Fair and Fair Alike: Miami 2009. Scope

Fair and Fair Alike coverage so far:
. Aqua Art
. Pulse
. The Big One, Art Basel Miami Beach
. An Overview Before the Individual Fairs
. Art Bloggers at Art Miami
. Are We Out of the Woods?
. A Little Gossip
. Art? Or Not Art?
. Nosing Around
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The view when you enter Scope

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From Aqua I went to Scope. Last year Scope was pretty good. This year, not so much. Part of this surely had to do with the economy. I mean knitting machines and fingerpainting wouldn't normally get within a mile of the joint, and here they were each tucked into a booth.
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I realize it's expensive for promoters to undertake an event like this, and for dealers to take a booth, select artists, pack and ship the work, set up the space, sit there for endless hours, and then strike the booth and do the whole process in reverse. The succesful galleries left Miami with a lighter load and a heavier wallet. The others left with a heavy debt. I have no idea how Scope and its participants did did financially, but let’s just say that on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being the best, I found this fair to be somewhere south of five. The catalog looks good, though.

Here are a few overview images of the fair plus a couple of pics of what I liked--plus a new feature, the WFT Department: .

Wider aisles and more spacious setup than in last year's space

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Below, I spied the work of my buddy Max Carlos Martinez, visible in the center of the picture, in the Christopher Henry Gallery, which had one of the more interesting booths at the fair.

(I wrote about Max's solo show recently here)
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Another view of the fair, which was sparsely attended when I was there
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Loved these paintings: John Brown oils, heavily built up and scraped back; at the Wilde Gallery, Berlin
Below: closer view of the three smaller paintings
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Loved this, too: Coming across F.J. Valdez's installation of large-format photographs of carpets splayed this way and that, like finding myself in a virtual souk; at the Jacob Karpio Galeria, San Jose, Costa Rica
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.Amusing the first time you see it: Franceska Kirke's Mona-to-Marilyn transformation, at Galeria Bastejas, Riga, Latvia
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WTF Dept.
Above, the knitting booth; at Amf Projects, Miami
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Below, the fingerpainting booth
You know every person who walked by nudge-nudged their companion and said,
"Fingerpainting? My five-year-old could do this."

.Morten Viskum at Son Espace Gallery, Papafrugell, Spain
. .Below, uh, the artist showing how he does it.

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Next up: NADA