|
 E-Mail
This Article
Art Basel Week 2008
Miami Report
By M. Brendon MacInnis
Bracing for the worst — with regard to the tough economy — the concensus that emerges among dealers and visitors who participated in this year’s (December 2008) “Art Basel Week” suggests that all was not lost after all. While some fairs got cold feet and bowed out beforehand, notably the AIPAD Photography Show, and other fairs that should have canceled didn’t — notably the disasterous Bridge Art Fair, there were nevertheless clear winners. The comeback story of Art Miami certainly tops the list; once all but written off as a casualty the of the tailwinds of the high flying Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami’s second largest and longest running art fair finally stepped up to the plate. First there was the smart decision taken the year before to leave the familiar trappings of the Miami Beach Convention Center for a large, pavilion-like tent in the city’s burgeoning Wynwood Art District, while also abandoning its traditional January schedule to coincide with Art Basel Week in December. Doing so had an immediate impact on the quality of the fair’s exhibitor applicants, with many of the same dealers who apply to participate in ABMB hedging their bets by applying for a booth in Art Miami. That strategy paid off; soon its roster of world class galleries shot up, along with new found high expectations among dealers taking a second look. Then came the one-two punch this year with the instalment of a new director, Nick Korniloff, who dramatically improved the fair’s logistics operations and secured the backing of BlackRock, the nation’s largest asset manager, as the fair’s main sponsor. This made possible a new media lounge curated by Asher Remy Toledo, the BlackRock Art Video | New Media lounge, the largest of its kind among any of the Miami art fairs. Then came Nestlé Nespresso SA; the same people who outfit the Art Basel VIP Lounge in Switzerland, providing the same VIP treatment for Art Miami. Indeed, in terms of attracting top artists, dealers and collectors from around the world, the gap between Art Miami and ABMB is closing.
The other big winner this year is Alexis Hubsman’s Scope-Miami. I remember a few years ago when The Armory Show in New York was making the transition from “alternative fair” status to becoming the main event, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Director, Glenn Lowry, in his keynote remarks declared that the fair had finally joined the big leagues; much the same can now be said of Scope-Miami. Especially with its incorporation of Ethan Cohen’s newly minted Art Asia fair, the sum of the two together is greater than the whole. There is a sense of place — that indefinable building block of culture — when walking through the fair. Things were happening, peoples’ paths were criss-crossing; it was fun and it was serious. And I heard that some dealers sold artworks.
One common misconception about art fairs is that it’s all about selling art. PR operatives send out glowing press releases to magazine editors proclaiming that millions of dollars of art was sold, or that a certain dealer’s booth “sold everything the first day” and so on. Don’t beleave it. A successful art fair is a successful marketing event. Even in good economic times, only a small percentage of galleries make substantial on-site sales; the rest is all talk, good talk. Dealers are happy when they see tangible proof that fair organizers have done their job.
At the bottom end, Bridge-Miami (Wynwood), Michael Workman’s attempt to launch a booth fair in Wynwood provides an example of what happens when the organizers have not done their job. Instead of doing the right thing and cancelling the fair beforehand when a critical mass of quality exhibitors failed to materialize, Mr. Workman accepted payment from anyone who could, as the expression goes, fog up a mirror. Making matters worse, a small handful of reputable dealers; two or perhaps three, were strung along, taking the fair organizers at their word until the last moment only to discover that they had paid art fair prices for what amounted to a stand in a flee market.
On the other hand, there were some pleasant surprizes in Miami. George Billis, a New York art dealer whose Red Dot hotel art fairs have gained a following in recent years, launched a booth fair in one of the pavilion-style tents in Wynwood on a street that looked like “Art Fair Row”— because of all of the other art fairs that had the same idea. Although this was the first booth fair organized by Mr. Billis, it had the look and feel of an established, professional booth art fair. How could that be? It turns out that Mr. Billis had the good sense to hire art fair veteran, Ilana Vardy, as producer. Before taking this job, Ms Vardy served as the Director of Art Miami for several years, gaining crucial experience in the Miami art scene which she clearly put to good use here.
Another nice surprize was to see the extent to which the art fairs in Wynwood cooperate now; more than just a bunch of competing art events taking place in the shadow of ABMB, the term “Art Basel Week” is now a misnomer. Today the number of important galleries exhibiting major art works outside of the ABMB zone of influence in Miami Beach dwarfs Art Basel Miami Beach. Shocking but true; the fair that started the party is more guest than host; more brand than substance. To be sure, ABMB is as good as it ever was. But Miami has grown and changed dramatically while in the ensuing years ABMB, under the stewardship of Samuel Keller, has essentially stood its ground in the secure environs of the Miami Beach Convention Center. Perhaps that’s why Messe Basel, which owns ABMB, replaced Mr. Keller, bringing in a team of new directors this year. According to official statements, Mr. Keller left ABMB to accept an offer to head the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland.
Among the highlights of ABMB’s ancillary VIP events under its new directorship (Co-Directors Annette Schönholze and Marc Spiegler) was an installation by David Lynch, Diamonds, Gold and Dreams, held in the Cartier Dome pavilion, across from the fair in the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens. The artist/filmmaker who developed a cult following with unconventional films such as the 1986 Blue Velvet and the 1990 television serial drama, Twin Peaks, transformed the interior of the Cartier Dome into a surreal planetarium with diamonds set in the illusion of a night skye.
Elsewhere in Miami Beach the usual assortment of hotel art fairs populated a stretch of Collins Avenue; there were some newcomers and there were some fairs that closed. They look nice from the street, lots of people mingling and having fun, but it’s too much work to go inside. In South Beach, along Ocean Drive, there is a very small artist run fair called Pool Art — participating artists “pool” their resources to pay for the fair — which is held in a boutique hotel that faces the ocean. This is a good fair for dealers because the artists are not represented by galleries; I usually find something I like. The Pool Art Fair is the brainchild of New York based artist entrepreneur Thierry Alet, whose company, Frère Independent, also produces the Digital & Video Art Fair, (DiVA).
The annual art brunch at the Sagamore Hotel, hosted by the ever gracious Marty and Christine “Cricket” Taplin is always wonderful. It seems like the whole art world converges on this unpretentious and charming oasis, just to catch up and perhaps cross a new path. Have I left anything out? Let’s do it gain next year.
M
E-Mail
This Article
Mai Braun
Feature, Inc.
By Megan Garwood
Comprised of several seemingly separate installations, Mia Braun’s solo exhibition, recent object, invites the viewer to dive into her chosen medium by stylistically reformulating and reconstructing recognizable subject matter into novel visual content. The works coalesce into a vibrant amalgamation of form and substance. Braun’s ultimate transformation of ubiquitous material, such as a shredded copy of a newspaper (The New York Times), works on several levels; she introduces a new user value for commonly considered, “trite” objects. Braun asks the viewer, “Why not sculpt with newspaper, not marble; why not use cardboard as a canvas; why not use enlarged tissue as wall hangings?”
Using unexpected yet familiar medium as a foundation, Braun produces works that play on the viewer’s familiarity with the material and, in turn, reveal underlying ideologies. For example, in the work, NYT-Nov 16, 2007 (Pakistan), Version 2, a newspaper “collage,” depicts The Times’ November 16, 2007 cover story interjected with taped paper cut-outs that resemble a Mickey-Mouse-eared shape. By appropriating the newspaper as a canvas—not only a medium to spread news—one must relearn how to view a newspaper as the physical material, as well as to discover anew the aesthetic and intellectual values projected onto it.
Here she only slightly shrouds the main context of The Times’ cover and does not blanket the story wholly. Therefore, even when conceived as art, the newspaper’s story remains a pivotal matter of discussion. Her usage of found, mass-produced objects echoes Duchamp’s famous “Fountain”. But unlike Duchamp, Braun does not completely negate the found object’s original use; instead she utilizes the newspaper to build a complex rhetoric discussing printed news and unprinted reactions. Located on the upper-left corner of The Times, the newspaper purports that it disseminates “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” but Braun’s NYT-Nov 16, 2007 begs to differ.
Braun’s involved study of unique medium allows her to acutely develop the form and texture of her works as she experiments with sculptural and pictorial shapes and representations. She sculpts with tissue, cardboard, newspaper and wood; she draws on tissue, cardboard and newspaper; she marks with paper, tape, ink and acrylic paint.
In contrast to her newspaper collages, Braun’s unfolded origami figures fully illuminate formal techniques, emphasizing aesthetics, showing her sculptural acumen. Nine sheets of tissue paper, a little over two-feet by two-feet, hang in a pattern of three by three. Each sheet titled after a different animal, which can be sculpted in traditional origami: pig, crab, beetle, crocodile, chicken, swan, pelican, goldfish and wild duck. Rather than nine sculptures in the round (tradition origami), Braun has unfolded the group and left the folds as “lines” tracing the “shape” of the animal. Brilliant neon colors are silk-screened onto the front and back of the tissue and fill the space that has been created by the folded lines; each piece of the series is purposely colored on both sides, forcing the viewer to examine the work from multiple viewpoints, as if it were a sculpture. This tension between sculpture and drawing, further tantalizes our visual perception.
Braun delineates the artistic struggle between planned precision and empirical surroundings by working with pliable medium, constructing forms that benefit from interaction. Rather than strive for that “perfect” static depiction, Braun embraces the malleability of her work and celebrates the ephemeral. Her playful choice and use of medium alludes to a larger motif, her insistence on a “teetering” humor in her art and her acceptance of uncontrollable ends.
Ed. Note:
Mai Braun’s solo exhibition, recent object, shares the gallery with Franck André Jamme and Toadhouse’s group exhibition, text works, an exploration of letters and words.
M
E-Mail
This Article
Yasumasa Yonehara
Barry Friedman LTD
By Natane Takeda
The apparent focus of Tokyo based photographer Yasumasa Yonehara’s Tokyo Amour is cute, young Japanese girls in semi-nude poses. As such, the work draws obvious comparisons to Nobuyoshi Araki, Japan’s most famous chronicler of all things prurient. But there is a kitsch quality in this show — which is part photography, part instalation — that feels deliberate and yet hard to figure.
Yonehara utilizes a Japanese-made polaroid camera called "Cheki," which produces 2 x 2 inch sized photographs. A sequence of snap shots of young semi-nude Japanese girls is laid out in a plexi grid frame. From a distance, the work looks like transparent square sculptures. The viewer must get much closer, standing just a few inches to see. Passively manipulated into this intimate proximity, the seductive girls (posed on a sofa or bed) catch the eye. Only parts of their bodies are shown, such as the upper torso and thighs, and as such the work looks almost like a puzzle. The snap shot presentation intones a friendly, immediate quality.
In some respects, Yonehara's work recalls Araki's nude series, in so far as that both artists deal with the erotic nature of images and our desires on a gut level. But there is a significant difference in how these ideas are conveyed. While Araki's work produces an invisible tension between the subject and the viewer, Yonehara's work focuses more on the subject matter itself. Just ask him and he’ll tell you matter-of-factly: "My work is all about Japanese young cute girls."
In technical terms there isn’t much detail here; unlike Araki's mastery of composition, particulary in the use of light and shadow, Yonehara's work is more raw, improvised.
Like Hiromix, another young Japanese photographer who uses a Polaroid camera to make visual diaries (she was born 1976 in Tokyo) Yonehara’s brand of “hip” feels somewhat dated here. Then of course the question arises, is this fashion photography or art? Now that fashion magazines reposition themselves as barometers of the art world — re: the W “Art Issue” — and art magazines court fashion ads, the line between kitsch, faux kitsch and fine art is truly in the eye of the beholder, or in this case, in the hands of that young guy the camera.
M
|
