Viola Frey

1. MIAMI PROJECT

“If you can only choose one fair, make it Miami Project” – WLRN Miami Herald News

Ferrin Contemporary presented selected works from Made in China: The New Export Ware featuring recent works produced in Jingdezhen, China by Caroline Cheng, Sin-ying Ho, Paul Scott, Robert Silverman, and Vipoo Srivilasa. Kasher | Potamkin‘s booth showed selected major works from Sergei Isupov’s 2014 solo “Promenade.” Kasher | Potamkin is a new Chelsea New York gallery located in the former Barry Friedman space. (Next fall, they will present a solo show of Isupov’s as an installation featuring sculptural works and and site specific wall paintings.)

2. MIAMI PROJECT

friends and colleagues

We chose this show for several reasons. Although relatively new, it is well run and we were surrounded by colleagues, our gallery partners, and art that seem to make sense next to ours. Our friend George Adams showed a recently consigned, ceramic selfie with tongue sticking out by Robert Arneson. Kim Dickey (currently showing “Mille-fleur” in the American art survey “State of the Art” at Crystal Bridges) showed two bird sculptures at Robischon whose booth was curated around the theme of birds, flight and sky. Jeffry Mitchell’s “Foo Dogs” were at PDX. Kris Kuski ’s “Ascension of Eos” was at Joshua Liner. Kuski is one of the many Virginia Groot Foundation award winners who were showing at the fairs. Photographer Andy Freeberg surprised us with a gift of his book Art Fare that included photographs he shot in 2010 of dealers and staff behind-the-scenes. The book featured our booth at ArtMiami. That was the year our red painted booth presented works by Sergei Isupov, Chris Antemann, and the lovely Lauren Levato came to work the show and we were reminded about how much had changed in four short years. Freeberg’s current work continues to follow his interest in working in the art world through environmental portraits and was shown by Kopeikin and Andrea Meisel at Miami Project.

3. Design Miami

collaboration and the special projects

Ephemera, sponsored by Perrier-Jouet, commissioned Vienna based duo Katharina Mischer and Thomas Traxler to create Small Discoveries. The project included mechanized plants moving, growing, and dying. Thinning Ice by MacArthur Fellow Jeanne Gang was sponsored by Swarovski. Both dealt with ecological issues and sustainability. To begin and end the show is the leather-clad Fendi booth celebrating Peter Marino, awarded “Design Visionary.” (Marino’s solo show is onview at the Bass Museum.)

4. DESIGN MIAMI

no names, no labels, no price lists

While clay may be everywhere, at Design Miami, you have to guess who made the piece or find someone in the booth who isn’t tied up with another VIP to ask. Then you have find a way to remember who did what where. You either needed to record voice or written notes on your phone or revert to taking notes with a pen on paper. I borrowed a pen and drew pictures on paper and left a card to receive digital information sometime in the future #oldschool. Elisabeth Agro, curator Philadelphia Museum of Art, used a pencil-written, paper cheat-sheet of her bucket-list dealers to visit.

5. DESIGN MIAMI

less is more and more is less

It is true that #clayiseverywhere throughout this fair, celebrating its 10th year with 35 dealers. Booth design is strong and in some cases overwhelms the work presented. Large low tables, mixed up and sometimes cacaphonic shelving, burnt wood shelf grid, colorful walls, clusters-as-still-lifes, and intensely lit individual works were a bit over the top. A quick overview of the ceramics reveals contemporary and mid-century works from the USA, France, Belgium, Holland, South Africa, and Korea. Of all the fairs, this one provided the most concentrated opportunity to view ceramic objects but this was primarily within the context of design, not fine art. (The highlighted links when clicked lead to web information that offers explanations of what was seen but not readily accessed at the fair. The list that follows refers to the series of images contained in the blog post with artist names and the dealers who presented their works.) Adam Silverman at Edward Cella Art + Architecture; Ron Nagle; Tony Marsh at Pierre Marie Giraud; Anders Ruhwald at Volume; Haas Brothers at R&Company; Maren Kloppman; Eva Hild at Hostler Burrows; Iris Eichenburg at Ornamentum; Studio Makkink & Bey’s Pyramid of Makkum (an edition of 7, that commemorates the original first produced at the Royal Tichelaar Makkum, the oldest dutch manufactory, est. 1572.) Presented within a wooden cabinet housing an assemblage based on everyday objects with detailed instructions to be assembled into a flower pyramid was exhibited by Priveekollektie. Selected ceramic sculpture from La Bourne, France produced from 1940–1960 was shown by Magen H Gallery. The Southern Guild from Capetown, South Africa, presented works by Ardmore Ceramic Art, a ceramic studio in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The presentation of South African design was made possible by the department of trade industry.  Seomi exhibited artist-designed ceramic furniture. Jean Jacques Inc. presented an array of American and European ceramicists.

6. ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

too large for one day let alone three hours so you can’t possibly see the whole show

For those who come every year, the #clayiseverywhere saying is true; but actually, clay is not as everywhere as it was last year-but if you weren’t there last year, then it seems as if it is everywhere this year. Great singluar works were on view throughout the show by clay masters Ken Price ,Toshiko Takaezu, and Betty Woodman along with younger artists Theaster Gates and Francesca DiMateo. CFILE’s Justin Crowe spent time there and wrote the filtered report on clay works at this fair. I noticed that he missed a booth off to the side with a set of pickle jars fabricated partly from wood, ceramic, and found objects. Like much of the work we were showing and looking at recently, they used collage and time honored repair methods to join history to the present in an object driven message delivered through the power of the familiar utilitarian object. Sudarshan Shetty, shown by Gallery SKE from New Delhi, presented a series titled “every broken moment piece by piece.”

7. ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

shiny, reflective and selfies

There were way too many opportunities to take reflective selfies at ABMB, but the most powerful example might have been the two part work by the ultimate, selfie-ist Ai Weiwei whose selfie taken of himself (with police behind him pre-arrest in 2009) was presented behind and reflected upon a something-ton forty-inch cube of clear crystal. ABMB, with over 73000 visitors included 160 museum groups and more than 267 galleries from 31 countries. That’s a lot of PEOPLE. People was the word embodied in one of the booth’s rotating neon signs. A personal favorite, was a neon sign by Jeppe Hein that asked “ARE YOU REALLY HAPPY”.

8. ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH

a kid could do this

“a kid could do this” was one of the special curated projects at the entrance to this fair. Installed as period room setting, each artwork was hung above a wainscot moulding with the artists’ signature on the wall in vinyl shown in dim lighting under a ceiling with a scrimmed covering presented by Gallery Gmurzynska. (Catalog available.) The idea is that modern art elicits the comment “any child could do this ____”. Appropos to our #clayiseverywhere theme, the title and intent of this exhibition could have been used as a starting point for an exhibition that explores the ongoing debate about intentional and unintentional abstraction by artists who come from the “Art World” to suddenly start working with clay and those who work with clay but climbed up the art ladder through training from the “Clay World.”

9. AQUA

Glazed and confused

AQUA lost a bit of its charm and uniqueness without the eye of the original founders Jacque Chartier and Dirk Park at the helm. But it was still art fun to cruise through at the end of a long day. Our Berkshire neighbor William Baczek has been exhibiting consistently, and presented illustrator Travis Louie along with well-known artists from our area Susan Mikula and Scott Prior. Victori Contemporary presented Jae Yong Kim’s wall of ceramic donuts. This was our most-liked photo and elicited the best captions comments. His interview in twelvmag about how he came to “make the donuts” is priceless. (Kim’s donuts were also shown by Lyons Weir at ArtMiami)

10. PULSE

Now located on the beach

This solid show started in Wynwood ten years ago and is now under the direction of Helen Toomer. Toomer moved it to the beach this year. Adjacent to the boardwalk and steps from the ocean, the show is beautifully installed with plenty of white space to show off the fresh, contemporary, material-driven artworks shown by well-known galleries that feature both established and emerging artists. Included in the varied materials and media was plenty of photography and conceptual installations. These provided a good setting for Sienna Patti Contemporary to show works by Susie Ganch and Lauren Fensterstock. (Fenderstock’s work was shown this summer at Independent Art Projects in North Adams, Massachusetts.) A major seated man by sculptor Viola Frey was presented by Rena Bransten. Tthe work of emerging artist Alwyn O’Brien was shown at James Harris Gallery in an organic grid-glaze-figurine collage sculpture. These assemblages are a new trend in ceramic sculpture as they push the limits of the clay’s fragility. A gorgeous series of works by Kathy Butterly at Shoshana Wayne greeted visitors at the entrance of the fair.

11. THE PARTIES: SCENE + SEEN

plan A, Skypad and more…

What’s Miami without a few parties? Special thanks goes out to Kasher|Potamkin and particularly Andi Potamkin for hosting the Miami Project exhibitor party on the boat. We felt honored and pampered; it was definitely a lovely benefit of being a dealer exhibiting at the fair. We were on a boat. Then there was the Saturday night let-it-all-down penthouse party held by our uber host and hostess Stuart and Julie Chase at Skypad-on-the-Bay. Twinkly lights, sunrise/sunsets, and birds eye view of the backed up traffic, police lights, and reflections of boats across the water. Gathered there were various #artberkshire regulars, museum professionals, visiting photographers, and, of course, the weary dealers. Stuart Chase, director of HistoryMiami, announced the Knight Foundation award of a matching grant to develop a new photography center dedicated to the photography of Miami. We were all there to congratulate and cheer on this initiative. I lacked any initiative at that hour and only took a shot of the view before sitting down to enjoy the company in real time. Monday we took a spin through the current exhibitions at HistoryMiami museum and discovered how the Beatles foresaw Miami Art Week as shown in the photograph of the group on their 1966 Butcher album cover.