Art Basel Miami

"Ocean's Symphony" by Herman Bas.


“Music was also the basis of one of the fair’s biggest word-of-mouth hits, an installation at the Kate MacGarry Gallery’s shipping container by the British duo Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard. Titled ‘Silent Sound,’ it led me into a dark, padded chamber to hear, and feel, a recording of a specially commissioned live performance by the English rock musician J. Spaceman. Maybe it was the ‘ambisonic’ technology, an ocean rather than a wall of sound. Maybe it was the subliminal message that was supposedly encoded in the music. Or maybe, after three days of nonstop looking, it was a relief just to sit and listen.” — Karen Rosenberg


“One particularly active corner of the convention center was home to Terence Koh’s salaciously self-mythologizing photographs at Peres Projects and Xu Zhen’s complete re-creation of a Chinese supermarket at ShanghArt. Nearby, Michele Maccarone was exhibiting Paul McCarthy’s aromatic chocolate Santas, a lush peacock-feather carpet by Carol Bove and a decidedly less sensual array of documents from the harrowing legal battle between the artist Christoph Büchel and Mass MoCA.”

“So was an Enoc Perez exhibition at the MoCA Goldman Warehouse, a branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, where Mr. Perez’s patchy transfer paintings of midcentury Caribbean hotels are a guilty pleasure akin to the Collins Avenue strip.”

“After so much art in congested booths and crowded group shows, solo-artist projects become especially appealing. Peter Coffin’s giant sculpture of a spiral staircase twisted into a circle, at Emmanuel Perrotin’s gallery in Wynwood, was worth a detour.”

An exhibition by Adam Cvijanovic titled "Normandy."


"Inside the fair, black, white and silver geometric abstraction proliferated. Adam Cvijanovic’s panoramic landscape dominated Bellwether’s booth, as did Matthew Day Jackson’s installation based on an Albert Bierstadt Western scene at Ballroom Marfa. Courtney Smith and Ivan Navarro’s collaborative sculptures, incorporating wood and light bulbs, caught my eye at Roebling Hall.”


“On opening night, the band Deerhoof performed as dealers from the fringes of Chelsea and the orbit of the new New Museum lounged in hammocks.”

A fairgoer walks inside the installation work by Swiss artist Christoph Buchel at the Hauser & Wirth gallery space.


“A program called ‘Art Kabinett’ disperses solo-artist exhibitions in separate booths throughout the fair. As in previous years, ‘Art Nova’ places the edgier part of the establishment along the main room’s periphery and ‘Art Positions’ places emerging dealers in beachside shipping containers.”


"After Party" by Valeska Soares.


“With more than 20 fairs (at least seven more than last year) now piggybacking on the main event, Art Basel Miami Beach has made a point of finding new ways to showcase smaller galleries and individual artists. ‘Art Supernova,’ a kind of fair-within-the-fair, creates a communal booth with shared storage space and a sales office for some 20 galleries.”


The installation "Your Now Is My Surroundings," by Olafur Eliasson.


At Art Basel Miami – the annual festival - Karen Rosenberg says “the art is heavily scripted, raucously colorful, and monstrously proportioned. Parties and people-watching crowd the field of vision. Fortunately, serious art lovers can still find moments of transcendence while hopping from fair to fair, or even from fair to private collection to cocktails by the pool.”

December 9, 2007