BY Jane Simon
“Satellites: it’s getting awfully crowded out here in outer space. Nearly twenty ‘satellite’ fairs have developed around the core of Art Basel Miami Beach, aka ‘the big fair.’ So what happens when one exits the artificially-lit warren of booths in the Convention Center, leaving the insularity of planet Basel to explore the permutations in the surrounding atmosphere? At the NADA, Untitled, and Scope fairs, for example, representation of more diverse pockets of the art world—with a lot of energy but varied levels of quality—can be found. It’s a constellation where ‘fringe’ phenomena sometimes prove to be just as compelling as what one sees at ABMB. And the presentation has a decidedly different flair.
NADA
For the past ten years, the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) has been the place to find emerging but not necessarily ‘hot’ or ‘young’ talent (read, substance over sex appeal… in Miami. Who would have thought?). For example, Kerry Schuss’s New York gallery showed several remarkable drawings by the late Tom Fairs (1925–2007), a professor of stained glass at London’s Central School of Art and Design, who only started making work earnestly and prolifically after he retired in 1987. A certain vibrancy pulses from the diminutive works, their quality far outshining some of the flashier fair offerings. Also worth a mention is the intergenerational pairing of works by Thomas Bayrle (born 1937, and a long-time professor at Frankfurt’s famed Städelschule art academy) from 1976 with new pieces and a site-specific intervention by younger artist Michael Riedel (born 1972) in the Bischoff Projects booth. Yet another example of older work that stood out at the fair can be found at Newman Popiashvili, where two photographic prints by Georgian artist Guram Tsibakhashvili from 1990 and 1991 are on view. Created with a camera that split 35mm film in two parts, rendering the juxtaposition of images out of the artist’s control, the hazy and slightly surreal results—underpinned with quotes from Alice in Wonderland—seem to hint at the wild transformations of post-Soviet life in Tbilisi, where the artist still works… (more online).
Untitled
Untitled is the new fair on the scene this year. Housed in an impressive bespoke pavilion (by architecture firm K/R) right on the beach across from the Bentley Hotel on Ocean Drive, it was a curated fair, founded by New York-based independent curator Omar Lopez-Chahoud. Dancing around the market-based motivation for much of what goes on during this week, Lopez-Chahoud handpicked the participating galleries and curated nine individual projects that occupy the sleek tent structure. According to Lopez-Chahoud, he was interested in galleries who could show intergenerational pairings and non-figurative work with a conceptual bent. The results on the whole were a very mixed bag, although the initiative is admirable, and the location—airy and flooded with the natural light that Art Basel Miami Beach’s venue is so sorely lacking—was a big draw in and of itself. My favorite work in the project spaces was artist Coco Fusco’s The Empty Plaza/La Plaza Vacia, a new video from 2012. Filmed in Havana’s famous main square, the plaza’s contemporary emptiness is juxtaposed with archival images of the early days of the Cuban Revolution. In it, Fusco weaves the desolation of today’s Cuba—with its beleaguered economy and frustrated populace—with the romantic promises of the past.
Scope
In the past, Scope’s ‘Breeder Program’ has given upstart galleries a chance to strut their stuff—the now well-known Peres Projects (which participated in 2002, and can now be found at NADA) is a good example. But this year Scope has also taken cues from the curated sections of Art Basel, and included several ambitious commissioned installations in the corridor around the fair. Frankly, I found these to be more interesting than the presentations in the fair booths, which had a slightly haphazard and hit-and-miss quality. For example, the comforting yet wholly out-of-place sound of crackling fire—emanating from an installation-cum-bonfire of old TV sets playing endless loops by artist Kevin Cooley—follows you as you come upon expansive installations like Lori Nozick’s anti-architectural folly of reclaimed lumber, glass, and neon lighting. It’s a rough-hewn lighthouse, a pavilion for unstructured thoughts, somewhat gangly but also colorful and fun.” …(more online).
(Via Art Agenda » Reviews.)