When you visit Wynwood during 2014's last Second Saturday, you might notice that many local galleries are still recuperating from Miami Art Week exhaustion.
Some spaces like Gallery Diet are locking before Art Walk gets underway while others, like Diana Lowenstein Fine Arts, are shuttering their doors until January.
But despite dealing with laryngitis from sales pitches at a fair tent or a dirty shot to the liver following a deal-closing tipple, plenty of Wynwood dealers are opening late and hoping for a chance at post-Basel cash.
That's the case at the Robert Fontaine Gallery across from Panther Coffee where you can sip a cup of Joe to sharpen those peepers before catching the gallery's show of museum quality works beginning at 6:00 p.m. this weekend.
The good news is that you'll be able to catch some of Wynwood's better shows of the season starting with our five picks for this year's Second Saturday finale.
Perspectives
"Basel week was highly successful for the artists we represent ....we exhibited at Context / Art Miami Fair and are presenting a museum quality show on view through the New Year," says Robert Fontaine of his eponymous gallery. "But I'm still recovering and some galleries won't be open". The dealer's show explores the history of art, from Post-WWII to contemporary works, and boasts a little of everything: paintings, sculpture, works on paper and installations culled from the gallery's holdings. On view you'll see works by artists ranging from Calder to Rauschenberg, Warhol and Keith Haring among others and is the largest collection of "museum works ever shown in the gallery," Fontaine adds.
Robert Fontaine Gallery 2349 NW Second Ave., Miami. 305-397-8530; robertfontainegallery.com.
Welcome to the Jungle
You'll have to arrive early at Pan American Art Projects to catch the group show featuring 10 artists riffing on the symbiotic relationship between man and nature. The show winds down at 6:00 p.m. and includes Gustavo Acosta's desolate post-apocalyptic urban landscapes and Carlos Estevez's surreal world populated by half animal, half human hybrids. Also catch Tracey Snelling's House on The Hill, a mockup of Norman Bates' ramshackle home in Psycho, which is fitted with a tiny LCD Screen that loops a compilation of horror classics.
Pan American Art Projects 2450 NW Second Ave., Miami. 305-573-2400; panamericanart.com.
In The Vicinity of History, 5774
Meyer Vaisman rose to prominence when he opened his International with Monument gallery in the New York's Lower East Side with two fellow Parson's grads back in the 1980's. His gallery gave some of our era's biggest art stars their first shows including Jeff Koons, Peter Halley, Richard Prince, Robert Smithson, and Ashley Bickerton. Now the Venezuelan-born, who currently resides in Barcelona, has returned to the Magic City where he was first inspired to pursue an art career.
At KaBe Contemporary you can catch Vaisman's exploration of identity via abstraction. His solo features new inkjet paintings on poplar plywood reflecting his enduring interest with mechanical reproduction including works that render the signatures of artists Paul Cézanne, Cy Twombly and Eva Hesse in their own painting styles.
KaBe Contemporary, 223 NW 26th St., Miami. 305-573-8412; kabecontemporary.com.
Morphosis
You can discover another master of abstraction at the Mindy Solomon Gallery where James Kennedy marks his second solo at the space. The gallery is rolling out an arsenal of new paintings and sculptures including Kennedy's Spatial series; intricately abstract and semi-abstract works. The Irish artist's collection was recently named a 2014 'Top 100 Fall Show' to see, worldwide, by Modern Painters Magazine.
Mindy Solomon Gallery 172 NW 24th Street, Miami. 786-953-6917; mindysolomon.com.
Revuelta (Revolt)
This intriguing solo by Argentinean talent Mauro Giaconi boasts a series of moving sculptures sourced from the ephemeral, site-specific mural Volver A Girar, the artist created at Mexico's vaunted Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes last year. For his third solo at Dot, Giaconi employs fragments of that mural and reconfigures them as a new installation; in the process he explores detachment, fragility, rupture and notions of a social breakdown. His poetic resurrection of a once static image evokes a sense of a phoenix rising from its ruins.
Dot Fiftyone Gallery 187 NW 27th St., Miami. 305-573-9992; dotfiftyone.gallery.com.
Follow Cultist on Facebook and Twitter @CultistMiami.
