miami report #2: art

Too much art can be hazardous to your health. That was the realization that Sean Healy and I had while drinking our last round of Pina Colada’s at the Miami airport. We had been attending the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair and had seen what must have been thousands of works of art, and now we were completely wrecked. The fair is ridiculously gigantic and turns the city of Miami into one giant traffic jam of art. While the parties and late night extravaganzas probably didn’t help matters, the art certainly had a lasting effect: it was as if our eyeballs and brains were seared from too much art perusing, as if we had been staring at some super-bright light bulb for hours on end.
According to their website, “Art Basel Miami Beach is the most important art show in the United States, a cultural and social highlight for the Americas. As the sister event of Switzerland’s Art Basel, the most prestigious art show worldwide for the past 38 years, Art Basel Miami Beach combines an international selection of top galleries with an exciting program of special exhibitions, parties and crossover events featuring music, film, architecture and design… An exclusive selection of more than 200 leading art galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa will exhibit 20th and 21st century artworks by over 2,000 artists. The exhibiting galleries are among the world’s most respected art dealers, offering exceptional pieces by both renowned artists and cutting-edge newcomers. Special exhibition sections feature young galleries, performance art, public art projects and video art. The show will be a vital source for art lovers, allowing them to both discover new developments in contemporary art and experience rare museum-caliber artworks.”
ABMB does seem like a pretty important event in the art world, and I was very honored that they chose to include my installation future so bright in their video program, but after experiencing the festival in person, I have come to the conclusion that the fair is really just SPRING BREAK FOR THE ART-WORLD. For five days, an estimated 50,000 people descended on Miami Beach to buy art, schmooze, drink Pina Coladas, and look awkward in swim wear. Celebrity sightings included Tom Wolfe, Lance Armstrong, and the dude from PaperRad. The fair has a very small curated program, and then selects around 200 galleries (from hundreds of applicants) to set up booths to display and sell art. It’s a lot like an antique mall, except the booths are run by fancy gallerists and art dealers instead of cute old ladies. And unlike an art museum, the work here was for sale.

The official fair takes place in the Miami Convention Center and adjoining Botanical Gardens (where my video showed), but the ‘official’ fair really is less then half of the entire attraction. Jumping on the coat tails of the fair, several satellite fairs have emerged, setting up shop in nearby hotels, warehouses, vacant buildings, and even the shipping containers that much of the art was delivered in. With names such as Aqua, Pulse, NADA, Red Dot, Scope, Flow, Bridge, Photo Miami, Art Miami, Art Positions and god knows how many others, these ancillary fairs added an interesting, puckish flare to the entire event. Rental of the cheapest booth at the main fair costs a staggering $35,000, so obviously the smaller side fairs offer an opportunity for younger and riskier work to get into the mix.
But it also turns into something too big to possibly consume, at least for someone of my amateur status. I got off to a strong start on the first day, seeing about half of the booths in the convention center and the stuff at the Aqua Hotel. And on day two I was able to check out the Aqua Wynwood warehouse space (where Elizabeth Leach was set-up) and a few of the shipping containers, but I quickly realized that I was losing steam fast. Looking at that much art, and dealing with that many people, is absolutely exhausting. By day three I was starting to wonder if I even liked art anymore, and the thought of spending more time indoors with all these weird art people when the beach was a mere block away just seemed wrong.
And then there were the parties. So many parties. So, so many parties…
But before running out of steam, I did see some stuff I really liked. I am also realizing that my favorite works of art are often interactive, and look more like something you might expect to find in a children’s museum than an art gallery. Zilvinas Kempinas’ piece ‘Lemniscate’ consisted of a long piece of magnetic tape that was held aloft by the air current created by two electric fans. It was beautiful and looked like something you might see on Bill Nye the Science Guy and was probably my favorite thing at the fair. I also liked Julieta Aranda’s ‘There has been a miscalculation,’ which recreated a dust-storm in a giant clear cube, and Anish Kapoor’s untitled inverse mirror, which would liven up any party or shared public space. Here is a short video I made of these new “children’s museum for adults’ pieces that I like so much:

interactive and moving works at art basel miami from matt mccormick on Vimeo.