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Art Wynwood returns, at the Art Miami and CONTEXT Art Miami headquarters, on the occasion of President Day’s long-weekend, from February 14th to 18th, consecrating the eighth edition of the show, with attribution, as for the last five years, of the award dedicated to the memory of Tony Goldman, creator of the Wynwood Walls and doors. To do the honors this year, the winner of the Art Wynwood Tony Goldman Lifetime Artistic Achievement Award, the legendary Ron English.
Delivered during a dinner reserved to the South Boulud by the hands of Jessica Goldman Srebnick, daughter of Tony and CEO of Goldman Properties, the award is given annually to those in the industry who has been able to distinguish. Ron, founder of the term POPaganda, deserves the merit of mixing technical skills and cartoon characters with works of art with particular cynicism and irony in the representation of American culture, of which his character Supersize Me has become famous, criticized by the junk giants American food. The proceeds from the VIP night of Art Wynwood will go to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Miami, distinguished by having promoted continuous experimentation in contemporary art, encouraging the exchange of art and ideas at a national and international level.
Sixty-five galleries from 12 countries exhibited some blue-chip works by post-war and modern artists with a clear majority of contemporary works, some inspired by street-art and surrealism with a notable artistic fan that last year attracted 25,500 people.
In addition to the celebrated Ron English, which featured Saturday Morning Guarnica, Charlie Eyes Lucy, Duck Alright and Boxer (four-handed paintings with Daniel Johnston), Three-Eyed Spongebob, Star Skull Basquiat, and Mousemask in the Combat Zone and Mighty MC in the Combat Zone for the Allouce Gallery, among the most expensive works on display by Anish Kapoor, Untitled, a stainless steel work from 2006. Coming from a private European collection, it was sold for $ 1,250,000 by the ARCHEUS / POST MODERN Gallery, exhibited with other works by Robert Rauschenberg, David Hockney and Andy Warhol’s Red Lenin.
The great Cuban art is instead on stage at the Cernuda Gallery in Coral Gables, which features works by Mario Carreño, René Portocarrero, Victor Manuel García, Amelia Pelàez, with the 1947 mixed technique Interior with Balcony sold for $ 400,000, and the oil of Wilfredo Lam with Untitled (Rendez-vous at Twighlight) of 1962 from Milan and sold for $ 350,000.
Among the contemporary works a lot of paintings but also ceramics and bronzes combined or not, with alternative materials. The pure poetry of the works entirely handmade by Kirsten Stingle of Atlanta at the Bel Air Fine Art of Miami is a mix of ceramics and painting that relives in the splendid sculptures that evoke images of the illustrative environment. On display The Air We Breathe ($ 8 200), Whisper ($ 4800), Ricochet ($ 4200), Soul Performer ($ 3800) and Dangerous Beauty ($ 1850).
Milena Martinez-Pedrosa’s if I Knew is inspired by the drama of immigrants at the Martinez-Pedrosa Studio in Miami: a semi-buried head surrounded by roses and golden moths for the work preserved in a case. The bi-face sculptures by Frank Hyder exhibited at the Project Gallery, halfway between Fabergé’s eggs, for which he worked and the memories of French Polynesia, in which he lived. Frank Hyder is the founder of The Janis Project and the creator of large inflatable sculptures at the entrance of Art Wynwood. Always on the outside the work Crabit, the giant flyer by Mike Renard. The satire of the bronze works of Renard (M-Ray), exhibited at the ArtLabbé Gallery are works full of meaning that denounce the consumerism, indifference and greed of man who does not renounce wars to exploit resources and the planet . On display: the Piovra whose tentacles represent the mafia families and corruption, ($ 15000) and Rhino Beetle, which represents the fragility of endangered species. Also in bronze, the work of Navigator’s Dream by the acclaimed Cuban artist Roberto Fabelo, always displayed at the Cernuda Arte gallery, halfway between a pot full of sirens and a boat full of unarmed migrants. This work also recalls the bitter theme of immigration, whose characters await with awe an event that will never happen, remaining lost in silence.
Italian art works are those by Giulia Ronchetti exposed at the DAM by co-founder and curator Valeray Francisco: Giulia, who among the exhibits boasts the display of the Hermés Italia showcases, uses images of the animal world, alchemical and old herbariums. Italian is also the artist Giovanni Confortini, halfway between hyperrealism and metaphysics, with his works on display at the Galleria Mart in Miami (Martinelli Art Gallery) by Raffaele Martinelli and Liliana Bressanelli.
Brendon Murphy, with his exploration of beauty, power and the need to understand the logarithms for a happy life, brings his equations on canvas and in sculptures. On display at the Contessa Gallery, two large sculptures: War and Peace Series, Tree Pose of 2018, representing a soldier doing yoga ($ 180,000) and BOONJI Spaceman, an astronaut returning from the future with a magic formula ($ 150,000). Also by Contessa Gallery is the essential art of Mr. Brainwash that creates, with broken vinyls on canvas, the figure of Freddy Mercury ($ 133,000) and the face of Bob Marley ($ 73,500) and the street art works of Hijack, Life through Street Art of 2017 ($ 55,000) and Beating Heart of 2018 ($ 45,000). Traditional and always of great impact is the figurative art of the talented Cesar Santos, who exhibited at Waltman Ortega Fine Art in Miami with his oil and plaster and charcoal works.
The various Giant-foot self-taught instinctive Idan Zareski break into many measures at the Markowitz Fine Art in Miami, while the simple, almost naive style of Kaï, comes to criticize society and condemn social injustice.
So much art mixed with current problems confirming the fact that art carries far more complex mechanisms that do not limit the look to a like.
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