Thanks to the efforts of organizations such as Primary Flight and Wynwood Walls, the Wynwood district in Miami is undergoing a radical transformation through art.
Miami
Los Angelenos and visitors to the West Coast are in for a treat this weekend. Fountain Art Fair rolls into LA for the first time from September 2 to October 3 with an exciting line-up of emerging artists and art spaces.
Walking or driving around Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, you’re immediately struck by the great volume of art all around, most noticeably on the wall. Some of the work is illegal but others are sanctioned through the efforts of Primary Flight, an organization which descibes itself as “Miami’s original open air museum and street level mural installation that takes place annually throughout the Wynwood Arts District and the Miami Design District.”
One gallerist told me that one “host” of a Primary Flight mural from last year loves his so much he was talking about graffiti coating it to ensure it longevity. What was remarkable about these murals, many of which were from last year, is that they look pretty much as good as the first day they were painted. Why?
Brooklyn-based artist Jacob Krupnick had the opportunity to spend the day after the Art Basel Miami Beach fair closed inside the convention center dodging forklifts and documenting the breakdown of the fair. “It’s that rare moment when lots of valuables are at risk and in motion,” he told me over email. “The amazing piles of crates and packing materials make it hard to pin down what, exactly, an art piece is. (One forklift operator pointed at a stack of shipping containers he’d arranged, and said without sarcasm: ‘This is my art.’)” [PHOTO SERIES]
Sure they love the money, but not all Miamians are kumbaya about the alien spacecraft that is the art fairs and its annual landing in South Beach. The Miami New Times has a hilarious list of why they are glad the fairs are over.
SCOPE is the art fair that many people like to disparage but this year’s installment was quite good and worth a trip.
Housed in a large tent near the Art Miami and Red Dot art fairs and, as always, attached to Art Asia, the greater prominence ensured more foot traffic than last year (two gallerists told me sales and traffic were better this year) and the lofty space made it much more conducive to looking at art.
Tired of all the chatter about Nada being the next big thing, I decided to see if this year’s display would be everything the PR and press promised it would be.
Honestly, it was. Even if the solo artist booths in Richelieu hall were generally a little dull and pedantic, the Napoleon hall was filled with a diverse range of work from galleries that obviously loved what they do.
I found the painting at Nada particularly strong and it was nice to see a love of color in so many that ranged from large-ish-scale abstractions to small intimate pieces with rich surfaces. The tread for most of these paintings is that they tended to be done in a gestural mode of representation veering towards the abstract, but I can live with that.
If looking at art is fun, watching it burn is great. There’s something cathartic about attending an event dedicated to the destruction of art in the middle of the world’s largest art fair bacchanalia.
