Satellites: it’s getting awfully crowded out here in outer space. Nearly twenty “satellite” fairs have developed around the core of Art Basel Miami Beach, aka “the big fair.” So what happens when one exits the artificially-lit warren of booths in the Convention Center, leaving the insularity of planet Basel to...
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Much can be—and, of course, has been—said about the role of Art Basel in the global art market. It’s a fair, after all, that can turn certain “peripheral” cities into cultural centers. What was Basel, what was Miami, before the advent of the art fair? In particular, Art Basel laid...
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In the tenth year of Art Basel Miami Beach, the number and range of supplementary events has skyrocketed. From satellite fairs, such as the more established NADA and Pulse or the newer Seven, to well-known private collections, quirky pop-up exhibitions, and endless performances, the peripheries of the fair have become...
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Cognitive dissonance. It’s a cliché by now, a toss-off term used to explain (or to keep from explaining) all sorts of contradictions, hypocrisies, moral and ethical failings, feats of self-loathing, etc. It has become a standard operating principle, the kernel of cynical reason, the delivery mechanism of mental detachment.
And we...
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Wishing for respite from the throngs at Art Basel Miami Beach, I walked over to the Formalist Sidewalk Poetry Club, a new gallery launched not in the obligatory blighted-cum-gentrifying Wynwood "gallery" district, but nestled in a former shoe store on one of South Beach's rather banal shopping strips. As the unusual name and strategic locale may suggest, the venue, run by Columbia MFA holder, Clayton Deutsch, is going for something a little different. And with the owner's...
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Affectionately referred to as the Borg ship amongst some bloggers, Basel's floor plan is basically a large grid of white cubes inside the Miami Convention Center. This format has the ability to make all art look the same, and this year was no different: a rather stale viewing experience. As always, the Modern and postwar art booths are located at the front of the building, while contemporary settles for the back. Probably not such a bad layout tactic—but I expect this...
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