Scene, by All: Miami Art Week 2014
Instagram highlights from the city’s art extravaganza
There are two verifiable facts pertaining to every Miami Art Week: first, no one can make it to everything; second, someone managed to capture what you missed and put it up on Instagram. That makes the week-long, multi-fair event a perfect fit for our Scene, by All series, which in this case, rounds up highlights from our friends and peers who were also out and about in the madness. Whether it was shot at the central hub of Art Basel, the satellite fairs or the art parties around town, here are a few images that caught our attention.
“I’m just really struck by the beauty, and sometimes humor, in what Jiri Georg Dokoupil does. I saw a lot of the fair and I thought this was one of the most striking and fun pieces there,” shares Social Media Strategist, Alex Simons. His photo from Art Basel Miami Beach definitely captures the fluid wonder of the painting, titled “Hukmirek.”
Every year Perrier heads down to Miami to support the fairs (and keep everyone hydrated in the Miami sun). This image, taken at The Margulies Collection at the WAREhOUSE, showcases a 1983 work by artist Bruce Nauman. The Perrier team notes that they posted it at the time “because everyone needs to take a break from the fairs to check out this Bruce Nauman piece at The Marguilies Collection.” With so much going on at all times, it was a handy reminder—but the photo and its message on behavior are lasting.
Seen at NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) Art Fair by WGSN Trend Editor Sarah Owen, this image of embroidered towels carries a message on all our minds—our extended existence on search engines. As Owen explains to CH, “I fell in love with that towel, which is by an artist called Darren Sylvester, mainly because it ties onto the end of a statement embroidery theme I’ve been seeing. I recently got gifted a towel with my nickname ‘SOWEN’ on it. I’m into the fact that he used spell-check underlines and abstract prose related to the internet.”
In a one-of-a-kind snap, performance artist Lena Marquise was captured in a moment where, naked, she charged the musician Usher’s cellphone on her thigh and “from her post-human vagina” at JJ Brine’s VECTOR Gallery within the Select Contemporary Art Fair. Marquise notes to CH that, “It may or may not actually be about prostitution” when describing her “Body As Commodity” performance piece. At the crux, the piece begs participants to ask whether using a doll for sex is more of a commodification than using a real body for other amenities, in this instance, charging a mobile phone.
Boutique production company SandenWolff did the impossible when capturing the minute details of Swarovski’s “Thinning Ice” room at this year’s Design Miami—done in conjunction with architect and MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang. The video makes evident the source material for the installation: photographer documentation of the shrinking of the Stubai glacier in the Austrian Alps, done in conjunction with Swarovski and the wonder the crystals themselves possess.
Brooklyn-based artist Maria Kozak landed a video of a perpetual motion balloon chair at NADA—simple, weird and wonderful. “It seemed like a perfect happy accident?” she questions back when asked why she took this photo.
At this season’s Scope Art Fair, artist Elana Stonaker presented a charming work at the Natology booth. The artists shares that her own Instagram photo from the booth is of “a soft sculpture that I made called ‘Together.’ Over the last few years I have made a series of these pieces of two connected figures in eternal embrace—both sculptural and painted. They are about trying to achieve a perfect connection at the human level, about learning to be good to each other and ourselves.”
“Just incredible! The pink ceramic is by Japanese artist Takuro Kuwata. He creates the ceramic around rocks and stones so when the clay is fired with the glaze it unpredictably explodes into new forms,” Champ Magazine explains on their Instagram. The image, taken at Design Miami, where Champ was a media partner, reveals the subtle details within Kuwata’s work.
Dave Wilfert, a Miami Art Week regular and founder of The World’s Best Ever explains, “I was approaching my third Grey Goose and tonic when I took this photo of Misaki Kawai‘s teepee at the Mondrian South Beach. Warm air makes for long nights.” The teepee was a part of the hotel’s Grey Area + FriendsWithYou pop-up.
CH’s own David Graver was down for Miami Art Week, and attended a closing night party at The Freehand, thrown by photography duo Raat City and Tanqueray. There, he snagged an image of a David King Reuben painting suspended above the crowded poolside event. He shares, “Half of the great programming during Miami Art Week takes place after hours. This event saw some of the most interesting art placement, involved directly in the mise-en-scène, like this David Kind Reuben painting above the pool, and Raat City’s streaming videos just opposite.”
