In the shadow of the ever-renovating South Beach hotels, Art Basel Miami hosts 20 young galleries in converted orange shipping containers in the outdoor exhibition "Art Positions." Each container has been provided with a rampway, a door, and a shelf space for information about the galleries. Each container is attended by a young woman with bangs, wearing a black dress or something oddly shaped, and speaking Dutch or Castillian Spanish. Cognescenti report that these cell-phone wielding mini-models are gallery interns; the market for interns seems to be an unexpectedly strong economic indicator.
The container concept is totally cool, and cries out for better ideas, planning, execution, and professionalism. Overall, the art on display seems amateurish, unintentionally funny, and poorly displayed. Some containers have a handful of bland, forgettable drawings or photographs. Others have quasi-installations that fail to meet the challenges of the space, present coherent ideas, or interesting imagery. Many display video works that seemed to have been pulled out of a VCR from 1986, or a blender from 1960. The Galerie Andreas Huber features a video by Judith Hopf entitled Zahlen! / Counting, ostensibly a tribute to Hans, the famous counting horse of fin de siècle Berlin, in which a horse is taunted by a quartet of people peeping over a fence while wearing mime-like make-up. Coulrophobia, anyone?
Perhaps the effort and expense involved in transporting the work from around the corners of the globe was daunting. The general effect is like a Top Design project in which the contestants get mad at each other and give up, and the rejected contestants from Project Runway all come to take a look.
In addition to the excellent people-watching, a stand-out:
Teresa Margolles' 21, at the Galeria Salvafor Diaz, appears at first glance to be a Miami Beach jeweller's showcase, the 21 pieces of lavish gold and gem-encrusted jewelry displayed and lit as if in a Bal Harbour store window. Margolles' work is preoccupied with the many causes, effects, attributes, and artifacts of death in her native Mexico. This particular collection of pieces was fabricated under her direction by a jeweller from her local market using shards of glass collected from narco grudge-murder sites in place of jewels, with settings similar to those favored by the narco gangsters. These pieces are beautifully rendered, gaudy with excess luxury, and casually horrifying.
Art Basel Miami
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