Well, I'm reaching the end of my list of places visited in Miami. Finally. And sadly, without pictures, I'm sure these notes are not nearly as interesting to read. But for the sake of blogging about my visit in it's entirety, here we go:
SCOPE
Of the SCOPE fairs in recent years, SCOPE Miami 2009 was probably my least favorite (although, full disclosure, I was not in Miami last year). It was probably also my least favorite of all of the fairs this year. I'm not sure if it had more to do with the booths or with the actual venue itself. It probably was due to the acute combination of the two. I'm not going to say anything about "The Market" other than to point out that when I stopped by on Saturday, the only things being displayed or sold were t-shirts and what looked like vintage clothing. If you're from LA, think Melrose Ave. in the late 90's. It was that, squashed into a windowless, cinder block tower. I'd label it a NO-GO.
After that downer, I'm going to list the GREAT things that I saw:
Anonymous Gallery (NY)--this gallery wins the award for showing not one but TWO things I really liked: Maya Huyuk's brightly colored, psychedelically geometric paintings and David Ellis' kinetic sound-sculpture/installation. I'm definitely not the only person to have mentioned the David Ellis piece. Here's a nice video of it for those of you who didn't experience it in person.
The rather controversial Mike Weiss (read controversial part here) had what seemed like a perpetual booth--it filled a regular-sized booth space and continued to spill over into two flanking aisles. It was the unending booth, but thankfully it was unending with large, beautiful paintings by Stephanie Gutheil (three of which were sold by Saturday morning when I visited).
Gagliari Art System (Torino) had a crowd-pleaser with a sculpture by Daniel Glaser and Magdalena Kunz. The sculpture was described as a Cinematographic Sculpture. In this work, the talking head was a dealer talking to an artist. Intriguing for us gallery-peeps.
Civilian Art Projects (Washington D.C.) was showing super affordable ($200) tiny works on paper by Nikki Painter.
Irvine Contemporary wins THE PIT award for having the BEST booth at Scope. They showed a cohesive ensemble of Barnaby Whitfield drawings, Melissa Ichiuji sculptures and a large Aaron Johnson painting. Like a tiny, dark fun-house packed into a booth.
Enjoy the weekend. Be sure to join us for Kimberley Hart's talk (there will be a Q&A session as well) TOMORROW, 2pm @ Mixed Greens.
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