With so much happening during Miami’s Art Week, it’s never too early to start planning. Since a couple of exhibits are opening this month, you can start getting it on as soon as this as this weekend!
The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum ushers in Art Basel season 2014 with two powerful shows opening November 8. From China, Wang Qingsong: ADinfinitum, and from Argentina Global Exchange: Geometric Abstraction Since 1950 (from the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires, MACBA). Both exhibitions open Saturday, November 8 with a reception. Wang Qingsong’s colossal and daring photo-murals encompass the entire third floor of the museum. MACBA’s stellar collection of multinational Geometric Abstraction artists is transported to the Frost’s galleries on the second level.
Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) has commissioned five ambitious new projects for the 2014-2015 season, in keeping with its mission to support the work of living artists and promote cultural engagement with Miami and South Florida communities. Artists Nicole Cherubini, Mario Garcia Torres, Shana Lutker, and Gary Simmons will present new work in the Museum’s project galleries, which were designed especially to provide focused, single-artist experiences, while artist Iman Issa will create an exhibition of new sculptures for one of the museum’s more expansive focus galleries.
The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 was the worst natural disaster ever to strike Japan. It reduced much of Tokyo to rubble and left its inhabitants in despair. In the aftermath, the woodblock artist Koizumi Kishio (1893–1945) produced his most famous series of prints which will be exhibiting FIU’s Wolfsonian (Wolf) in Miami Beach. In Downtown Miami, Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Museum of Art + Design (MOAD) and MDC Live Arts present Shen Wei – In Black, White and Gray, the complete series of groundbreaking paintings unveiled for the first time in the U.S. with never-before-seen choreography by the award-winning artist. One Way: Peter Marino explores the renowned American architect’s multifaceted relationship with his art exhibit at Bass Museum.
Here’s you complete guide:
PAMM
FUTURE BROWN Featuring KEELA
PAMM marks its one year anniversary in the new, and now iconic waterfront building with an immersive evening of music and visuals featuring the first U.S. performance by Future Brown with live vocalists. The special one-night event, PAMM Presents Future Brown Featuring Kelela, a DIS Magazine + THV Entertainment Production, launches WAVES, a season of art and music collaborations that are part of PAMM’s year-round time-based art initiative dedicated to film, video, sound, movement and performance art. Taking the spotlight at one of the most anticipated events on the Art Basel Miami Beach VIP calendar will be Future Brown, the internationally acclaimed DJ collective comprised of artist and composer Fatima Al Qadiri; Asma Maroof and Daniel Pineda of Nguzunguzu; and J-Cush of Lit City Trax. Accompanied with vocals for the first time in the U.S., Future Brown will be joined by guests from their forthcoming album on Warp Records slated for release this winter. The night will open with solo performances by Kelela and Fade To Mind artist Total Freedom with guest appearances by Ian Isiah and Maluca, all of who have garnered a strong following of music industry contemporaries and critics. Future Brown and vocalists will perform on a custom stage with a vibrant light and video production by THV Entertainment to the backdrop of a dynamic water sports event involving a flyboarding performance in Biscayne Bay choreographed by DIS Magazine. The museum’s façade will be used to project the premiere of the PAMM-commissioned music video from Future Brown’s debut album.
Exhibitions
Project Gallery: NICOLE CHERUBINI
Cherubini mines the history and formal possibilities of clay to create works that range from spare, tense minimalism to exuberant and brash decadence. For her new exhibition at PAMM, 500, the artist created a new body of interrelated, free-standing and wall-based works. Comprised of a diversity of objects, this exhibition responds to the architecture of the space and expands on the artist’s previous body of work, incorporating new shapes and materials into her lexicon.
Clay has been Cherubini’s primary material for 20 years and she employs a specific constellation of forms and techniques, which have come to constitute her unique vocabulary. These forms are variously reinterpreted, conjoined, stretched, embellished, and combined with other materials to create discrete works that suggest an investigative and experimental approach to sculpture.
Cherubini’s work is indebted to an abiding engagement with clay itself and the core of her project resides in her ability to bring the medium’s particular materiality, forms, and history to bear on the ongoing dialogue of painting and sculpture.
Project Gallery: GEOFFREY FARMER
Geoffrey Farmer (b.1967) is best known for his work with collage and his references to the genre’s modernist traditions, such as those produced by Dada artists at the beginning of the 20th century. The artist has also created numerous theatrical installations involving odd combinations of found objects which he transforms into awkward, puppet-like figures. His recent sculptures and installations have included kinetic elements that are often choreographed with sound. These pieces become theater plays or small operas with uncanny objects as their main performers. Creating mysterious and, at times, sinister environments, the artist’s work responds dynamically to the architectural and cultural contexts in which it is produced.
Project Gallery: GARY SIMMONS
Simmons is best known for enigmatic compositions featuring deceptively simple motifs rendered atop broad fields of monochromatic pigment. He extracts these motifs from a variety of archival and pop culture sources, arriving at each selection through an intensive research process. Simmons will create an ambitious new work for the PAMM’s stunning double-height project gallery—a large, ephemeral mural to be painted directly on the gallery’s 30-foot high and 29-foot wide back wall.A single work by Simmons is capable of evoking a multiplicity of meanings, simultaneously referencing a buried episode in the painful history of race relations in the United States and the artist’s own childhood memories, for example. Simmons is known for his use of an eerie erasure effect, which he achieves by blurring his drawings with his hands. Recalling the look of chalk on blackboards, the effect reinforces the mysterious quality of Simmons’ imagery while suggesting movement, the fleetingness of time, the pliability of history, and the inevitable fading of both cultural and personal memory.
Project Gallery: MARIO GARCIA TORRES
The Mexico City-based artist Mario Garcia Torres is currently working on a new project commissioned by PAMM for one of its first floor project galleries. Garcia Torres has long been interested in exploring historiography by addressing unusual parallels or little-know fragments of stories within recent art history. Simultaneously, the artist examines the specific qualities and contexts that provoke creation and invention. As part of his initial investigation, the artist is considering notions of South Florida as a site for withdrawal from society for the purposes of artistic creation. This research is intended to produce a number of gestures, including photographic documentation, a potential film, and display of objects, which will be exhibited, successively, beginning on December 2, 2014—timed to the kickoff of Art Basel Miami Beach.
MDC Museum of Art + Design
In Black, White, and Gray: SHEN WEI
Miami Dade College’s(MDC) Museum of Art + Design (MOAD) and MDC Live Arts present Shen Wei – In Black, White and Gray, the complete series of groundbreaking paintings unveiled for the first time in the U.S. with never-before-seen choreography by the award-winning artist. Five public performances by Shen Wei Dance Arts will coincide with the exhibition opening from Friday, December 5 to Sunday, December 7 during Art Basel Miami Beach week at MDC’s National Historic Landmark Freedom Tower in downtown Miami. The exhibition of his paintings will remain on view at the museum through February 1, 2015. Both the exhibit and performances are free and open to the public. Shen Wei – In Black, White and Gray is being presented at the College’s flagship institution dedicated to the presentation and exhibition of visual art and design. This is Shen Wei Dance Arts’ second visit to Miami presented by MDC Live Arts, having performed his acclaimed work Rite of Spring in 2003. Unveiling 11 new paintings, this body of work is a study of contrasts: light and dark, turbulent and tranquil. They explore the nuances of a grisaille palette with shapes and forms powered by a dynamism and force suggestive of sublime landscapes, yet they recede into abstraction and the materiality of paint. In these canvases, Shen Wei’s lifelong study of Chinese ink painting converges with his deep interest in Western oil painting, and is in dialogue with his choreography for this series.
I was not taught the arts separately and I don’t separate them in my work Shen Wei
BASS
One Way: PETER MARINO
One Way: Peter Marino explores the renowned American architect’s multifaceted relationship with art. Recognized as a pioneer of cross-disciplinary practice, Peter Marino has been celebrated for the past four decades for his forward-thinking work that exists at the intersection of art, fashion and architectural design. Curated by internationally renowned cultural agitator and curator Jérôme Sans, the exhibition explores the interplay between Marino’s iconic architectural designs, his personal collection of contemporary art and his series of cast-bronze boxes. True to the architect’s practice of creating bespoke environments at the intersection of art, design and fashion, One Way: Peter Marino will feature commissioned new work by artists Gregor Hildebrandt, Guy Limone, Farhad Moshiri, Jean-Michel Othoniel and Erwin Wurm.
One Way: Peter Marino begins with Hildebrandt’s Orphische Schatten (Orphic Shadows), a site-specific installation that employs hundreds of videotape strips culled from copies of Jean Cocteau’s classic film Orphée. Hildebrandt’s installation continues inside the museum galleries, plunging the Bass Museum’s “white cube” into shimmering darkness, extending Cocteau’s poetic play with imagery of mirrors and passageways to the Underworld. These corridors of tape guide visitors through a selection of works from Marino’s personal collection of contemporary art, including pieces by Loris Gréaud, Keith Haring, Richard Serra, Rudolf Stingel, Andy Warhol and Yuji Yoshimoto, among others. The exhibition also features sections dedicated to Pop Art, iconic portraiture and photography, and Marino’s recently designed series of cast-bronze boxes that will be presented within leather-clad walls.
One Way: Peter Marino comes to a suitably mythological conclusion with the recreation of Christophe Willibald Gluck’sopera Orfeo ed Euridice. This work – a collaboration between Marino, his wife Jane Trapnell, Michal Rovner, Raf Simons and Francesco Clemente – recreates the opera originally staged in Marino’s New York home in 2013 with sets designed by Marino himself. Artistic collaborations and privately commissioned performances such as Orfeo ed Euridice demonstrate Marino’s passion and continued drive to work with the most talented individuals in the visual and performing arts.
Featured Artists: Miquel Barceló, Georg Baselitz, Steve Benisty, Jeff Burton, Francesco Clemente, Dan Colen, Ronnie Cutrone, Richard Deacon, Pierpaolo Ferrari, Lucio Fontana, Adam Fuss, Loris Gréaud, Andreas Gursky, Keith Haring, Gregor Hildebrandt, Damien Hirst, Thomas Houseago, Zhang Huan, Y. Z. Kami, Idris Khan, Anselm Kiefer, David LaChapelle, Claude Lalanne, Peter Lane Peter Lane, Guy Limone, Nate Lowman, Robert Mapplethorpe, Steven Meisel, Andrei Molodkin, Joel Morrisson, Farhad Moshiri, Vik Muniz, Jean-Michel Othoniel, Yan Pei-Ming, Walter Pfeiffer, Paola Pivi, Richard Prince, Lee, Quiñones, Michal Rovner, Robert Ryman, Tom Sachs, Richard Serra, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool, Erwin Wurm, Manolo Yllera, Yuji Yoshimoto.
TC: TEMPORARY CONTEMPORARY
Nicholas Baume, Director and Chief Curator of Public Art Fund, returns for his second year curating Art Basel’s Public sector. Under the theme Fieldwork, Public will transform Miami Beach’s Collins Park into an outdoor exhibition space with 26 large-scale and site-specific installations by leading and emerging artists from 13 countries. Produced in partnership with the Bass Museum of Art for the fourth consecutive year, the sector will include work by Georg Baselitz, Lynda Benglis, Matthias Bitzer, Sarah Braman, Ana Luiza Dias Batista, Sam Ekwurtzel, Elmgreen & Dragset, Faivovich & Goldberg, Nuria Fuster, Ryan Gander, Jeppe Hein, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Alfredo Jaar, Gunilla Klingberg, Jose Carlos Martinat, Justin Matherly, Olaf Metzel, Sam Moyer, Ernesto Neto, Ugo Rondinone, Nancy Rubins, Yinka Shonibare MBE, Jessica Stockholder, Barthélémy Toguo, Tatiana Trouvé, and Hank Willis Thomas with Ryan Alexiev and Jim Ricks.
Public will open on Wednesday, December 3, with a special evening program of live performances by Ryan Gander, Christian Falsnaes, Liz Glynn and Dawn Kasper, and Alix Pearlstein. Focusing on the potential for public art to challenge artists and viewers, Nicholas Baume’s curatorial premise of Fieldwork will center on the idea of experimentation. In Collins Park artists will try out their ideas and verify them ‘in the field’. Public will include several site-specific works conceived especially for the exhibition by Ryan Gander, Sam Moyer and Jessica Stockholder. Some of the selected works will engage with the architecture of Collins’ Park, like Ugo Rondinone’s intervention on the Bass Museum façade or Alfredo Jaar’s on the park’s rotunda. This year, the sector will extend beyond Collins Park to include a performance-installation by Gunilla Klingberg on the nearby beach, where an intricate geometric pattern will be imprinted into the sand every morning, gradually being erased over the course of the day.
FROST ART MUSEUM
Breakfast In The Park
During Art Basel week, the 11th annual Breakfast in the Park showcases FIU’s Frost monumental Sculpture Garden on Sunday, December 7th with American contemporary artist Daniel Arsham as this year’s guest speaker.
Exhibitions
ADinfinitum: WANG QINGSONG
Recognized worldwide as one of China’s most innovative artists, Wang Qingsong is based in Beijing and was born in 1966 at the start of the Cultural Revolution. The artist has been invited to Miami for the opening reception and will speak at 4 p.m. on Saturday, November 8. ADinfinitum features giant photographic masterpieces the artist stages in huge spaces such as movie studios and warehouses. These works depict the drastic changes occurring in China, and the challenges brought about by this accelerated transition. They chronicle the difficulties that rapid societal change has presented to the Chinese people. The artwork can require months of logistical preparation and staging, and recruitment of dozens and sometimes hundreds of models for epic photo-shoots (many are done in one day and with no digital manipulation). The exhibition is site-specific, featuring 12 of Wang’s large-scale works (some from the Miami collections of Ella Cisneros, Anthony Japour and Craig Robins). Spanning all three galleries of the Frost’s third floor (a rarity for the museum), the show encompasses 2,500 square feet. A first for Wang’s solo shows, each gallery is dedicated to a particular theme of his work. The artist’s deep nostalgia for Chinese tradition permeates one gallery focusing on this core subject matter. One of the artworks in this exhibition, Crazy Readers, has never been shown in the United States.
Known for wandering the streets of China armed with a camera, Wang states that he uses his photo-murals to witness and emulate the hopes and frustrations of the Chinese people.(…)ADinfinitum brings the story of China past and present to a new Western audience fascinated by his country’s cultural and artistic dramas Lidu Yi, Curator
A Global Exchange: Geometric Abstraction Since 1950
Part of the Frost’s longstanding collaborative partnership with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Buenos Aires (MACBA), this exhibition features 30 works spanning 1950-2014. The commanding roster of artists showcases MACBA’s emphasis on crosscurrents of influence in geometric abstraction between artists worldwide. The scope of A Global Exchange sets it apart as one of the only group shows to present the interchange among geometric artists on such a global scale and time-line.
Featured Artist: Tony Costa (Italy), Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuela), Gabriele Evertz (Germany), Cristina Ghetti (Argentina), Frederick Hammersley (U.S.), Tadasuke Kuwayama (Japan), Walter Leblanc (Belgium), Almir Mavignier (Brazil), Olivier Mosset (Switzerland), Francois Morellet (France), Sarah Morris (U.K.), Matilde Perez (Chile), Francisco Sobrino (Spain), Julian Stanckzak (Poland) and Victor Vasarelly (Hungary).
The exhibition chronicles an international dialogue between artists that was integral to the development of geometric art Joe Houston, Curator
This updated Miami version of MACBA’s original thrust to explore geometric abstraction adds new focus on modern-day artists spearheading new variations of Color Theory and Op art, plus new acquisitions and historical works not shown before from artists such as Henryk Stazewski. The show traces the trajectories of the movement’s ideals all the way up to the new millennium, with Cristina Ghetti’s 2014 Vibrancy and Joy (zig painting). There are classic examples of 1960s Op art. The 50th anniversary of the Op movement is in 2015, it debuted with MOMA’s seminal 1965 show “The Responsive Eye,” making this exhibition at the Frost a well-timed kick-off to this anniversary. Half of the artists in this show participated in the groundbreaking MOMA exhibit. Rarely seen examples of perceptual art, alongside a broad sweep ranging all geometric art perspectives through six decades, are also showcased. The exhibition invites visitors to ask how geometric abstraction developed over time and distance, how this form has conveyed larger philosophical and political ideals, and how geometric artists changed the traditional relationship between artist and viewer.
A Global Exchange is more than just the idea behind the name of this exhibition.(…) It is the philosophy and spirit at the heart of MACBA’s mission. Geometric art has become our sole focus at MACBA because it is an art form present in every element of life. Its relation to other sciences like mathematics and physics allows for more open and embracing qualities. It is inclusive – never exclusive. Aldo Rubino, MACBA
WOLF
Myth & Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture
The First World War was radically unlike any earlier armed conflict. On the occasion of the centenary of the start of the war, The Wolfsonian–FIU exhibition Myth and Machine: The First World War in Visual Culture shows how artists, designers, and filmmakers responded to the unprecedented qualities of the war: new technologies, from aircraft to chemical weapons to tanks; the massive mobilization of armaments industries on the home front; the grinding everyday experiences of soldiers in trenches along stationary fronts; and the immense scale of destruction that the war entailed. The exhibition focuses on the role of myth in giving comprehensible form to the shattering realities of the war, and on the relationship between humans and machines as a key theme of wartime visual culture. Among the paintings, sculpture, posters, books, and photographs included are many rare and unique items that will offer an unfamiliar view of a conflict that changed the world.
Remembering Tokyo: KOIZUMI KISHIO
The Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923 was the worst natural disaster ever to strike Japan. It reduced much of Tokyo to rubble and left its inhabitants in despair. In the aftermath, the woodblock artist Koizumi Kishio (1893–1945) produced his most famous series of prints, Showa dai Tokyo hyakkei zue (One Hundred Views of Great Tokyo in the Showa Era) between 1928 and 1940. This exhibition presents thirty of the 100 Views, focusing on women in temples and shrines. In most cases Kishio shows the women in profile or facing away from the audience. The viewer cannot see their faces, and yet the message of each print, along with a sense of nostalgia for the past, is conveyed. This expressive means narrates, on the one hand, a sadness surrounding Tokyo after the calamity, and on the other an optimism for cosmopolitan rebirth.
