You don't have to visit a tarot card reader to divine what Miami's top dealers are planning for the contemporary art fire sale called Art Basel Miami Beach.
Instead, stop by some of the local galleries dealing their aces, court cards, and show ponies during the November version of the Second Saturday culture crawl. You might discover how they stack a deck. You might also stop by New Times' Foodstock event, with bands performing and trucks serving plenty of chow.
Beginning at 6 p.m. this Saturday, scores of new exhibits will open across Wynwood and the Design District, where you can catch some of the best gallery shows of the year before they are buried in the Basel onslaught, which starts December 1. Here are our tips for this month's edition of the high-stakes event.
Sex, Drugs & Profanity
At his eponymous, candy-striped space, Robert Fontaine has cobbled together the works of more than a dozen artists who have strip-mined the margins of pop culture with mixed-media and photographic representations of chemical abuse, erotic fetishism, and vulgarity.
The show features some top names, including Nan Goldin and Damien Hirst, along with Miami's Philip Ross Munro (and) Moscow's Oleg Dou, who was almost electrocuted as a toddler. Among works on view you'll find Tina La Porta's All the Pills in My House, a tiny mixed-media opus of sundry candy-colored prescription drugs floating against a milky background and appearing much like the contents of a pill popper's pumped stomach. Robert Fontaine Gallery (175 NW 23rd St., Miami), Call 305-397-8530 or visit robertfontainegallery.com.
Spinello Projects
Recently back from Berlin, Anthony Spinello is smashing a champagne bottle on his new Design District space with solos by Agustina Woodgate, Santiago Rubino, and Typoe. Spinello and his artists have holed up in an abandoned branch of a Christian family social services center, where the exhibits explore the often turbulent, conflicted dynamics of childhood, learning, loss, and nostalgia.
In "Black Sunday," Typoe references Disneyland's 1955 opening when the mouse park imploded. Woodgate's "If These Walls Could Talk" takes a stab at elementary school education, unmooring metaphorical students from familiar places. Rubino weighs in with "Eyes of the Stars," in which doe-eyed children appear in his beautiful graphite drawings as if transported beyond the schoolhouse by idyllic reveries. Spinello Projects (150 NE 42nd St., Miami) Call 786-271-4223 or visit spinelloprojects.com.
