ART & DESIGN

Fair Enough

The fifteen best things from Art Basel Miami 2013.

by Diane Solway

For Piston Head, a show of artist-designed cars, the New York collector-turned-dealer Adam Lindemann...

Another year, another Art Basel bacchanal. Over five days last week, a number of the world’s most high-octane collectors, dealers, artists, brands and pop stars converged on Miami Beach for some spirited trophy hunting. Pharrell hit Design Miami, Kanye talked architecture with starchitect Jacques Herzog and uber curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Leo DiCaprio powered through the main art fair, keeping his capped head down. (“No photos please.”) Of course, you can’t do everything, but after navigating a number of the fairs, exhibitions, museum openings and parties around town, we bring you fifteen of our favorite things from Miami’s 2013 edition.

Photos: Fair Enough

For Piston Head, a show of artist-designed cars, the New York collector-turned-dealer Adam Lindemann and his team from Venus Over Manhattan took over a floor of 1111 Lincoln Road, the snazzy Herzog and de Meuron designed parking garage. Sponsored by Ferrari, the show included a spotted mini by Damien Hirst, a compressed car by French sculptor César Baldaccini, and our favorite, a 1961 Cadillac by Kenny Scharf, with the most rad interior you’ve likely seen.

Stephanie Busuttil-Janssen next to French sculptor César Baldaccini’s compressed car.

Given the feverish pace of the art market, it was only fitting, perhaps, that a number of galleries at the Design Miami art fair showed clocks. Analog meets digital in the clocks that Victor Hunt gallery presented by the Swedish design from Humans since 1982. One of them was made of 60 mechanical clocks, controlled by an iPad. The hands of each clock seemed to dance in space before displaying the correct time in a digital format.

And at Carpenters Workshop gallery, Maarten Baas offered a wry take on the Grandfather Clock featuring Grandpa himself. A video showed the old guy regularly redrawing the hands on to the face of the clock—an apt metaphor for the phantom of time.

Photo courtesy of Carpenters Workshop Gallery.

Mark Bradford’s “Carta” at Hauser & Wirth.

Photo courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth.

Toilet-paper pyramid by the Turner Prize winner Martin Creed at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

A detail of Sturtevant’s “Elastic Tango,” an assemblage of video screens, at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise.

Jorge Pardo’s “The Booth” for neugerriemschneider not only filled the booth with works of art to buy, the booth itself was a work for sale—and also offered a reprieve from the fair. Once you stepped inside this Aladdin’s cave, light, delirious color and plush cushions combined to create a mesmerizing experience to contemplate art. Added bonus: in the afternoon during the VIP fair, tequila was on tap.

Photo by David Owens, courtesy of neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

The interior of Jorge Pardo’s “The Booth.”

Photo by David Owens, courtesy of neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

Daniel Arsham’s volcanic ash and crystal eroded laptop at Emannuel Perrotin.

The new Pérez Art Museum Miami, designed by Herzog and de Meuron, connects the city, water and sky. Natural light brings its collections to life.

Photo by Iwan Baan.

Who could resist a confab between Kanye West (taking a break from his tour) and the Swiss architect Jacques Herzog on the subject of design and architecture, especially when moderated by the über curator Hans Ulrich Obrist? Even if it started 90 minutes late, was hard to hear, and was literally, standing room only, the conversation yielded a few gems, among them Kanye’s recollections of why he dropped out of art school, his advice to not be “afraid to ask questions to a person who’s an expert,” and this amazing photo op, which likely proved one of the more unlikely collaborations of the week.

Photo by Getty Images.

Tracey Emin lit up the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami with her all neon retrospective.

Photo by Allison Diaz.

Kevin Spacey and Tracey Emin.

Charlotte Perriand designed La Maison au bord de l’eau (the house by the water) in 1934 though it wasn’t until last week in Miami that the beach house was first constructed—thanks to Louis Vuitton—at the Raleigh Hotel. Elegant, chic and designed as low-cost housing, it is possibly the perfect house by the sea. It even has a retractable roof for savoring all seasons.

Photo courtesy of Louis Vuitton.

The NADA art fair was the most energetic place in Miami—with its younger gallerists, emerging artists and bent toward risk-taking. A few of our favorites include Matt Lipps at Jessica Silverman gallery, Sean Kennedy at Thomas Duncan, Mariah Robertson at American Contemporary and Dashiell Manley at Redling Fine Art.

Matt Lipps’s “Photojournalism,” 2013. Photo courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery.

Sean Kennedy’s “Untitled,” 2013.

Photo courtesy of Thomas Duncan Gallery.

A piece by Mika Tajima at Eleven Rivington.

Dashiell Manley’s “two second loop (sixth second fragment, 30/24, half speed, reel A) 5-8,” 2013.

Photo courtesy of Redling Fine Art.

Mariah Robertson’s “59,” 2012.

Photo courtesy of American Contemporary.

At Design Miami, the Dutch artist Simon Heijdens presented Phare No.1-9, an elegantly minimal installation of hand-blown glass vessels in which delicate three-dimensional “drawings” appeared in response to data taken by sensors located outside the fair’s tent. The project, commissioned by Perrier-Jouët, was Heijdens’s modern take on Art Nouveau, which he explained was informed by technology and mathematics despite its lavish naturalistic stance.

Simon Heijdens installation. Photo by Charles Emerson.

Also at Design Miami, Suzanne Demisch and Stephane Denant gave the most elegant of one-two punches filling their booth with early Maria Pergay furniture and wall pieces by Sheila Hicks.

Floating paper boat by Luis Pons at the Standard Hotel. An oasis of calm and simple design in the midst of all the frenzied activity. It looked particularly captivating in the moonlight.

Photo by BFAnyc.com.

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