimalist objects in glass cases were scattered all over the winding Basel booths.

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At the booth for famed editions workshop and gallery Gemini G.E.L., new works by Richard Serra, Julie Mehretu, and Sophie Calle were on display. Serra’s monochromatic black Rift series was partly inspired by rubbings of asphalt textures in the Gemini parking lot. Mehretu’s Myriads, Only By Dark, composed of many layers of finely colored inks and intricately textured gestures in black, took over a year to complete. Calle’s work, In Memory of Frank Gehry’s Flowers, featured a collage cut-out of dried flowers given to the artist by her friend, architect Frank Gehry, in honor of her exhibition openings, alongside photographs of the flowers when fresh and a vase of real roses designed by Gehry himself.

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Between 250 galleries at Art Basel alone, 10 independent art fairs, and countless events, parties, exhibition openings, performances, and lectures, it was truly impossible to see it all here in Miami this week. Some important lessons were learned: few people come to Miami Beach in early December to view artwork. Perusing the fairs is like speed-dating high culture–there simply isn’t time to stop and study. As the fashion and music industries have teamed up with Art Basel, many more have arrived just for the parties, and parties they find: many of them last late into the night and well past sunrise. And as Art Basel has grown, so has Miami, sprouting gleaming new residential skyscrapers (including the new Zaha Hadid 10 Museum Park) that crowd out the two-lane boulevards and classic white Art Deco hotels.

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If you plan on attending Art Basel Miami Beach next year, don’t forget to pack good walking shoes, your favorite hangover cure, and a well-planned schedule. With the right preparation, you won’t find a better way to spend the first days of winter.

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH – DAY 3

Paris, LA began our third day at the international arts bonanza Art Basel Miami Beach at a groundbreaking for 10 Museum Park, the first residential project by famed architect Zaha Hadid in North America. The site of a former gas station, tucked between two gleaming new residential skyscrapers, 10 Museum Park will rise 60 stories above Biscayne Boulevard.

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The building features Hadid’s signature curves as part of an elaborate visible exoskeleton, lacing up towards the multistory aquatic center and lounge at the skyscraper’s crown. The groundbreaking ceremony was packed with Miami developers and admirers of Hadid, including the Mayor of Miami, who presented the architect with a key to the city. Reserved yet gracious, she expressed happiness in being able to complete such an ambitious project.

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Across the street lies the Peréz Museum of Art, whos beautiful new campus by Herzog & de Meuron was completed last year. The palm-lined courtyard features a geodesic dome by legendary architect and designer Buckminster Fuller. As part of their inaugural exhibition, the Peréz showed Global Positioning Systems, which demonstrated the international scope of its collection and the various geopolitical interests of contemporary artists. Rikrit Tirivanij, Dara Friedman, Alfredo Jaar, and Fred Wilson were particularly notable.

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Next Paris, LA ventured to Miami’s new design district, filled with gleaming designer stores and yet another Buckminster Fuller dome–this one the entrance to a block-sized parking structure. The de la Cruz Collection featured a number of impressively installed Aaron Curry sculptures and drawings and large works by Mark Bradford. The third floor held two notable pieces by Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Portrait of Dad) and Somewhere better than this place/Nowhere better than this place, around which small crowds of people clustered, listening to docents and taking mint candies or posters.

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Not far from the de la Cruz Collection, the Miami Institute of Contemporary Art featured a three-story lobby installation by Andra Ursuta, As I Lay Dying. The centerpiece was a disturbing clay figure, covered in wax–recalling a suicidal leap from the atrium’s third floor or a violent rape. On the museum’s upper floors, “psychiatrists” in white lab coats led visitors around Pedro Reyes’ Sanatorium, a series of rooms where participants were encouraged to divulge their secrets, relieve their stress, and share their life questions.

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At nearby Locust Projects, an installation by Daniel Arsham occupied the entire gallery floor. A huge circular pit dug into the floor was filled with crumbling casts of antiquated objects–boomboxes and walkmans, Super-8 and Polaroid cameras. It was quite literally a pit of obsolesence–echoed by the piece’s title, Welcome to the Future. The work was reminiscent of an indigenous burial pit, where pottery and other objects are ceremonially burned.

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Paris, LA finished tonight at the James Blake concert, hosted by the National YoungArts Foundation. A brilliant musical auteur from Britain, Blake’s music is soulful yet dystopian–velvet melodies often fracture into mechanical rhythms and deep bass “dub” sound. His hit single “Limit to Your Love” was the perfect way to end the day.

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ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH – DAY 2

For the second day of our coverage of Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris, LA visited the Pulse and NADA independent art fairs, the Rubell Family Collection, Hans Ulrich Obrist’s “Instagram as an Artistic Medium” panel, and Ryan McNamara’s MEEM 4 Miami: A Story Ballet About the Internet.

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But first, let’s rewind a bit: not content to remain a daytime affair, the cultural events and opening parties during steamy South Beach’s Basel week stretch late into the night. And last night, after a visit to the Untitled. fair, Paris, LA visited the opening party for Peter Marino at the Bass Art Museum. The storied architect of contemporary Gucci and Louis Vuitton branches around the world donated his extensive collection of blue chip contemporary art, including several especially commissioned Damien Hirsts, for the show. The galleries were awash with especially salable black paintings, gold-lacquered skulls, and morbid readymades, like a gas mask case. Most press cited the show as proof of Art Basel’s pop apotheosis, though that was confirmed further by the Jeffrey Deitch-hosted Miley Cyrus concert later in the night.

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In the lobby level of the Bass was Gold, a flashy show that encapsulated the ostentatious displays of wealth at Art Basel. Although the curatorial text hinted that the present artworks’ use of gold was intended to be critical, it wasn’t clear of what. Instead, visitors saw two rooms of shiny things–reinforcing the commodity status of the art object, in the midst of a large commercial art fair.

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Outside the museum, in Collins Park, a public sculpture display and performance featured a Lynda Benglis fountain and a fascinating Alfredo Jaar piece with revolving speaker heads speaking in a robotic drone. Visitors lined up to stand inside Truth, and others spraypainted, carved up, and reassembled a wooden wall in a participatory piece by Christian Falsnaes (a work whose best aspect was also its worst: the utter inconsequence of its ultimate form). Finally, the night ended at the Artsy Dance Party, hosted by Carter Cleveland and Wendi Murdoch at the historic Moore building in honor of Chinese painter Shen Wei, which featured a performance by rapper Theophilius London.

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Thursday: there was little sleep do be had before Paris, LA was back at it again, this time perusing some of Miami’s many independent art fairs. The morning began (with strong Cuban coffee in hand) at Pulse, on the shorts of Indian Creek Park. There Danziger Gallery exhibited contemporary Dutch portraits by Hendrik Kerstens, using plastic bags and hand towels as traditional Flemish headwear. Unique at Pulse was an African presence, with photographs by Pieter Hugo, Malick Sidibé, and others.

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Elizabeth Leach Gallery of Portland exhibited drawings and wall sculptures made of tessellated paperback book scraps by Ann Hamilton. Nearby, Leslie Heller Workspace of New York gave a solo presentation of Lothar Osterburg, who makes photogravures of miniature models of mid-20th century New York City.

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Greg Kucera Gallery from Seattle exhibited work by Los Angeles-based artist Chris Engman, who photographs sculptures and installations to suggest intense depth in a truly stunning tromp l’oeil trick.

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Next Paris, LA travelled north to NADA, the New Art Dealers Alliance. Just within the hall entrance, London-based Jonathan Viner’s booth impressed with works by Amir Nikravan (who recently closed a show at VSF Los Angeles), Nicholas Deshayes, and Pentti Monkkonen.

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Nextdoor, New York’s Lisa Cooley displayed work by Andy Coolquitt and others. Los Angeles-based François Ghebaly Gallery’s booth featured a graph-paper drawing by Channa Horowitz and a photograph by Charlie White. London’s Ibid Projects exhibited new paintings by Jack Conway, whose work is also currently on display at their L.A. branch. Featuring flying bill notes and sacks of gold, Conway ironically captured the high-octane spending at Art Basel, much more effectively than the Bass Museum’s gaudy exhibition.

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Other striking booths at NADA including Night Gallery of Los Angeles, Frutta of Rome, and Tomorrow of New York, with its rainbow resin ant farm.

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After a quick break to feel the soft sand and warm seawater outside NADA at the Deauville Beach Resort, Paris, LA headed to the mainland neighborhood of Wynwood to see the Rubell Family Collection.

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Founded by hoteliers Donald and Mera Rubell, the collection features a laundry list of influential American and British artists–primarily from the 1980s–housed in the former DEA headquarters of “Miami Vice” fame, where confiscated cocaine and Kalashnikovs were stored. The galleries were full of works by Richard Prince, Robert Longo, Jeff Koons, Jason Rhoades, Glenn Ligon, and Charles Ray.

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The lobby featured a new commission by Kaari Upson: a silicone and spandex mattress cast over a fiberglass frame, caked in sooty black charcoal dust.

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After a quick bite near the Keith Haring-decorated Wynwood Walls, Paris, LA headed back to Art Basel for “Instagram As an Artistic Medium”, a Digital Talk panel discussion featuring curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, artist Amalia Ulman, collector Simon de Pury, MoMA PS1 Director Klaus Biesenbach, and Instagram founder Kevin Systrom, moderated by ForYourArt founder Bettina Korek. After discussing each of their projects and how they involve Instagram, the panelists wondered how the format of a social media platform may be similar or different from past art.

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Biesenbach cited On Kawara and Yoko Ono as two artists who predicted the seriality and repetition of Twitter and Instagram, and said that Instagramming his bedroom window every day had seriously affected his sense of time and change. Korek argued that Instagram shouldn’t count as “art” because it isn’t trying to be art at all, but rather a kind of filtered documentation. Finally, the panelists wrapped up with a brief argument over the nature of authenticity: while Systrom stated that the freedom to choose a subject and frame it makes Instagram an authentic platform, Ulman wondered aloud whether preselected screens or filters subvert this presumed authenticity.

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Finally, after a brief break for drinks at Disaronno’s party at the Art Deco Gale Hotel, Paris, LA attended Ryan McNamara’s MEEM 4 Miami: A Story Ballet about the Internet, commissioned by Performa. There were truly no bad seats in the house as audience members were carted around by trained workers to various parts of the theater (and even a secret back room), where dancers performed for groups of 10-20 people at a time individually, in pairs, or triplets.

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Once the audience had fragmented, perspectives shifted constantly. It was difficult to determine when one’s seat position would change, as the lifts always picked up the theater’s chairs from behind. In all, the dancers performed feverishly for over an hour, ending in the balcony as the music collapsed into itself, with a disjointed mashup of pop hits.

Stay tuned tomorrow for Day 3 of Art Basel Miami Beach.

ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH – DAY 1

This week, Paris, LA will be bringing you an exclusive look inside Art Basel, the world’s largest international art fair, which began today in Miami Beach and lasts until Sunday. In addition to the primary Art Basel fair, featuring 250 galleries from 31 countries as well as lecture and film series, more than ten independent art fairs take over the tropical beaches of South Florida and the museum spaces of metropolitan Miami.

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The week began with a press conference hosted by Director Marc Spiegler and Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine. The two introduced the fair’s sponsor, UBS Financial Services, and announced a number of revitalization initiatives in Miami, including the construction of a new convention center next year (to house future Art Basels) and the unveiling of a new Institute for Contemporary Art Miami, a controversial breakaway museum from Miami’s preexisting Museum of Contemporary Art.

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After the press conference, Paris, LA headed to the W Hotel South Beach for a private preview of a photographic series by Peter Lindberg, in conjunction with IWC Schaffhausen’s new watch collection. It wouldn’t be a major art fair without the inextricable collaboration of fine art, commercial advertising, and fashion. As the atmosphere and activity of Art Basel reveals, art is a commodity par excellence.

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At 11am, Art Basel Miami Beach officially threw open its doors to select collectors. The stalls were almost instantly swarming with eager collectors, though most fairgoers perused without significant scrutiny.

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Fondation Beyeler presented a collaborative performance by Marina Abramovic, part of the 14 Rooms series, which involved sleeping participants listening to soothing soundtracks while bundled on cots in a gallery. P.P.O.W. of New York presented a moving David Wonjarowicz retrospective, which displayed the artist’s multimedia sculptures and paintings next to his videos and photographs of the artist by friends Peter Hujar and Nan Goldin.

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Tornabuoni Art, Milan exhibited the light yellow drinking-straw wall sculptures of Francesca Pasquali next to deep blue and black paintings by iconic Italian artist Lucio Fontana. The booth was notably minimal in its primary color palette and white furniture to match its carpet and walls. Nearby, São Paolo’s Galeria Raquel Arnaud showed work by Carlos Zilio, influenced by quantum mechanics and metaphysical diagrams.

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Gladstone Gallery of New York and Brussels presented Cyprien Gaillard’s Cuban Wren, a massive steel excavator claw strung across with a bar of banded calcite, its iridescent mineral veins shining against the rusted machinery. The work recalled Gaillard’s work completed during his residency at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles last year, in which he used steel parts from Caterpillar excavators to mimic ancient sabertooths and refer to the constant construction in the Hammer’s neighborhood of Westwood. Gaillard’s was not the only work from the Hammer, as Los Angeles gallery Regen Projects exhibited site-specific work by Gabriel Kuri, sculptures that mimic the marble flooring of the museum’s second-floor smoking patio.

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Many galleries were awash with “blue chip” pieces. Marian Goodman Gallery of New York showed an impressive array: recent work by Jeff Wall, drawings and a video by William Kentridge, and mineral photographs by Tacita Dean. Next door, New York’s Cheim and Read showed a fleshy, pink Lynda Benglis wall sculpture and an unusually colorful Jenny Holzer ticker. London’s White Cube showed installations by Haim Steinbach, a lightbox by Alfredo Jaar, and documentation photographs of an early Marina Abramovic performance.

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After several hours of art viewing (tomorrow’s post will cover other Basel highlights), Paris, LA continued down Ocean Avenue to Untitled., the independent art far in a gleaming white tent on Miami Beach’s soft sandy shores. The crowd was much more casual and congenial. Several booths offered giveaway posters and tabloids, including Alfredo Jaar’s ingenious For Sale, Not For Sale (2014), a perfect addition to such a commercial setting.

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Zürcher Gallery of New York displayed calculators by Brian Belott that looked as if they had washed ashore, coated in barnacles and sandy pebbles. SIC, or Helsinki’s Initiatives for Individuality, displayed the detritus of a Monday night performance by Anastasia Ax: giant blocks of shredded paper, splattered with black paint, crumbling across the gallery floor. Ax has created “refugee camps” out of plaster and destroyed them in fits of rage, synced to live-performed noise music.

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Los Angeles had a definitive presence in the small fair. Culver City gallery Luis de Jesus showed Margie Livingston’s amusing (and ironically titled) Body of Work (2014) and a pair of beautiful digital prints by Kate Bonner. Veteran L.A. crafts artist Joel Otterson had a whimsical candelabra and ceramic vase exhibted in Maloney Fine Art’s booth.

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Stay tuned for Day 2 of Paris, LA’s trip to Art Basel Miami Beach.

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