Miami Art Week Stretches Far Beyond Art Basel Miami Beach
It’s party time.
Art Basel in Switzerland effectively pioneered the art fair model so aggressively proliferated today, but it’s the Miami offshoot, launched in 2002, that solidified it. Today, the 21-year old satellite remains l’enfant terrible, the spring breaker of art fairs. But don’t be fooled by the playful iridescent miniskirts and Latin American dance music…because Miami still means serious business, stretching far beyond the big main fair with everything from emerging art to bank-sponsored behemoths.
Pack your bags and buckle up for the best of 2023 Miami Art Week.
Hitch a Ride
Uber who? If you’re in the market for a luxury car service, two neck-in-neck competitors are eager to assist. Blacklane offers on-demand service in Miami allows users to book rides for immediate pick-up, as well as longer-distance holiday travel. Meanwhile, Alto boasts that their drivers are full-time employees, not contractors, and includes HEPA air filtration and Do Not Disturb buttons in each vehicle. Alto has coupons for first-time users, perfect for the Miami newbie!
Especially during the pandemic, art world elites were known to fly private or take black cars from New York to Palm Beach to escape the plague. Why not join them in decadence?
Enjoy Sex
Well, obviously. But the Museum of Sex has launched a 32,000 square foot Miami offshoot for December 1st, with two concurrent showcases. The first, Modern Sex: 100 Years of Design and Decency, historicizes 500 works and ephemera documenting the evolution of intercourse and pleasure. It chronicles the history of sexual health in America from the 1920s through World War II and into the free love movement of the 1960s and 70s. The show is co-curated by actress Dakota Johnson (of 50 Shades of Grey fame) and co-sponsored by Durex and KY.
The second new show is Hajime Sorayama: Desire Machines. The Japanese artist features four ‘sexy robot’ sculptures and 20 new hyperrealist erotic paintings, including a 14-ft triptych to be included in the immersive Super Funland: Journey into the Erotic Carnival—the mainstay permanent collection. This is Sorayama’s first American show, organized with Nanzuka Gallery in Tokyo, who will also sell his work during the Art Basel Miami Beach fair.
Demand Justice
The last few years have seen a massive shift in the way blue-chip art responds to inequity. Untitled Art Miami Beach has partnered with For Freedoms to debut a series of panels. On December 1st from 4 to 5pm, former director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art will be in conversation with artists and educators at The Square West Palm in a public panel called Challenged: Art and The Freedom of Expression. From 11-12pm at UOVO West Palm, What is Creative Expression Now? Exploring the Role of Art in Today’s Society will include legendary Project Empty Space founder Jasmine Wahi.
Limited edition prints will complete the panels, available December 5th. Untitled will be open to the public December 6th through 10th, 11am to 7pm. Gallerists include Claire Oliver, the Harlem-based dealer whose Black American showcases continue to make history.
At the NADA art fair, ART FOR CHANGE partners with the Prospect Park Alliance to celebrate Brooklyn, with limited edition prints already available at artforchange.com.
Celebrate Local Diversity
The Rubell family is famous for having its pulse on art from New York and Miami for decades. The launch of their eponymous museum in 2019 has ensured the permanence of their family’s enduring collection. They are known for collecting works by Yayoi Kusama and Kerry James Marshall, who will be on view as well. But the mainstay on December 4th is work from the artists-in-residence program. St. Louis-born Basil Kincaid and Havana-born Alejandro Piñeiro Bello open solo exhibitions chronicling their year at the museum. Kincaid explores African themes and origins with quilting, found materials, collage and photography, while Piñeiro Bello looks at Caribbean diaspora from his home base in Miami, painting with vibrant colors on raw linen or burlap. This is a local place for local people, worth looking at in the middle of a global frenzy.
The same night (December 4th from 6-8pm), Opera Gallery Miami opens 18 paintings and 9 sculptures by Fernando Botero (1932-2023.) His full-figured images are famous and highly collectable the world over, but distinctly Latin American.
And for true grit, the Museum of Graffiti celebrates a book launch on December 9th from 5 to 7pm. This is an essential destination to understand the heritage of street art and aesthetic in Miami, Brooklyn, and beyond. For more information, please visit museumofgraffiti.com or email [email protected].
Take Tea Time
SCOPE Art Show may not be the fan favorite during its 20+ years at Miami Art Week, but their 2023 programming is going the extra mile from December 5th through 10th. 110 participants from 23 countries feature 70 new galleries and experiences.
Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova will be on site, but my personal favorite is a true hidden gem: Japanese-born experiential installation tea room, which includes both hosts and guests in a ritual of sharing a bowl of tea to revere the symbiosis between craft and calm, aesthetic and environment. In a world of nightclubs and rat racing, why not take a pause with Japan before hitting the streets again?
Save the Ocean With Technology
From December 5th-1oth, Faena Art and the Reefline will showcase installations focused on discussing the realities of climate change. After all, Miami Beach is at the epicenter of its reality, threatened every day by changing tides. Works by Beeple, Alissa Alfonso, Guido Elgueta and +X. feature. Faena also plans to launch a seven-mile underwater sculpture park, snorkel trail and artificial reef 600 feet off the Miami Beach shoreline later next month. Chase Sapphire supported Faena’s initiatives.
Undeniably, Beeple’s S.2122 is the breakout work in the showcase. The artist made history when he sold a digital work of art as an NFT at Christie’s for $69 million in 2021, and has since been collected by top museums such as Crystal Bridges in Arkansas. NFTs and crypto are huge in Miami, and many digital art collectors will be there to usher in a new generation.
At NADA, artist OONA’s performance of “Look, Touch, Own,” is an NFT, in which every touch of her former silicone implants triggers the creation of a new NFT visual, as a statement about the commodification of women at the Annka Kultys Gallery, from December 5–9, 2023.
But a more subdued showcase at Faena Beach by Sebastian Errazuriz (b. 1977, Santiago, Chile), MAZE: Journey Through the Algorithmic Self, was designed using artificial intelligence (AI) platforms Midjourney and DALLE2. This installation is actually life-sized, inviting viewers to literally navigate the maze of confusion to solving the planet’s problems through technology.
Another important discussion is over the work “Lost at Sea” by Gustavo Oviedo at the Balfour Hotel on December 6th at 7pm, featuring “responsibly-made” leather handbags by Piper & Skye and live music. I don’t know how much you will hear over the DJ, but hopefully the bags are saving the planet.
Mingle with Hollywood
Art Basel and Tribeca Festival will open talks to the public at Miami Beach Convention Center on December 8th through 10th, featuring new father Robert De Niro and John Stamos. Their more private Miami Botanical Garden events promise the creme de la creme of Hollywood elites, citing David Duchovny and Ben Stiller as prior guests.
Instagram It
If Hollywood is not calling your name, perhaps ARTTECHHOUSE will get you the Instagrammable photos you crave. Computer-driven installations celebrate innovation for the bargain price of $25, at 736 Collins Ave., Miami Beach.
Keep it Weird
Who needs a love shack when you can have an ape shack? Forget the bored apes of crypto. From December 6th through 10th, Spectrum Miami hosts a series of acrylic Wild Planet paintings. They are named from the B-52s of Love Shack song fame’s second album, and feature their new partners, 16 chimpanzees from the Save the Chimps Floridian refuge. Priced at $5000 and under, each painting is named for a B-52 song or lyric and signed by the band. Limited-edition posters for $50 during the fair are available on site at the fair. The B-52s will be playing at the Venetion in Vegas through 2024.
And there you have it. From nudes to apes, oceans to computers, Miami is anything but boring. Best of luck to those brave souls who dare to do it all. You’re probably gong to need that Japanese tea room.
