Art Basel Miami Beach is for any and every one. With all the craze in Miami of hipsters and socialites skipping from one Art Basel party to the next and scoping out all of the beach’s beautiful galleries, it’s only fair that we tell you what our favorites are…the ones you shouldn’t miss.
What: Wynwood Walls
Where: Next door to Joey’s Italian Cafe, 2506 NW 2nd Ave
Why: The Street Art Mural Park, a collaboration between Tony Goldman and Jeffrey Deitch, features works by nine internationally respected artists that typically create museam-quality art. For Wynwood Walls, they took their talents to the streets and used the walls of the buildings owned by Goldman Properties as their canvas.
What: Gary Nader Fine Art
Where: in the heart of Wynwood, 62 NE 27th Street
Why: With the same square footage as the White House, it fills the many walls with fine works of art such as works by Lam, Kahlo, Rivera, Picasso, Matisse, and Chagall, with the largest collection of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by the most celebrated artist-Fernando Botero, and many works by Matta, the Chilean master, priced between $125,000 to $2.5 million.
What: The new de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space
Where: 23 NE 41st St. in the Design District.
Why: When you walk through the door, you’re greeted by installations that pop with imagination: Paulina Olowska’s CarMobile; textile creations by Cosima Von Bonin that include a giant multicolored octopus; seminal works by the late Félix González-Torres and Ana Mendieta, and this gem-Good Times by New York-based Jim Hodges, an edition of the New York Times washed in gold.
What: ChinaSquare Gallery
Where: Art Miami
Why: Pixelated images by Alex Guofeng Cao appear to be huge photographs. But look closely and you’ll see that the pixels are actually tiny photographic images, like the portrait of President Barack Obama made up of photos of President Abraham Lincoln; Marilyn Monroe is composed of tiny images of JFK; JFK of tiny images of Monroe.
What: Museum of Contemporary Art
Where: North Miami
Why: The Reach of Realism, which is showing the wildly colorful and humorous vinyl mural Collage Family by Olaf Breuning-mother, father and daughter created by the Swiss-born, New York-based artist from images he appropriated from the Internet.
What: Italy’s Galleria Continua
Where: Art Basel in the Miami Beach Convention Center’s Booth D-5
Why: They are featuring a piece by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruycere that may stop you, because it contains a hunk of wax that looks like a hunk of human torso with a $180,000 price tag.
What: American band, OK-Go rocks out 6:30 p.m.
Where: inside Design Miami’s big-top at Northeast 39th Street and First Court in the Design District.
Why: OK-Go will perform on Gibson guitars tricked out with Fendi fabulousness with fur, nailheads, leather and suede. In an ode to performance art, each guitar shoots laser lights onto a screen to create psychedelic images.
What: Okay Mountain Corner Store at Booth I-200
Where: Pulse Miami at the Ice Palace, 59 NW 14th St.
Why: Austin-based artist’s collective Okay Mountain opened. The 11 artists created a mind-boggling variety of handmade products to sell inside the store: wall signs, scratch-and-win lottery tickets at two for $10; fishing lures for $59.99 a package; sticks of beef jerky; and a soda fountain. Nothing is priced higher than $8,000. The only freebie is an advertising flier advertising sales. The installation’s point is to skewer the art fair’s overriding obsession with sales.
What: The Rubell Family Collection
Where: 95 NW 29th St. in Wynwood
Why: A massive Budweiser beer can installation by artist Cady Noland, part of the Rubell’s new exhibition, Beg Borrow and Steal is VERY cool to see. Starting with the title of the work “This Piece Has No Title Yet,” Noland uses whimsy and iconic objects to address American social issues. The exhibit of flags, scarves and more than 1,000 unopened beer cans lining the walls is designed to look unfinished by the random placement of objects.
Via: Miami Herald
