Untitled Art: Brandt Gallery: Johan deWit, (boxes made out of paper)
I could feel, yet again, that excitement was beginning to create a vibration that Miami grabbed onto decades ago and never let go. I donned my ruby slippers, and was whisked away on the tornado of art fairs.
The 2025 Design Miami Fair still resides happily in their “glamping” across from Art Basel Miami Beach in the Miami Beach Convention Center. Founded by entrepreneur Craig Robins in 2005, DM features practical and decorative objects taken to a new dimension in world design.
Design Miami 2025 is it’s usual eye popping amalgam of booths. Best in Show was London’s Charles Burnand Gallery featuring the brilliant Peter Lane’s ceramic “wall.” I was sure it was gorgeous charred wood, never imagining that the huge erose slabs adorning the booth walls were made of a ceramic material bolted to a supporting wall. Lane’s large-scale panels are described appropriately as “monumental ceramic murals.” Being able to crawl inside exceptional creative minds involved in this fair is a heady experience.
The Charles Burnand Gallery also displays hanging lights by Kyeok Kim called “‘Surface of Memory 03’ inspired by the structure of human skin cells and uses materials like copper, ottchil (Korean natural lacquer), and wood powder.” The white chairs are by Jungin Lee and made from 100 sheets of Hanji paper and flour paste. I tapped on the surface. One would not ever imagine from the hard tapping sound that the origin material is essentially paper. It’s stunning to realize that a material so fragile can be handled in a way to ultimately sustain the functional life of a chair. The artist is also known for her sumptuous labor-intensive manipulated photography on mulberry paper.
It is about here I started to realized I cannot skim by any of the pieces without peering deeper, since nothing is what it seems. Never assume you know what is real until you spend a moment of inquiry.
Design Miami’s Best In Show for Contemporary Work is “Sunrise Japan” by Jorge Lizarazo in the Cristina Grajales Gallery (NY). The Colombian artist weaves tapestry from metal strands, reflecting and filtering light. Sublime.
Design Miami has several beautiful booth designs. The sheer intensity of detail and care and brilliant ideas and artisanry and hours of intense work overflowed my ability to fully absorb the degree of dedication these various pieces would require.
Art Basel Miami Beach: Ward Shelley, "The Last Library IV: Written in Water"
In Art Basel Miami Beach I noted the same tone. After going through the new Sector “Zero 10,” covering the fast rising digital practices, i.e, code-based, algorithmic systems, immersive installations, robotics, light, and sound, I noted alternatively a distinct veering towards using one’s hands again . . . and with a dexterity and excellence not seen in the last decade, a time I was chronically miffed at the lack of carrying through to emerge into a truly earth-moving piece. Back then it appeared merely having an idea seemed good enough. Pulling it off was an unnecessarily cumbersome bother. I may be a bit harsh here but that is my take-away memory.
It’s come full circle. We want to use our hands again, but back to accomplishing tasks with precision and with a knowledge of where original ideas were utilized by our forebears. Handmade paper, fiber arts, crafts of all areas. . . people want to connect with a tangible medium, to feel something again. Ceramics is gaining speed with collectors along with complicated and often deeply cultural and ancient artistic methods. This time surprising materials are switched out with traditional treatment. Figuring out how work was done has been fun and enlightening this year.
Zero 10’s Robotic dog people called “Regular Animals” from Beeple Studios was disturbing in the very real-to-life faces of our nearest and dearest techno mega-billionaires. I stared down at medium-sized robot “dogs” zipping around in a penned area of the Meridians sector sporting what appeared to be the severed heads of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg; you get the picture. It made me think . . . and made me a little uncomfortable. The “faces” take patrons photo and, how shall I say this, proceed to “eject” the photo back out from a small rear mounted printer. I don’t know how much more artfully I could report on those high brow “toys” with low-brow appeal.
The Meridian Sector typically contains large scale projects that cannot be confined to a booth-sized space. Artist Ward Shelley created a shockingly large and industrious installation titled “The Last Library IV: Written in Water” focusing in on the “post-truth era.” If it’s the end of your art-perusing day and your eyes no longer focus, you may be tempted to walk by the messy piles of books and file boxes and piles of papers. Don’t. Stop, read the labels on the file boxes (i.e. “Verbatim but out of order.” or “Human Downgrading”), read the book titles, walk around the installation to see the perspective distortion, note the signage. Billed as “elaborate handmade fiction of fake books and documents juggle for space with the Magna Carta and Declaration of Human Rights.”
Art Basel Miami Beach: Nike Davies-Okundaye at the Ko Gallery
As I came down the escalator into the main convention hall at one point, I had to stop for a moment and take in the sheer vastness of the fair I looked down upon from above. It took my breath away. But by now it was getting later and I was running out of steam. Back on the convention floor, I was instantly resuscitated by gazing upon the pure life force of Nigerian artist Nike Davies-Okundaye at the Ko Gallery from Lagos. She is a visual explosion. People flocked to her. You couldn’t help it. Her mother and grandmother had taught her what was then called the feminine arts (this work was from the 1960s). Beading, indigo dye-work and batik . . .what she was wearing was all her work. Davies-Okundaye has a workshop and gallery in Lagos preserving and promoting traditional Nigerian textile arts. She has a show at the Tate Modern in London on the development of modern art in Nigeria on view until May 2026.
The Untitled Fair on the sand at 12 Street anted up small old metal boxes on a shelf. I was underwhelmed until realizing the boxes were impeccably fashioned from paper. If you don’t know what you’re looking at, how can you make a proper judgement.
Untitled Art Fair: Antonio Santin, Marc Straus Gallery
A framed carpet at the Marc Straus Gallery (NY), upon inquiry, did not contain anything resembling carpet, only paint, (now stay with me here), squeezed on laboriously layer by layer by layer with a hypodermic needle by Madrid artist Antonio Santín. No matter how closely I peered, I questioned the gallerist of her absolute claim. Only after I photographed a close-up section, then enlarged it could I be sure of her declaration. I’m still trying to unravel the dedication of time and patience of that artist. He describes his work as “more real than reality itself” stressing “meticulous detail and optical illusion.”
My mind spun as visions of myriad creative minds tumbled around in my brain. Art Week. We love it until our eyes glaze over and our feet become sick of us. Tomorrow is another day: Art Miami on the Water taxi from the beach, followed by INK at the Dorchester. My favorite quiet fair.
The Art Basel Awards: the first year ever of awards is an interesting meander through the link.
Twenty years of Design Miami: In case you want to read through what you missed.
“Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.” Kurt Vonnegut
