10 Art Spectacles That You Aren’t Going to See At A Fair During Miami Art Week 2012
As we prepare our itineraries for the upcoming Miami Art Week, we've decided to look beyond the fairs, at a few of the week's finest art spectacles that have little to nothing to do with a fair. Prepare yourselves for silliness, beauty, mystery, flight, rebellion and sandwiches!
1. First up is something near and dear to our hearts. Of course, Art Video Nights is affiliated with a fair (Art Basel, the biggest fair, to be exact), but the nightly series of 60 films and videos, displayed on the 7,000-square-foot projection wall of the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center has always been its own entity as far as we’re concerned. Especially when names like William Kentridge, Hans Schabus, Ryan McGinley and Cao Fei are involved.
2. On Thursday, December 6, Miami Art Week-goers have a chance to come together to celebrate the late, great Kurt Cobain via a multi-discipline exhibition/performance at the Gusman Center’s Olympia Theater. The evening begins with an abstract, short film featuring several actors portraying Cobain, then leads to a performance piece rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Los Angeles’s “dance provocateur” Ryan Heffington, and culminates in what is bound to be an unforgettable performance by Thurston Moore, one of Cobain’s biggest documented influences.
3. “No hay banda! There is no band! Il n'est pas de orquestra! This is all... a tape-recording…” And you too can whisper “Silencio” at the pop-up iteration of David Lynch’s infamous, Mulholland Drive-inspired Parisian nighclub. The club will appear, as if a dream, ever so briefly at the Delano South Beach during Miami Art week.
4. Cali artist Dickson Schneider has met his Kickstarter goal of $800, enabling him to bring his “Free Art Cart,” loaded with over 300 art works, to Basel this year. Schneider, who likens his art peddling to an ice cream man giving out ice cream, has a straightforward yet innovative approach to performance art, free speech and social practice, so it should be interesting to see how the Miami art crowds receive him. Plus... FREE ART FOR ALL!
5. You may remember that we honed in on José Parlá as one of the five up and coming artists we thought you should be looking for at ABMB this year. I guess we should once again mention that The Standard will be celebrating the mural work that Parlá did in conjunction with renowned graffiti artist JR during last year’s Havana Biennial by launching a book that will document the project, with a party during Miami Art Week to celebrate. And celebrate we will. What we’re really looking forward to at The Standard however is Parlá‘s Cafécito Neptuno, a pop-up Cuban café serving traditional Cuban fare, that will remain open 24 hours a day for the run of Miami Art Week.
6. Look! Up in the sky! It’s… a plane… with some strange, cryptic text attached to the back of it? This year the Morgans Hotel Group will be running “Plane Text,” an installation in the actual skies of Miami, Florida. Between 9 am and 1 pm each day during the run of Miami Art Week, visitors can expect to see the text art of Richard Prince, John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner and more, and all they have to do is look up.
7. When you’re not guzzling Perrier to stay hydrated this Miami Art Week, make sure you’re carrying around your limited edition Art Production Fund artist water bottle. The public art initiative has teamed up with Tommy Hilfiger and will be unveiling a series of three artist-designed stainless steel water bottles next week. Whether you’re a fan of Marilyn Minter, Joseph Kosuth, Raymond Pettibon, or all three, pick up your bottles at The Standard Spa Miami Beach before they run out!
8. Sometimes art just isn’t fair, so OHWOW is setting up their fifth and final group exhibition, It’s Not Fair, as a testament to art that doesn’t necessarily fit within the confines of one of Miami’s December art fairs. Progressive, large-scale work from all disciplines including Gang Gang Dance, Nate Lowman, Terry Richardson, Harmony Korine and Agathe Snow, just to name a few, will be displayed in a 6,000 square foot space on the beach this year. Further showcasing their mission to give back to the Miami community and stand up as the antithesis to the wealth that is Miami Art Week, It’s Not Fair will be hosting a soup kitchen providing free dinner to whoever wants it throughout the run of the show.
9. Many visiting Miami forget about the other venue where fantastic art can be viewed: the gallery. The Diana Lowenstein Gallery, located in Miami’s Wynwood District, showcases some incredible talent, much of it local. During Basel, the gallery will showcase work by Italian artist Loris Cecchini, whose sweeping installations seem to challenge our perception of everyday form, have been shown at places like MoMA PS1 and the Pecci Contemporary Art Center.
10. This one’s a bit unusual and vague, but as we all know, anything goes during this particular week in Miami. Over the course of three days, French art duo Kolkoz will be setting up Lunar Park, an installation inspired by the landing site of Apollo 11. The beach installation, which is part performance piece and part social experiment, will be set up to look like a Jules Verne or Georges Méliès-inspired moon face and will be the scene of a beach soccer tournament featuring artists, collectors, curators and art critics, split into teams and competing against each other for bragging rights. We all know how good the art world is at sports.
