{"id":13615,"date":"2024-12-05T18:04:07","date_gmt":"2024-12-05T18:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=13615"},"modified":"2024-12-05T18:04:07","modified_gmt":"2024-12-05T18:04:07","slug":"the-best-booths-at-art-basel-miami-beach-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artoday.net\/?p=13615","title":{"rendered":"The Best Booths at Art Basel Miami Beach 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tOn Wednesday morning at the Miami Beach Convention Center, well before the 11 a.m. start time, the lines to get into Art Basel\u2019s VIP preview were already long at the fair\u2019s multiple entrances, and they remained that way throughout the day. Inside, the fair was packed as people meandered about the aisles. The booths of the blue-chip galleries were crowded, just as you\u2019d expect. Smaller galleries also managed to lure more modest groups of people.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs ARTnews<\/em> reported yesterday, the fair seems to have its energy back. Mega-galleries like David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth reported total sales of at least $12.9 million and $15.16 million, respectively, on the first day.<\/p>\n
\n\tAs a whole, though, this edition, the first staged under the direction of former dealer Bridget Finn, is a rather safe affair. Dealers seem to have brought large, easy-to-digest paintings. A few times, I heard fair visitors commenting on how much they loved seeing the colorful paintings\u2014it was uplifting to them, they said. Maybe dealers just happen to know what people want in December 2024, though that\u2019s a rather sad state of affairs, if you ask me.<\/p>\n
\n\tFor those who are looking to cut through the noise at this year\u2019s edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, here\u2019s a look at the best that the fair has to offer. The majority of these picks come from the fair\u2019s curated sections. The Kabinett presentations, single-artist spotlights mounted inside a gallery\u2019s regular booth, were particularly strong this year.<\/p>\n
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Jim Amaral at Instituto de Visi\u00f3n<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tWhen it comes to straight artist couples, men historically eclipsed women. But the opposite is the case with artist Jim Amaral, whose wife, the fiber artist Olga de Amaral, has received much more acclaim than him in the past several years. She recently got a stellar retrospective at the Fondation Cartier in Paris this year; he has never had a survey of that scale. Jim wouldn\u2019t have it any other way. A California native, he moved to Colombia to study medicine, quickly realized he was no good at it, and met Olga, who agreed to move to the Colombian countryside with him so they could both pursue their art.<\/p>\n
\n\tStarting in the 1960s, Amaral started creating his own artistic language. It was heavy on eroticism, and it aimed to flip gender norms on their head. He refused to accept that feminism should only bring women into men\u2019s roles; it was men who must also claim traditional women roles in the name of equality, he believed. Toward the edge of this Kabinett presentation are a pair of densely painted houses. They open to reveal blue orbs at their centers, along with a rendering of a man in one and a woman in the other. But my favorite is a tender pencil drawing from the 1970s that just shows the close-ups of mouths, fingers, and nails. There\u2019s lovely erotic tension at play here.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Zilia S\u00e1nchez at Galerie Lelong & Co.<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tErotic tension is also at hand in another Kabinett presentation, this one dedicated to Zilia S\u00e1nchez. While S\u00e1nchez is best known for her three-dimensional paintings, this presentation focuses on her sculptures, which reinterpret her canvases in marble and bronze. The best\u2014and most sensual\u2014of these is Concepto II<\/em>, conceived around 1998 and realized in 2019. In the booth, the two bronze elements, each weighing 80 pounds, are placed so close together on a plinth that they almost touch, with just a centimeter or two between them. Both are ensconced in curved partitions, giving this scene a sense of privacy, as if to suggest that this were a place where anything could happen perhaps.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Rachel Youn at Night Gallery<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tInstalled on the floor of Night Gallery\u2019s booth is a sculpture by Rachel Youn that likewise seems to undulate with desire. At its center are two oscillating circular massagers covered with artificial plants attached with a pink cord. The two massagers are in a constant loop of pulling apart and coming back together as though they were about to kiss. It\u2019s mesmerizing to watch. For Youn, that endless loop represents contemporary living: the tools we try to soothe ourselves with are merely short-term fixes in the path toward permanent, if unachievable, happiness.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Jimena Croceri at Piedras<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tBuenos Aires\u2013based artist Jimena Croceri is one of the stand-outs in Positions, the fair\u2019s section for solo booths. Here, she presents a series that she began while doing a residency at Flora ars+natura in Bogot\u00e1, where she made several visits to the Museo del Oro. She was fascinated by the pre-Columbian metalwork she there. Croceri\u2019s work is similarly about touch, focusing on the small voids created when two bodies connect. She created plaster molds of these areas between, for example, two women\u2019s chests or butts pressed up against each other, the soles of three pairs of feet touching, the recesses of a clavicles when a person raises their shoulders. From these molds, she then produced bronze sculptures that themselves appear like possible medical implements. She then re-creates the compositions from which she made the molds, now placing the final bronze sculptures in those voids, and makes a photograph to accompany the sculpture. These are parts of the body we don\u2019t think much about, but they\u2019ve never looked so elegant as they do here.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Melvin Edwards at Galerie Buchholz<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tFor the past few years, Melvin Edwards has been realizing installations in barbed wire that he conceived decades ago. The most memorable of these is in a room at Dia:Beacon in Upstate New York, where visitors can get relatively close to these works. At Art Basel Miami Beach, Galerie Buchholz has brought a similar piece that Edwards remade for a show at the gallery\u2019s Berlin space in 2023. This work, titled Now\u2019s the Time<\/em> (1970\u20132023), is placed out of harm\u2019s way in a corner. Edwards has suspended a saxophone from a metal chain that extends downward; in front are around a dozen lengths of barbed wire installed in a triangular formation. The tension in this piece seems even more pronounced than Edwards\u2019s other installations in this medium. There isn\u2019t just danger here but perhaps joy and vibrance if the sax were to be played. It\u2019s thrilling.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Mimi Smith at Luis De Jesus<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tMimi Smith, an artist associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, offers one of the most striking showings in the Survey section, for historical presentations. On view are several of her \u201cTelevision Drawings,\u201d dense transcriptions of the morning and evening news broadcasts from the 1970s and \u201980s that are framed within renderings of TV sets from the era. Nearby are four clocks from the 1980s and \u201990s that tackle social issues like healthcare access, environmental justice, and poverty. Woman\u2019s Work is Never Done, Health <\/em>(1995), for example, is pink-painted clock with a black-and-white photograph of an open fridge with a caption bearing the work\u2019s title on its face. At one o\u2019clock, there\u2019s domestic violence; at two, breast cancer; at three, abortion rights and safety; at five, AIDS; at eight, infant mortality.<\/p>\n
\n\tBut the most powerful work in this booth by LA\u2019s Luis De Jesus is her three-part installation Slave Ready: Corporate<\/em> (1991\u201393). At its center is a pinstriped women\u2019s business skirt suit; to this Smith has lined its edges with steel wool pads, a commentary on how women were still expected to perform domestic labor during the era, even as they ascended the corporate ladder. To the right is another clock piece with a woman holding up her finger as she says \u201cJust a Minute, Please,\u201d while at left is one of Smith\u2019s \u201cError Message\u201d paintings, a series depicting the problematic language used in early computer language that were built around \u201cmaster-slave\u201d input functions. (In the \u201980s, Smith learned these complex languages.) The painting reads simply: SLAVE READY.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Miriam Inez da Silva at Gomide & Co.<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tThis Kabinett presentation spotlights Miriam Inez da Silva, a Brazilian artist whose oeuvre has been under reconsideration over the past several years thanks to a major retrospective and catalog in 2020 by another Brazilian gallery, Almeida & Dale. Miriam, who went by her first name to subvert patriarchal hierarchies, was long marginalized within Brazilian art history, with some considering her a na\u00efve artist. But she was a keen observer of the changes in Brazilian society during the country\u2019s dictatorship and in the years after its end in 1985. Though she studied under Grupo Frente artist Ivan Serpa (also featured in Gomide & Co.\u2019s booth) at Museum of Modern Art of Rio de Janeiro, Miriam turned her attention to her native state of Goi\u00e1s, in central Brazil, and the social, cultural, and political changes happening there, especially for women.<\/p>\n
\n\tHer paintings synthesize popular culture, mythology, Catholicism, and Afro-Brazilian religions. One shows a woman and man in bed, along with the caption \u201cThe woman who ripped the pillow and bit her husband\u2019s nose because she dreamed about R. Carlos,\u201d referring to the famous Brazilian singer-songwriter Roberto Carlos. The samba musician Paulinho da Viola features in another, with wings as he rests precariously on a cavaquinho.\u00a0 Another shows a shepherd as an angel flying above a herd of cows he is corralling, while several feature sailors interacting with mermaids. In one, a nude Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, with a snake to their left and peacock to their right, hold up a saint on a cloud.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n
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Agosto Machado at Gordon Robichaux<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Maximil\u00edano Dur\u00f3n\/ARTnews\t\t\t\t<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\n\tIn the Positions section, Agosto Machado presents shrines and altars to his friends, long since departed. (The Museum of Modern Art recently acquired a Machado piece similar to these.) At Art Basel, the artist has brought together a sundry of personal items that he has amassed over the decades to create moving tributes to drag performer Ethyl Eichelberger and one to Warhol superstars Candy Darling, Holly Woodlawn, and Jackie Curtis. In these dense installations, Machado has arranged textiles, prayer cards, matchbooks from places where he performed with them, books about their lives, their images (some of them by Peter Hujar), a compact case, I Ching cards, fans, masks, subway tokens, jewelry, tassels, and artworks by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Uzi Parnes, Steve Dalachinsky, and Bruce Eyster.<\/p>\n
\n\tThe most fascinating of those on view, however, is a new work, Desire (Altar)<\/em>, which features, among other trinkets, a rosary and prayer beads, a box of amyl nitrite (early poppers that came in a vial to be broken), and a painting of a nude man\u2019s torso by Bill Rice. Machado has draped a yellow fabric with red script over the painting\u2019s right side, where there is a depiction of the buff man receiving a blow job. This modesty isn\u2019t for the sake of Art Basel visitors, though; this painting lived in Machado\u2019s apartment for years, and he at one point decided to cover it up. Machado\u2019s works are rich in queer history, much of which would have been forgotten were it not for elders like him who have kept it alive. The poignant tension between joy and grief, love and loss, sacred and profane is ripe in these works. That\u2019s not something you see at most art fairs these days.<\/p>\n<\/article>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n
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