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After the Miami Art Week, 5 days immersed in the world of art including exhibitions, galleries, parties, special events and performances without physical and material time, to post an image or leave a comment: A total full immersion that despite everything makes it equally difficult to capture Art Basel as a whole even if in speed-date mode. Less than 6 hours to see Art Basel is a schedule that does not go well with the hours necessary to see and digest everything correctly. But this is the Miami Art Week and when it starts you are thrown in a jungle in the midst of people coming from everywhere to discover the Magic City, with a still limited number of parking lots and the fallback on Uber (which more often than not will turn down the call) or Lyft, this year affiliated to the exhibition circle. But the madness of the art week also offers its merits by showing the possibility of testing how, a city like Miami, a melting pot of culture, races and languages can animate, letting itself be enveloped by the intricate network of satellite fairs, events, parties and museum exhibitions of considerable value.
The official opening of the 17th edition of Art Basel, from December 5 to 9, began between greetings and honors to the outgoing president Norman Braman, automotive magnate, in charge of Art Basel on which I want to spend two words starting from when, seventeen years ago he managed to convince the unwilling executives of the Swiss fair to open a “branch” in Miami raising the profile of contemporary art in the popular culture of the city, then scarce in terms of museums and galleries.
Besides Braman’s presence there were Dan Gelber, mayor of the city, Marc Spiegel general manager of Art Basel, Noah Horowitz, director of art Basel for America and Johan Jervoe, head of marketing for UBS global leader market of Art Basel.
In addition to UBI bank participated as a sponsor MGM Resorts International Audemars Piguet, NetJets, BMW, Ruinart, La Prairie, Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, Vienna Tourist Board, Sanlorenzo, Yvel, Swiss International Air Lines, Prada and Kannoa and Hotel Partners.
Before leaving, Braman talked about the splendid renewal of the Convention Center, by Arquitectonica, with a total cost of $ 620 million and the imminent construction of a hotel connected to the Convention Center.
Opened in 2001, the exhibition was canceled following the events of 9/11, for which the official opening, in which Braman, engaged elsewhere, was replaced by Sam Keller, then director of communications of Art Basel, was in 2002. The opening was not easy because of the few adhesions to the fair that pushed Braman to ask Sam Keller for help, so that he could have some of the galleries present at the Basel fair. The following year with the entry of Gagosian things began to change and at the third edition, Art Basel in Miami Beach had already consolidated its reputation not only as an artistic event, but also as one of the biggest weeks expected during the year with its district of satellite fairs. The New York Times at the time declared “The Miami Beach art fair has differentiated from Art Basel in Switzerland by staging a tropical art show: A pioneering mix particularly effective in obtaining a new class of Americans looking for a social status and a luxurious lifestyle in the name of art ”
The unbelievable modesty of Braman, unlike other collectors, has never allowed to put a plaque in his name to commemorate the founder of Art Basel Miami Beach, rather than his humility has highlighted the importance of collectors as de la Cruze, Rubell, Scholl, Martin Margulies and Alberto Ibargüen, president and CEO of the artistic organization Knight Foundation, who has donated $ 165 million to local art organizations for the last 13 years, in the foundation of Art Basel Miami Beach.
History aside we come to numbers: this year in Art Basel 268 art galleries from 35 countries participated, including 29 completely new ones. In addition to the actual exhibition, Art Basel left room for “Conversations”, a collection of panels in which artists such as Christo and Judy Chicago, museum directors such as Hans-Ulrich Obrist, director of the Serpentine Gallery or Franklin Sirmans took part, director of the Perez Art Museum.
In addition to strengthening its position as the leading American art fair Art Basel Miami Beach attracted 83,000 spectators during the five days of the fair, including influential collectors, directors, curators, trustees and senior patrons of over 200 major museums and international cultural institutions that have had the opportunity to see and preview the works on display, among them: the Museum l ‘Albertina in Vienna; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Aspen Art Museum; Baltimore Museum of Art; Center Pompidou, Paris; Creative Time, New York; Denver Art Museum; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Front International, Cleveland; Bilbao Guggenheim Museum; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C .; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Khora Contemporary, Copenhagen; Minneapolis Institute of Art; Jumex Museum, Mexico City; Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, Medellín; Tamayo Museum, Mexico City; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham; New Museum, New York; Norval Foundation, Cape Town; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Paolo Museum of Art; Serpentine Galleries, London; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Americas Foundation, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier; VIA Art Fund, Boston; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
The show was structured as usual in the different areas this year best distributed because of the renewal of the Convention Center, in the middle of which, in the Grand Ballroom was set up an incredible performance “Autorreconstruccion: To Insist, To insist , To Insist … “by Abraham Cruzvillegas and Bárbara Foulkes.
Galleries: the beating heart of Art Basel with 198 galleries exhibiting works between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, presenting the highest quality of painting, sculpture, drawings, installations, photography, video and digital works. This year, the list of participants was joined by 12 galleries that have already participated in the show’s Nova, Positions or Survey sector: Boers-Li Gallery, Canada, David Castillo Gallery, DC Moore Gallery, Essex Street, Tanya Leighton, mor Charpentier, Proyectos Monclova, Ratio 3, Simões de Assis Galeria de Arte, Travesía Cuatro and Galerie Georges-Philippe and Nathalie Vallois. Two galleries in the main sector – Kayne Griffin Corcoran and Cardi Gallery – were completely new to the show, and Barbara Thumm returned to the industry after a brief break.
Nova: 29 exhibitors presenting new works for up to three artists each. Participants for the first time included: Carlos / Ishikawa blank projects, Selma Feriani Gallery, Galerie Christophe Gaillard, Grimm, Hanart TZ Gallery, Levy Delval, Josh Lilley, Linn Lühn, Morán Morán, Lorcan O’Neill Gallery Rome and Tiwani Contemporary. Highlights included: “World Matters”, an installation inspired by the paleolithic Venus figurines by the French artist Marguerite Humeau, presented by Clearing; an installation that explores the impact of colonialism and its remaining cultural artifacts by Claudia Martínez Garay, presented by Grimm; ceramics, textiles and a performance video by the Mexican artist Pia Camil, presented by the Instituto de visión; and an installation with wall tapestries, paintings and a figurative sculpture by Jeffrey Gibson, presented by Roberts Projects.
Positions: 14 galleries each with a single artist represented. The highlights of the participants for the first time included the Mexican gallery Parque Galería, which presented the second chapter in the series by the Ecuadorian artist Oscar Santillán, Dawn and Dusk Seen, which tells the history of science in Latin America; Upstream Gallery, based in Amsterdam, presenting “La Casa Lobo”, a monumental feature film of stop-motion animations by the duo of Chilean artists Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña; and This Is No Fantasy by Anne Tanzer + Nicola Stein from Australia, presents new paintings by Vincent Namatjira that reflect on the aboriginal heritage of the artist and on his complex colonial history. Other participants included for the first time: Bodega, Commonwealth and Council, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Madragoa and Galerie Jérôme Poggi.
Edition: in its sixth year Edition presented 11 world leaders in the field of prints and printed works: Alan Crystal Gallery, Crown Point Press, Gemini GEL, Carolina Nitsch, Pace Prints, Paragon, Polígrafa Obra Gràfica, STPI, Two Palms, ULAE, as well as Susan Sheehan Gallery, who participated for the first time at the Miami Beach show.
Survey: The sector is back for the fifth year with 16 targeted presentations of works created before 2000. Six exhibitors joined the industry for the first time: Sabrina Amrani, with textile-based works by Chant Avedissian; Tibor de Nagy, with a presentation of works by Larry Rivers; Eric Firestone Gallery, with the work of Joe Overstreet of the late ’60s and early’ 70s that speaks of the African-American experience; Paci contemporary, with a series of composite portraits computer generated by Nancy Burson; Venus Over Manhattan, with Maryan’s work combining abstraction and figuration; and Walden, with a series of embroidered fabrics, works by Feliciano Centurión. Other highlights include the Peter Blum Gallery, with a presentation of Joyce J. Scott’s early work; Anat Ebgi, who presented works by the Paraguayan artist Faith Wilding, recognizing her contribution to the discourse of the history of feminist art; and Hales Gallery, whose stand presented the work of Virginia Jaramillo reflecting on her time in New York during the Black Power movement – a period of transition in her life.
Kabinett: Always the highlight of the show, Kabinett consisted this year in 31 exhibitions curated inside stands throughout the fair. This year, the industry once again demonstrated the strong focus of the Miami Beach show on artists and galleries in the Americas. The highlights included a presentation of both youth and later works by the Uruguayan artist Washington Barcala to Jorge Mara – La Ruche of Buenos Aires; an exhibition that includes little-known abstract paintings made between 1954 and 1964 by Romare Bearden at the DC Moore Gallery; Surrealist drawings by Gray Foy to Francis M. Naumann Fine Art; “A Tribute to Richard Gray”, presented by Richard Gray Gallery, a selection of post-war works on paper in homage to the late art merchant and connoisseur Richard Gray, who passed away earlier this year; and a Kabinett of the Brazilian artist Paulo Roberto Leal at Bergamin & Gomide.Art Basel presented exceptional works, from modern masterpieces to contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, works on paper and film – some of which were created specifically for the fair.
In addition to all this the neighboring museums have given their best exposing exhibitions of a certain thickness: The Bass has presented works by Paola Pivi, Aaron Curry and The Haas Brothers; The Frost Art Museum-FIU presented “Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago”; the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) presented Larry Bell, Manuel Solano and Judy Chicago; the NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale: Remember to React: 60 Years of Collecting and William J. Glackens and Auguste Renoir: Affinities and Distinctions; the MDC (Museum of Art and Design) presented Superflex and William Kentridge; the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art presented AfriCOBRA; The PAMM (Perez Art Museum Miami) presented Arthur Jafa, and Christo and Jean-Claude: surrounded islands; the LOWE Art Museum: A Selection of Paintings by Florence and Robert Werner Collection and Yousuf Karsh, FAU exhibited works by Eduard Duval Carrié.
Private collectors have opened their collections among them: the Cruz Collection, Margulies Collection at the Warehouse and The Rubell Family Collection.
Satellite exhibitions were: Miami Art, Art Africa Miami, Miami Aqua Art, Context, Miami Design, Miami Ink, Miai River Art Fair, NADA Art Fair, Pigment Intl, Pint, Prizm, Pulse, Raw Pop Up, Red Dot, Scope Spectrum Miami and Untitled. In addition to this, during the Miami Art Week, Afrofuture was inaugurated, an organization that, starting from the Overtown area, wants to re-establish its origins and offer the opportunity to find its roots.
But if it is true that art reflects our time, socially, politically, economically and technologically, it is also true that nothing can keep up with the times and the judgments of the generations to come. And in an incessant swarm of flowers, collages, sex, and historical artists reproduced in all techniques and in suits, changes always become difficult to digest and everything requires constant evolution, constantly and unquestionably inflated with excess, emptiness and of monetization.
The Latin American art sector is undoubtedly growing, especially Cuban, as the galleries of Latin America have been able to grasp what is essentially an advantage, the city of Miami, as a gateway to Latin America and for the many successful and businessmen of North and South America who keep their second homes here. The Latin American art market holds 5% of the best collectors in the world.
As for the 2019 edition, Art Basel is committed to improving the participation economy for small galleries in its future editions. The 2019 edition will introduce an escalator for stand prices, allowing larger galleries to subsidize smaller ones. The new scheme will come into force for the first time at Art Basel in June, where there will be a 8% price drop for the smaller galleries of the fair and a 9% increase for the largest galleries in the fair. Adjustment that will also be made for Art Basel Miami Beach.
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