Creativity Is on Full Display at Miami Art Week's Satellite Fairs

Art Basel Miami Beach is the biggest fair on the Miami Art Week calendar, but it's far from the only one. In fact, you're likely to see more interesting art at one of the dozen or so other events around town.

I managed to stop at four of the most notable art and design fairs before Basel debuted on Wednesday. Out of those four, Untitled Art Fair on Miami Beach had the most interesting and expansive program thanks to its theme of "East Meets West." That meant a view into art, artists, and galleries that typically don't make it to Miami, particularly from south and east Asia. One example is the Los Angeles-based gallery Rajiv Menon Contemporary, which specializes in emerging artists from South Asia and diasporic communities. It showed a wall of embroideries by Viraj Khanna and metal sculptures by New Delhi-based Tarini Sethi. Based on traditional shadow puppetry, Sethi's figurations depicting female bodies attempted to call into question India's cultural taboos over the female body and its depiction.

A smattering of Korean galleries featured artists using hanji, traditional paper made from mulberry trees. At Seoul-based BHAK Gallery, Bo Kim used hanji to create some remarkable abstract paintings, the paper giving the works a weathered texture, with checkerboard grids crisscrossing each work's surface. Also from Seoul, Voda Gallery featured moody figurative work by Gio Yang, whose somber yet calming landscapes reflect the restorative nature of solitude.
Locals showing at the fair also impressed. Emerson Dorsch displayed paintings by Taiwan-born Elleen Lin, whose figurative paintings referenced the inconsistencies she found in various translations of Moby Dick. At the Ant Project, I adored Miami-based Carina Mask's atmospheric photographs of rural Japan, contrasting the bonfire festivals in Akita prefecture with the dark, ancient forest of Aokigahara. The gallery paired her work with ashen textile art by Mexican artist Andrea Bores for a positively elemental presentation. Mexico also figures in the work of Miami-based Ilsse Peredo, whose installation Nieve de Mamey features photographs taken in the country's rural villages during Dia de los Muertos celebrations. Gallerist Aurelio Aguilo described the show to me as an attempt to explore the "profound connection to death" found in traditional cultures on both sides of the globe.

Across the causeway at NADA, things were a little harder to define. One local artist I ran into mentioned seeing a lot of "fantasy figuration," and another seemed to spot lots of cars. Automotive art seemed to be a theme all over the place; for my money, the most interesting expression of the theme was at New York-based Entrance Gallery, where Nathaniel Matthews hung a group of Warhol-esque screen prints titled Destructive Opulence juxtaposing Formula 1 crashes with Maria Callas arias — both moments of climax, I suppose.
I found myself drawn to some darker works, both in tone and material. Mexico City-based JO-HS Gallery showed a booth by Chavis Mármol with panels depicting fossilized flora and fauna surrounded by spikes resembling the thorns of the ceiba or kapok tree. New York-based Jordan Eagles showed a group of shadowy paintings made from blood and resin at New Directions. Korean artist Woo Hannah showed a pleather sculpture resembling a sci-fi monster straight out of John Carpenter's The Thing at G Gallery.

Locals had strong showings, too. Baker — Hall gallery debuted at the fair with a batch of ethereal paintings from Melissa Wallen, while Primary gave its booth to Spanish artist Paola Santomé, whose hand-embossed aluminum reliefs attempt to reclaim female mythological figures such as Medusa and Eve. KDR, meanwhile, brought along a massive, remarkable impressionist canvas by Magnus Sodamin — "our little Miami Monet," as dealer Katia Rosenthal calls him — which shows an Everglades sunset. Still, overall, the art generally didn't feel quite as interesting, and the usually beloved fair felt like it had lost some of its free-flowing, accessible atmosphere this year. The massive booth for a Puerto Rican luxury resort certainly didn't help.

Of course, if we really want to get corporate, we have to cross the causeway again back to Design Miami. Every year, the massive design fair continues to astound with the inanity of its many brand activations. This year's lowlights included a group of animal-shaped bean bag chairs by Bottega Veneta and a ridiculous "immersive installation" by Saratoga bottled water. Land Rover sponsored a lights display with a tenuous connection to "filmic expressions of Miami" — sure, whatever you say. Other than a few interesting furniture displays — Japanese ceramics and glassware at Ippodo, Patagonia-inspired pottery and textile art from local gallery Mindy Solomon, a somewhat nifty Turrell-esque booth by Australian artist Nick Thomm — this fair continues to be the most inessential event at Art Week, a glorified showroom with few interesting ideas.
For those genuinely interested in cutting-edge design, Alcova, the Italian fair that debuted in Miami last year, is the clear winner. Now hosted in Little Havana at the Selina Miami River Inn, the fair took over the historic hotel and gave its rooms over to a handful of interesting design projects. For interior design-focused booths, the format has the additional benefit of letting visitors actually see what the furniture might look like in a normal home. My favorite of these was a well-curated group show called "Something Last," where a handful of creatives showed off classy, understated modernist pieces that served as a potent antidote to the usual flashbang attention-seeking one finds in Miami.

Speaking of an antidote to Miami, quite a few of the booths at Alcova dealt with themes of sustainability, an idea that seems to get chucked out the window during Art Week in this climate-threatened city. Czech designer Adam Kvacek envisioned a world where endangered species are saved by their utility as consumer goods — in this case, a threatened plant turned into cutlery. One booth by Make Good and the Center for Subtropical Affairs filled a room with plants down to the moss-covered floor that ruined my socks in order to raise awareness for the development-threatened Miami Tropical Botanic Garden.

I was also impressed by "Invento Spirit," another group show that grew out of the Havana Design Workshop 2018. Focusing on the kind of ad-hoc and improvisational design that serves as a daily reality in Cuba, where materials and consumer goods are scarce, the pieces on display applied the concept in tremendously clever ways — even the pedestals in the show were made from cardboard boxes acquired locally from produce markets in Allapattah. Vy Voi of Vietnam used banana leaves as a cushion for a stool, while show curator Dani Friedman reupholstered a plastic monobloc chair with mercado bags. Miami-based Emmett Moore made a chair out of some damaged, bend-out-of-shape metal traffic barricades and a planter out of an extension cord. One design studio called "Outgoing" even made a makeshift clock by wrapping a plastic Casio wristwatch around a smooth rock — hey, if it works, it works. That's the genius of the exhibition and of good design. Anyone can imitate these ideas. It doesn't take much to be truly creative.

For information on these and other fairs, check out New Times' Miami Art Week fair guide.