HUSH
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Recap and Insights
Friends of HUSH
12.23.14
Art Basel Miami 2014
HUSH
Hello Friends!
We had the opportunity to attend the Art Basel Miami fair in
December 2014 As in the past, we’ve put together a recap for your
enjoyment, education, and inspiration.
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Art Basel, held yearly in Miami, Basel & Hong Kong, showcases an
impressive array of artwork, art installations, and
experiences that reflect the current creative landscape.
Within days, Miami transforms into an art mecca that runs the
spectrum from the beautiful, to the thought-provoking, to the
occasional head-scratcher. Concurrent with Art Basel, there
are other satellite gallery fairs: Pulse, Scope, Nada, Untitled, etc.
The Design Miami event occurs at the same time as these gallery
fairs, representing an interesting mixture of high art, product and
furniture design, and other associated creative convergence.
What follows is not a comprehensive recap - it’s impossible to
attend every show, installation, gallery party, and design event - but
rather a look from the HUSH perspective. This includes things we
noticed - trends, similarities and interests from an aesthetic,
material, and brand point of view.
Please enjoy our take on an inspiring few days.
Art Basel Miami 2014
Index
Art and Nature
Colors & Patterns
Process, Process, Process
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Walls
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Art Basel Miami 2014
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Art and Nature
The art world reflects many facets of our society, paralleling events and
conversations happening around the world. If art responds to the cultural
zeitgeist, then the current world focus seems to be on Mother Nature. The
natural world, plants, animals and geological formations were very visible
across fairs and gallery shows this year.
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Art Basel Miami 2014
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Perrier Jouet | Mischer Traxler - “Ephemera”
Viennese design duo Mischer'Traxler has unveiled a dynamic
installation for Champagne brand Perrier-Jouët.
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"It's an interactive kinetic installation," said Thomas Traxler. "If you
are at a big enough distance from the table it starts blooming, and
the same with the mirrors. They become very decorative pieces. But
if you come too close the table becomes flat and the mirrors
become functional mirrors.”
"The species that are used on the table and on the mirror are all
related to real species," he added. "Some are extinct and some are
very common plants that can be found all over the planet, while
others are newly discovered species. So it's also about the impact of
humanity on nature, and the impact we have."
Link - http://www.mischertraxler.com/
Video - http://vimeo.com/113463131
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Brad Troemel - “LIVE/WORK”
Troemel is well-known for his development of the Tumblr website
The Jogging, which has received attention for its work in New Media
and Microblogging.
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While LIVE/WORK takes physical form, it nonetheless represents
Troemel’s exploration of the web-based experience. Troemel
explains his work as “a physical ecology of contextual complexity
and focused attention often destabilized and decentralized on the
web.”
Adding even more interest to this piece, the installation actually
exists as a charity walk . . . for ants. The ants are competing for
various nonprofits, from Earth First! to Greenpeace, Wikipedia to
PBS, which will receive 10 percent of proceeds from the gallery's
sales.
http://main.bradtroemel.com/
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Coral Therapy
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As far as we know, this was a first for Art Basel. Using the Oculus
Rift, Morphological Studios created a 360-degree virtual reality
film. When viewing ‘Coral Therapy’, the viewer is enveloped by
fluorescent corals and sea anemones; much like being inside a
virtual planetarium theater.
The creators explain, “‘Coral Therapy’ is designed to convey a virtual
out-of-body experience in which the viewer is transported to a
tranquil tropical reef in outer-space. An original ambient score
enhances the cosmic coral perspective while accentuating the
peaceful and relaxing experience.”
http://morphologicstudios.com/index.php?/projects/coral-therapy/
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Swarovski | Jeanne Gang - “Thinning Ice”
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‘Thinning Ice’ is an immersive installation designed by American
architect Jeanne Gang to raise awareness about climate change.
Time lapse video of Iceland’s Jokulsarlon Glacier cover the walls of
the installation’s oval-shaped room.
The glacier’s continuous, gradual movement informed several
components of the space’s design. The floor includes crystal-filled
illuminated ‘glacier cracks’. A center table, inspired by the free
form of ice, contains simulated subglacial meltwater channels. Each
of these channels is filled with a variety of both raw and finished
Swarovski crystals.
http://studiogang.net/work/2014/thinning-ice
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Paloma Teppa
Industrial designer and artist Paloma Teppa’s passion is to fuse art,
design, architecture and nature.
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Teppa writes, “I seek to design objects that value the beauty of
nature such as the colors, textures and smells of a garden. Objects
that breathe and naturally purify our homes. I find magical secrets
hiding in every garden. My miniature gardens portray an ideal world
where plants and animals live in harmony and cared by humans. It
is an exercise to raise our consciousness every day.”
http://shop.plantthefuture.com/
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Colors & Patterns
Basic forms, bold colors, patterning and repetition are keystones of the art
world despite changes in production techniques, materials and process.
This year at Art Basel Miami was no different. Both diverse color palettes
and huge color gradients wove their way into a remarkable amount of work.
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Art Basel Miami 2014
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Jonathan Muecke
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For the tenth anniversary of Design Miami, Jonathan Muecke
created a pavilion highlighting his ongoing investigation of “notions
of positive and negative space, positional relationships to structures
and the innate desire to read notions of functionality into objects
that relate to human scale.”
From the artist: “Centered around a double-layered circular
structure with apertures at both poles, this piece is designed on a
human scale, rejecting monumentality in favor of lightness and
variability. Filtered through a translucent canopy that shelters the
whole structure, light will bounce off the curved and colored
surfaces of the pavilion – complementary tones of red and green
within, primary blue and yellow without – creating a shifting
topography of reflected color.”
http://jonathanmuecke.com/
http://instagram.com/p/wCkp79PWlR/
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Guillermo Mora
Mora’s piece for the Untitled Art Fair, Hacia blanco (“towards
white”), exhibits the entire chromatic spectrum on a 300-meter
wooden circle, assembled by metal hinges.
These 300 meters would ideally surround the museum for which the
piece has been created.
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http://www.guillermomora.com/ESP/Guillermo_Mora.html
Art Basel Miami 2014
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RO/LU - “Uncertain Surfaces”
Design studio RO/LU believes their work emerges from and remains
continuously in motion.
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Within their installation, models and gallery attendants sport
clothing with the same pattern as the booth. RO/LU’s project is an
exploration of philosopher Bruno Latour's concept, the “life of
things”—the belief that “objects, images, and ideas have their own
agency and won’t simply sit still under someone’s watch, on
someone else’s terms.”
In the design team's words: "Objects, images, and ideas have lives
to live.... Suddenly we are interested in getting closer to these
objects, establishing a poetic proximity that will allow these things
to teach us in ways no person could."
http://www.ro-lu.com/
http://miami2014.designmiami.com/curio/view/patrick-parrishgallery
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Mika Tajima
Mika Tajima is fascinated by ergonomics and the way we can
condition our bodies, both externally and internally, through
industrial design.
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At NADA, the artist explored this theme by placing a full-sized
candy-colored Jacuzzi shell on the wall. It turns out that the Jacuzzi
did not originate as a leisure device, but rather a tool developed by
California’s Candido Jacuzzi in 1948 to treat his son’s rheumatoid
arthritis.
Flanking the piece are additional color explorations using similar
plastic materials. Collectively, they fill the exhibition space with a
range of colors and patterns.
http://mikatajima.com/
http://www.artspace.com/magazine/interviews_features/
interview_mika_tajima
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Matt Donovan
Matt Donovan is an artist, industrial designer, and conservator of
kinetic artworks to translate abstract ideas into accessible and
meaningful content.
He has built a career in which design and art are inseparable. For
his most recent series, he explores bold color patterns and textures
using one of the most ubiquitous of colored objects, the Lego.
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http://www.olgakorpergallery.com/collection/2704
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Abel Ventoso
Argentinian artist Abel Hector Ventoso’s formal approach to plastic
art developed through his architectural studies.
Each piece consists of a large piece of rubber, cut into individual
rectangles and contorted to form a complex structure.
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Ventoso states, ”The use of unconventional materials and
techniques allow me to project the valuable nature of the volumetric
and its expressive force.”
http://www.ventoso.com.ar/index0.html
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Process, Process, Process
Regardless of industry, many of us find as much pleasure in the journey as
in the final output. New techniques of production, new materials, incredibly
arduous and lengthy processes, and complicated mathematical algorithms
are defining process in a lot of contemporary art.
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Art Basel Miami 2014
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Tony Orrico
Passionate about creative process, Tony Orrico’s work focuses on
organized consciousness and applications of the body to a surface,
object, or course.
We featured him last year for his amazing Pennwald Drawings, and
this year he did not disappoint.
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This work was created by a simple process, done over and over
again, ad infinitum. He bit the paper . . .from top to bottom, left to
right.
Orrico explains, “I commit my attention, rationally, to the sensitivity
of the body at the receptive level— ready points and lines in space.
I attain a sense of embodiment that is geometric and mechanical,
with no dominating sense of axis or outside force, and find the
ability to motor from invented traction. The course is non-objective;
it is a continuation of pathway and response to stimuli.”
http://tonyorrico.com/
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Shinya Aota
At first glance, the work of Shinya Aota looks like a variety of
common glass bottle shapes, manipulated to look like sea glass. Far
from it.
By scraping off the surface of all sorts of ubiquitous commodities,
Aota transforms them into works of art. By removing the vessel’s top
layers, we are reminded of the essential quality and existence of the
thing itself.
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https://artsy.net/artist/shinya-aota
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Marck
Marck exclusively uses screens that began life as a cathode ray
monitor or a LCD to display his works. He then either dismantles,
newly creates, or rebuilds the screen cladding in order for the
specific video content to complement the display’s condition.
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In his "Woman Case”, for example, Marck explains, “the monitors
have been reconstructed into a box in which a woman is locked.
Marck`s video sculptures demonstrate how a man sees and reflects
on the female world and the patterns of the relationships between
men and women. The man locks women up in a chest or lies them
in baths in which the women make themselves at home in the hope
that the casing or the sphere of life around them will at some point
dissolve without their own actions.”
http://www.marck.tv/
https://vimeo.com/10445325
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Marina Abramovic - “Slow Motion Walk”
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The Young Arts Foundation recently took over the former Bacardi
US headquarters, and now calls it home. For Art Basel, YA
partnered with the Marina Abramovic Institute, and shared one of
her seminal works, the “Slow Motion Walk,” within the iconic
building. And it didn’t disappoint. HUSH team members performed
the “slow walk” led by an Abramovic understudy which took 45
minutes to travel a mere 100 feet around the room (pictured).
Concentration is the key to the celebrated performance artist’s
projects, most of which involve "durational" work, such as sitting in
the same spot in a museum all day.
Abramovic’s brand of intense baring down is applicable in other
creative endeavors and also business, where “monotasking" is
starting to come back into fashion. It’s something the artist hopes
to teach others.
http://www.youngarts.org/artbasel
http://www.mai-hudson.org/
https://vimeo.com/71658871
Art Basel Miami 2014
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Theo Jensen - “Strandbeest”
Theo Jansen's famed kinetic sculptures, Strandbeests ("beach
animals") blur the lines between art, science, sculpture and
performance. This was our week’s highlight.
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The exhibition celebrates the thrill of the Strandbeests' unique
locomotion as well as the processes that have driven their
evolutionary development on the Dutch seacoast.
Jansen constructs his self-propelling beach animals, like “Animaris
Percipiere” (pictured top-left) using only PVC pipe. Each of his
creatures gain locomotion from wind power. Jansen’s intricate
arrangement of the pipes enables the creatures to move in complex
ways, even change direction.
They are truly a sight to be seen.
http://www.strandbeest.com/
Upcoming Exhibit: Peabody Essex Museum - September 2015
http://www.pem.org/exhibitions/176strandbeest_the_dream_machines_of_theo_jansen
Art Basel Miami 2014
Walls
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The launch of Art Basel Miami in 2002 inspired a huge cultural and
architectural revitalization of the city. Taking a cue from other metropolitan
areas, Miami has striven to rebuild itself one structure at a time.
There are too many examples to highlight but the “Wynwood Walls”
phenomenon is worth a focus. The effort demonstrates a confluence of
urban investment, artistic opportunity, and readily available real estate,
transforming structures in vacant lots, commercial buildings (or any other
large, flat surface) into XXL canvases.
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Art Basel Miami 2014
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Wynwood Walls
Tony Goldman conceived The Wynwood Walls in 2009 as a way to
transform the district full of windowless warehouse buildings in a
big way. He wanted to bring city dwellers and visitors “the greatest
street art ever seen in one place."
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Through public exploration of these oversized art pieces, Goldman
hoped to develop the area’s pedestrian potential.
The Walls has brought the world's greatest artists working in the
graffiti and street art genre to Miami. Since its inception, the Walls
program has hosted over 50 artists representing 16 countries and
have covered over 80,000 square feet of walls.
Here are a few. . .
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Ron English - https://www.popaganda.com/
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Maya Hayuk - http://www.mayahayuk.com/
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Logan Hicks - http://workhorsevisuals.com/new/
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Faile -http://www.faile.net/
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Art Basel Miami 2014
Thank You!
David Schwarz | Partner
[email protected]
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Rob Cohen | Director of Business Development
[email protected]
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