Fair Enough: And It's a Miami Wrap

Report complete. The entire list of posts: 

Fair Enough: And I'm Off

Fair Enough: Traveling Incognita?
Fair Enough: All Over But the Posting
Fair Enough: Art or Trash?
Fair Enough: Prologue to the Report
Fair Enough: ABMB, Part 1
Fair Enough: ABMB, Part 2
Fair Enough: Aqua Art
Fair Enough: Pulse
Fair Enough: Seven
Fair Enough: Scope
Fair Enough: NADA
Fair Enough: Ink
Fair Enough: A Peek at Art Miami
Fair Enough: Doubletake at Art Miami
Fair Enough: Art Miami
Fair Enough: My Just Right Breakfast
Fair Enough: Speaking Volumes
Fair Enough: Moola-riffic
Fair Enough: Really Reductive
Fair Enough: High Fiber, Part 1
Fair Enough:: High Fiber, Part 2
Fair Enough: Color and Geometry

With this post we come to the end of my reports from the Miami art fairs, 2010. It's a full month from the time I packed for Miami and today, when the last cyber i is dotted and t crossed. If you like what you've read--shameless request alert--please support this blog, since doing this month-long project meant there were other projects I couldn't take on. It's a low-pressure request. The Pay Pal button will remain on the blog, so you are free to hit it when and if you can. (And those of you, dear ones, who supported my effort, many thanks.)

So, what were the oddments and highlights of the fairs? Everyone who went will have a different list, but here's mine :

1. I'd like to order a 1500-pound birthday cake, please.  And a fire truck.

Philippe Parreno's Untitled, 15 paraffin candles, each almost four feet high at Esther Schipper Gallery, Berlin; ABMB

2. What, this isn't Larry?

Matt Freedman, Bobblehead of St. Lazarus, at Bridgette Meyer Gallery, Philadelphia; Aqua Art

Freedman obviously has a sense of humor, so I'm sure he won't mind if I suggest a line of Bobblehead Dealers. Hey, kids, collect the whole set! Give St. Laz here a suit and tie and that head is good to go. Or should I say Gogo?

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3. Apparently you really can't be too rich or too thin

Pip Culbert, Shirts, at Fouladi Projects, San Francisco; Aqua Art

4. And neither can your closet

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Maskull Lasserre, Migration, carved coat hangers, at Birch Libralato, Toronto; Aqua Art

5. The love that will not shut up

 

Can we please go through just one fair without Mr. Indiana’s four-letter word? This year it was even done up in lights. If this trend continues, next year I fear it will show up with speakers and a Barry White soundtrack?   Various galleries at ABMB and Ink. Sho' you right

6. Did anyone else leave the Convention Center hankering for a lemon tart?

Anish Kapoor sculpture at Lisson Gallery, London; ABMB

I usually leave a Kapoor exhibition feeling slightly euphoric over his quirky vision and material mastery. This is the first time I left wanting coffee and a pastry

7. Connect the dots

As much as I saw tons of art made from money, there was a subset of art made about the lack of it.

Jane Masters' Starving Artist, a burned-paper drawing at Miller Block Gallery, Boston;  Aqua Art . . .

. . . and this painting at the Corey Helford Gallery, Art Miami. There was more, but it was too depressing

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8. Best title: "Discoball After Rothko"

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Daniel Gonzalez, Discoball After Rothko, at the Diana Lowenstein Gallery, Miami; Pulse

That sound you hear is not the ball turning; it's the irascible old painter rolling over in his grave

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9. The Big Prick Award

Giuseppe Penone at Marian Goodman Gallery, New York; ABMB

No, I'm not impugning the artist or his esthetic. This work is composed of acacia thorns, thousands of them. Better keep your distance, as the detail below suggests

10. Don't give these stuffed animals to the baby

Ross Bonfanti’s woodgie-woodgies are 20 pounds of solid concrete, and they’d flatten your little rugrat like that. At Blunt Collective/AWOL Gallery, Toronto; Aqua Art

11. You could give these fuzzy slippers to the baby . . .

. . . but you'd have to rip them off the feet of Bernice Steinbaum, photographed here in her booth at Art Miami. She may have her gallery in Wynwood now, but she's a New Yorker; you wouldn't stand a chance

12. Talking trash

Funny that in a season where so much money--actual moola and artwork depicting it--flourished, "trash" was equally in evidence
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Above: Ruben Verdu at Raul Zamudio, New York City; Scope
Below: Sylvie Fleury, Yes to All, steel with 24-karat gold plate, edition of 8, at Dranoff Fine Art, New York City; Ink. The price? $20,000

13. Taking the trash out

Price: 0

Yours, free for the taking

14. The creepiest surprise  

That step-up does invite you to look inside the pot. When you do, you'll come within inches of a taxidermied rattler poised to sink its fangs into your unsuspecting face. You've been punk'd 

Above and below: Huan Yong Ping, Well, ceramic and taxidermy; at the Rubell Family Collection

15. No, you're not tripping  

Jim Isserman installation at Praz-Delavallade, Paris; at ABMB

These walls provide their own hallucinogenic moments. Isserman, above, created a vinyl op pattern specifically for his installation at ABMB, replete with the wooze-inducing canvases. Trenton Doyle Hancock, below, printed a 3-D pattern in fluorescent inks--and when you put on the glasses, the red explodes off the wall.  Olek, bottommost image of the three, created an entire crocheted apartment

Trenton Doyle Hancock wallpaper, at Graphicstudio; Ink

Below: Olek installation at Christopher Henry Gallery, New York City; Scope. There were actual people (on the couch, in front of the TV)  inside crocheted skins; you weren't necessarily aware of them until they moved. Remember when you thought the walls were melting? It was like that

16. Best flashback to the 60's

The installation at Gary Snyder Project Space, New York; ABMB

Work includes Thomas Downing (dots) and Howard Mehring (stripes)

17. Sartorial serendipity

At the Charlotte Jackson booth at Art Miami, I snapped this pic of Jackson and her brother. I just love the symmetry of their clothing with the art.

But  wait, haven't I seen that pink sculpture before?

You've seen these two already, but they deserve a second look

Above: natty in front of a Yayoi Kusama at Gogosian Gallery, ABMB

Below: traveling under the radar in front of an Omar Chacon at Thatcher Projects, Pulse

18. Best use of a pencil? It's a draw
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Piotr Ulanski pencil-shaving assemblage at Gagosian, New York City; ABMB

Detail below

. . . and . . .

David Poppie sliced pencil assemblages at Pavel Zoubok, New York City; Pulse

19. Quick, which one is the Morandi?

Just kidding

Above: Jim Lambie glitter turntable at Anton Kern, New York; ABMB

Below: The Master from 1957 at Galeria Leandro Navarro, Madrid; ABMB

20. And finally, The Doublemint Award 

 

Not Vital at Galerie Urs Miele, Lucerne and Beijing; ABMB
 On behalf of art-world insiders who fear they can’t tell the difference between shit and Shinola, Not Vital wins this year’s highest award for his bronze casts of Mongolian cow dung. It’s two, two, two mints in one

See you next year!