One complaint about Art Basel: Local artists and galleries are given few opportunities to showcase their work. The only fair that has proven it values Miami’s artistic community is Scope.In this year’s catalog, [former] Miami Mayor Manny Diaz welcomes the fair right up front. In addition, local galleries Arune 5…
There’s a reason David Lynch long ago joined the small pantheon of adjective-ized American artists alongside Hitchcock, Kubrick and Bon Jovi. (What? You’ve never heard a Bon Jovian song?)The director’s tightrope walk between macabre and mundane was plastered all over the walls of OHWOW last night in a show that,…
Art Basel has swooped in along with those denizens of the art world, and there’s a nifty way to keep up with it all in real time at Art Log Live (@artlog). The site, which officially launches today, offers a hashtag for every major Art Basel fair, as well as…
Consider this the video counterpart to yesterday’s review of Design Miami/ 2009. We still recommend you head out for yourself, but in the meantime enjoy OK Go’s laser guitar performance, designer Maarten Baas’s human-powered clockwork (that’s the man himself opening the cabinet), and other assorted bits of fancy from the…
Last year it was a portrait of then President-elect Obama that was the main focus of Dietch’s project Art Basel booth. This year it’s the King of Pop Michael Jackson. Painted by Kehinde Wiley, who’s work usually puts hip-hop youth in the context of classical Royal portraiture, the piece was…
During a week when unchecked imagination runs wild and art comes close to scrambling your brain, Design Miami/ always refreshingly mixes things up by showcasing work with at least somewhat of a foundation based in function. Though the fair’s ArandaLasch-designed tent seemed a but smaller than years past, the fair…
Art Basel week Miami 2009 is all about music and street art. The “Primary Flight” exhibit is fucking it up all over Wynwood, and so is Tony Goldman’s public art project Wynwood Walls, produced in concert with Deitch Projects of New York. Galleries on the Beach and in the city…
Art Basel has a funny way of making us feel like we’re outsiders in our own town. Traffic is horrible. Parking even moreso. The line at your favorite Cuban restaurant (even if that happens to be Pollo Tropical) gets filled with hoity-toity Europeans trying to work in a little “authentic…
Most people know quixotic movie director David Lynch for his Academy Award-nominated films like Blue Velvet and The Elephant Man. But Lynch is also an accomplished visual artist who brings the same surreal, dream-like imagery and deadpan irony that are a staple of his films to his art work.Also known…
Beginning December 1, Jim Drain of Bas Fisher Invitational, British artist Graham Hudson, and I are co-curating a project inside Design Miami (where my wife works) called The Brief Happy Life of Workshop Workshop. Here’s the press release, which I wrote, so I guess it’s a press release in the…
Being one of the premiere art festivals of the year, not just any Joe Blow can show during Art Basel. You’d need connections, talent, or…a pack of markers, a glue gun, and some stray sequins. This year, the Scope Art Show has opened up their grand ol’ doors to the…
T minus one until Turkey Day, but the true date of anticipation is still a week away, Art Basel’s kickoff — December 2! There are events popping off from the Gables all the way up to Aventura, and if you think your head is spinning from all the Facebook invites…
Every now and then you just have to let the press release speak for itself, as is the case with this year’s ART BURN fair in Wynwood (123 NW 23rd Street). Setting off this Thursday, December 3, ART BURN bills itself as an “International Contemporary Art Expo and Immolation” and…
Often you have to look past the white tents and convention centers for the best work being shown during Basel week. Case in point, Invasion 68 Prague, a little show at the Miami Freedom Tower (600 Biscayne Boulevard) that’s easy to overlook.Put together by Miami-Dade College and the Aperture Foundation…
“The Black Factory,” an art instillation of wheels, will be rolling into town next week. The brainchild of William L. Pope, the Factory invited people to bring objects that represent “blackness” to the truck. Many of the projects are then broken down and resold in the truck’s gift shop. The Black…
In a move that would surely tickle its founder Andy Warhol, Interview Magazine will be curating the Mondrian South Beach’s luxury vending machine during Art Basel. Mondrian’s vending machine, which we wrote about earlier this year, usually includes such pedestrian items as a $400 marabou feather vest and the keys to a…
The work of Friends With You has already redefined “absurdly cute,” and through collaborations with Kid Robot and Memobots the duo of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III have gently expanded their burgeoning design empire into retail. Now, they’re set to open their own flagship boutique in the heart of…
It’s not often you get to see a curated show featuring the likes of Richard Prince, Jules de Balincourt, Shepard Fairey, Kenny Scharf, and KAWS, but it’s not often that Lance Armstrong comes calling on the art world. Armstrong’s Livestrong foundation and Nike asked 25 top artists to donate pieces to a…
The large orange shipping containers that find themselves filled with artwork just feet from the beach every year have become a trademark of Art Basel Miami Beach, but they won’t return this year.As part of a reorganization of the fair, the emerging galleries and artists relegated to Collins Park this…
Last year, brothers Fernando and Humberto Campana had more funky wicker pieces than a Boca yard sale and slaughtered more stuffed animal designs than Lady Gaga’s wardrobe at Design Miami for their stint as Designer of the Year. Following in their footsteps is 31-year-old Dutch designer Maarten Baas. Let’s take a…
The American designer is dead. We didn’t read the obituary, but apparently there aren’t many designers of note to be found not only in the Unites States but also across the Caribean, Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America.Annual art fair Design Miami wants to change that and seemingly will…
Bridget Marquardt, who rose to fame as one of Hugh Heffner’s three girlfriends on Girls Next Door, has the best job in the world. Basically she gets to travel the world touring beaches on Travel channel’s dime for her new show Bridget’s Sexiest Beaches. It’s not going to win her…
