I went into Art Basel Miami Beach like a good journalist would, I went right at 11am on VIP first viewing. I normally like to do this because I don’t care for too big of a crowd, and I want to see the movement of everyone else, what they gravitate towards, what draws attention. From what I could see in my over 5 hours at Art Basel, the I-guess-we-can-still-call-it-the premier fair of a year of Basels and art weeks throughout the world (and for the most part, what I saw at Untitled, Scope, NADA) was a bit of playing it safe and, at times, going back to what works with a wider-scope of collectors, critics, enthusiasts. There wasn’t much bold political works, although sprinkled in, but most of what I saw was art meant to be lived with in the background of your life. Not bad, I must say, just safe. Even Design Miami, it what was always a bit audacious and fun, really focused on design you could use. That for the most part, this was smart business.
I do want to get one thing off my chest, though, and no shit for saying it. One, the Beeple Regular Animals installation of roaming robot dogs of the billionaire class (Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, etc) was the fair’s attempt of cutting edge satire, and it wasn’t. It was bad. It’s a fair catering to the ultra-wealthy, the billionaire class, so a banal, vapid display of empty confrontation, along with Jack Butcher’s “Self Checkout” (2025) and a banana a few years ago… just reeks of desperation. The whole fair is a sponsored, corporate experience, one where galleries are being more and more pushed aside for the almighty brand of Basel, and artists seem to be secondary to the whole experience. Everyone here knows my opinion of the vlogging collector pretending to be slipping through the cracks of corporate-art-analytics, so I throw all this into the same garbage can of content nothingness and moved on.
But I saw a few major standouts. A few that I can mention briefly here were Night Gallery, Anat Ebgi, Charlie James Gallery, P.P.O.W, Deitch, Matthew Marks, NANZUKA, Ghebaly, Ames Yavuz, Tim Van Laere and Proyectos Monclova had some great and assorted curation (and in other fairs, R & Company, Richard Beavers, Richard Heller, La Loma, Megan Mulrooney, Library Street Collective, Dale Zine’s show with Subliminal Projects were standouts.)
Four booths that really took my attention began with South African gallery, Goodman Gallery, who shared a booth with Stephen Friedman Gallery and showcased some of the best art in the fair, including Ghada Amer, William Kentridge, Yinka Shonibare, Carrie Mae Weems, El Anatsui, Jared Ginsburg and more. Just a booth of craftspeople, masters of their domain, intricate and deeply meaningful.
James Fuentes was on his game, as well. One of the brilliant curations were the large-scaled abstractions that paired so well with a masterwork of Lee Quiñones (not to mention Louis Fratino). The graffiti wall of LEE’s old studio was a time-capsule and historical document of a moment in time was surrounded by the works of Jessica Dickinson, Geoffrey Holder, Sandra Vasquez de la Horra, Oscar yi Hou, John McAllister, Juanita McNeely and Chanel Khoury… just an eclectic and strong showing.
Always a favorite of ours, but Mexico City’s kurimanzutto was on fire. A mix of figurative and sculptural, abstracted and political, they seem to be emerging as one of the great galleries in the world right now. Felipe Baeza, Gabriel Orozco, Ana Segovia and Roberto Gil de Montes carried the Latin and Mexican booth.
Roberts Projects. Holy shit. I love this gallery and have always felt it was a NYC/London program in Los Angeles and though responsible in part of the rise of Kehinde Wiley, they have a brilliant program of the likes of Wendy Red Star, Amoako Boafo, Betye Saar and more. This fair in particular they brought that whole family as well as Luke Agada, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Lenz Geerk, Suchitra Mattai, Mia Middleton, with the Geerk painting being one of the best in show of the entire fair. This was an incredibly thoughtful and important booth, one of the best in recent years I have seen from this gallery. —Evan Pricco
