Fair Fetched: Navigating Miami, Part 2

A Couple of Hotel Fairs

See You in Miami
Fair Fetched: Navigating Miami Part 1, ABMB, Untitled, Pulse

Fair Fetched: Navigating Miami Part 2, A Couple of Hotel Fairs

Fair Fetched: Navigating Miami Part 3,  Miami Project,  Nada, Scope

Fair Fetched: Yes, Pink

Fair Fetched: The Phrygian Cap      

Fair Fetched: Some Paintings  

Fair Fetched: Punctum  

Fair Fetched: Material Mashup, Part 1   

Fair Fetched: Material Mashup, Part 2

This is the second of three overview posts. (I'd thought there would be just two, but I have a lot of photos.) The hotel fairs I'm showing you here are Aqua Art, an established event that has taken place for about 10 years at the Aqua Hotel, and the Satellite Fair, a first-time artist-run fair at the Ocean Terrace Hotel, which may or may not be repeated in coming years. Both were in Miami Beach, separated by about 60 blocks.

Aqua Art as night falls (image from the fair's website) at the Aqua Hotel

Below: the Satellite Fair at the Ocean Terrace Hotel

Aqua Art

Aqua has always benefited by contrast to Art Basel Miami Beach. Where ABMB was huge, closed in, and high priced, Aqua was tiny, refreshingly open to a courtyard, and featured work that is affordable. Founded by two artists, Jaq Chartier and Dirk Park, Aqua generated excitement from the very first year. A few years ago the a fair was acquired by Art Miami. The je ne sais quoi that made Aqua Art so special is gone, but it remains a welcome counterpoint to the big box.

The computer ate most of the pictures I took from this fair. I managed to salvage a few, and of them I edited the selection to focus on luminosity. I had work at Projects Gallery, so I spent a good bit of time there and shot multiple times, which accounts for the images I do have.

Frank Hyder's illuminated sculptures at Projects Gallery, Miami

Apollonia Vanova's  luminous weaving at Gallery on Wade

Detail below

Six from my Silk Road series at Projects Gallery

Below: Silk Road 321, 2015, encaustic on panel, 12 x 12 inches

Hyo Jeong Nam installation of thread on rice paper at Arcilesi Homburg Fine Art, New York City 

At C. Emerson Fine Arts, St. Petersburg: W. Chester Old's wax-dipped photographs

A closer view below

Satellite Fair

Tiger Strikes Asteroid, three autonomous galleries--in Bushwick, Philadephhia and Los Angeles, united by a name and common interest--produced an ambitious event in a defunct hotel on north Collins Avenue. I don't know what the curatorial process was, but the mix included numerous galleries with interesting projects. I went to see Julie Torres's Art in America show and Kirk Stoller's c2c project, but of course I trouped through the entire two-story hotel and saw, and enjoyed, much more. 

This was an exercise in endurance for the artist-exhibitors. "The walls were the color of baby poop," said one exhibitor. He painted his room white, as had many other exhibitors. The hotel, apparently abandoned for some time, had electricity but no air conditioning--well, no air conditioners--or running water (exhibitors used the facilities of a hotel a few doors down). Despite the lack of amenities, the fair had the spirit of freshness and excitement of the early days of art fairs. 

The venue

One of the exhibitions I went to see. Torres had put out a call for artists on Facebook, ultimately selecting one work from each state for the show in a lively salon-style installation. You can see all the submissions here

Julie Torres, curator of Art in America

View from the entrance: Adam Lovitz, Pennsylvania, foreground

Closer view of the background below

Becky Sellinger, Virginia

An installation view (note the hole where the air conditioning unit was) with . . .

Annette Kearney, Maine

Stephanie Sachs, Hawaii

Another view with . . .

Ben Pranger, New Jersey

Elizabeth Sheppell, Georgia

Perry Kopchak, Washington

Another room featured an installation of paired works. Kirk Stoller's c2c project space, based in San Francisco, brings together artists from the Bay Area with those from New York City. The concept and installation were elegant, in one of the few spaces that showed less rather than more.

Amanda Hughen and Tamara Zahaykevich

Below: Closer view of Zahaykevich's tiny sculpture

Gary Petersen and Seth Koen

Matthew Neil Gehring and David Fought

Doreen McCarthy, inflated sculpture, and Stephanie Robison on pedestal

MADE & LABspace, New York: The very opposite of less is more, and it worked. Whether it's the range of scale, or the mix 2- and 3-D work, a room full of art beckoned in an installation that didn't feel overstuffed

Cecile Chong

Janice Caswell

At Yellow Peril Gallery, Providence:  Jennifer Avery's installation of handmade figures, totems and dolls, many made with Hermes fabric.

I love the combination of fabulous and creepy, don't you?

Fags to dykes: Art F. City, the blog, has branched out into a gallery. For this fair, Paddy Johnson and staff turned their room into a dive

Penelope, a Brooklyn-based collective, produced what appeared to be an Alice-through-the-looking-glass installation

Fjord, Philadelphia created an aqueous environment 

A Soil Gallery, a Seattle-based collective, Paul Komada showed a wall of bias-knitted squares while Chris Buening embraced the time-honored tradition of creating a bathroom installation

Next up: Part 3, with Miami Project and Art on Paper, NADA, Scope

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