By Rebekah Drysdale:

Design Miami, Elisa Strozyk & Sebastian Neeb, Miami 2011. Photo by Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images.

At the entry of the Design Miami tent, an impromptu atelier welcomed visitors to the installation performance created by Elisa Strozyk and Sebastian Neeb. Fendi, the Italian luxury fashion house, provided the opportunity for these artists to showcase their work. Fendi also provided the leather that was woven into the 18th century furniture on display.

The simple workspace was surrounded by decorative objects and antique furnishings which the artists had modified using the materials at hand. Strozyk’s sewing machine seemed to be a very early model, reinforcing an awareness of the historic continuity of methods, techniques, and materials in noble crafts. Strozyk and Neeb’s collaboration achieved an elegant, subtle exhibit.

Retna: Wynwood Walls, Miami 2011

Retna‘s distinct, over-sized calligraphy graced numerous surfaces throughout Miami. His mural at Wynwood Walls was poignant and precise. The L.A. artist (real name Marquis Lewis) began painting murals in the mid-1990s and has since had many highly acclaimed gallery exhibitions, most notably his 2010 exhibition at New Image Art.

Visually influenced by writing from around the world, Retna invented his own alphabet. His calligraphy recalls Old English and Arabic scripts, drawn with an oversized brush as if with a nib. The artist encourages viewers to interpret their meaning and clarified in a recent interview, “They all say something.” Retna’s installations transcend the street artist vs. gallery exhibition debate. His imagery and symbolism are eloquent and exacting.

By Carmen Winant:

Across the fairs — though predominantly at Basel and Nada — mirror art loomed large. From Brock Enright at Kate Werble Gallery, Heather Rowe at D’amerlio Terras, Douglas Gordon at Dvir Gallery,  and Sam Durant at Sadie Coles…the list goes on and on. I spoke to one gallerist who believed that mirror art was so popular this year because artist finally caught on that collectors just want to see themselves reflected back. I’m not sure if she was kidding or not, but the speculation is telling. If that is the case, what they saw reflected was strange and fragmented; the mirrors tended to be scratched, burned, painted over, rubbed and otherwise sanded away, obfuscating — and perhaps refusing — a desperate view back onto the spectacle around them.

Silverman Gallery, NADA Miami, 2011

San Francisco’s Silverman Gallery gallery took an unconventional route this year with their booth featuring the work of Hugh Scott-Douglass, Susanne M. Winterling and Christpher Badger. The booth was quiet and strong, not overcrowded . Good thing, because the series of large, blue abstract cyanotypes on muslin, and, elsewhere, delicate cutaways made directly in raw, stretched canvas required some contemplative space. I stayed in the booth for some time, and found the work to be delicately mesmeric, undulating before my eyes.

The entire booth was also considered — a welcome trend, catching on with some galleries this year — as Silverman considered not only the work on the walls, but the ground beneath our feet. The booth’s floor was covered in neat, slightly foamy, white tiles to walk upon. It was three sides of the perfect white cube, and the effect made the booth hard to walk by.

Sandbar Lounge, Miami, 2011

Did you know that you can smoke in bars in Florida? That part was not a highlight, and my eyes are still burning from the smoky experience. However, converging in one place with so many friends (and friends of friends) from near and far was exciting, and could only happen in a place, and event, like this. The drinks where overpriced, the music was pretty bad, and there actually was sand on the floor. But somehow, it was all perfectly fitting with the aesthetic hedonism down here, the total playful, if expensive, abandon of that this place offers its annual visitors. This is my second year in a row here. I loved it, and I think I’m never coming back.

We continue this week’s coverage with Benjamin Bellas’ review of some of the works on view in Aqua Art Miami.

Megan Whitmarsh. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Concurrent with Art Basel Miami Beach and located nearby the main fair was the Aqua Art Miami contemporary art fair. This year the fair returned to its original location at the Aqua Hotel where its first incarnation was presented in 2005.  Situated firmly in the realm of the “hotel room as gallery” model,  Aqua’s organizers have stated their mission is “to promote innovative programming from the west coast as well as the greater USA and abroad, with a particular interest in young dealers and galleries with strong emerging artist programs.”  This year’s rendition was no different with a heavy emphasis on west coast galleries with a sampling of east cost and Canadian spaces.  As with anything that embraces the terminology “innovative programming” the results of this conglomeration of galleries in this context were mostly uneven.

Among the more accomplished work on view was Megan Whitmarsh’s showing at the San Francisco gallery Michael Rosenthal’s space.  In this assortment of pieces, Whitmarsh is working primarily with embroidery thread and spraypaint on fabric.  In them, Whitmarsh co-mingles large abstractions with small figurative elements to create her colorful and textured canvases.  House plants, bipedal primates, robots, and various individuals dressed ready for the clubs find themselves dwarfed by the geometric abstractions that serve as their stage set.  Whitmarsh focuses her wide net of playful figuration and abstraction by stating:

Lauren DiCioccio, 17JAN10 (reggie bush), 2010. Photo courtesy of the artist.

“I am a child of the 70s whose sense of futurism is informed by Star Wars (fucked-up dusty robots) instead of Tomorrow Land. A future with entropy and drug use and weeds growing in the cracks between the scratched plexiglass windows of the geodesic domes. Bits of yarn and dusty houseplants. If this sounds bleak, I don’t mean for it to. Perhaps the healthiest kind of futurism is one that admits entropy and flux. Perfection is suspicious; worn and dusty can mean well-loved, too.”

Another bright spot happened to be the work by Lauren DiCioccio in the space occupied by Jack Fischer Gallery.  Here DiCioccio embroidered over various pages from the New York Times.  The various colors of threads are left loosely flowing from the imagery that has been stitched over, while showing through the vast empty space of the cotton is the rest of the newspaper page’s original elements.  DiCioccio’s interest in these works of the physical/tangible beauty of commonplace mass-produced media-objects is reinforced to good effect both through her methodology and subject.  Although DiCioccio’s use of  embroidery differs from Whitmarsh’s in approach and effect, the result is no less satisfying.

Nonagon 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Dubai’s Third Line Gallery presents new work by Iranian artist Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian at this year’s Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Nova section.  Farmanfarmaian’s series of mosaics of mirrors succeed, according to the Third Line Gallery, in combining ‘the intricate ornamentation of Iranian architecture with the aesethetic of modern abstract expressionism’ – both of which appropriately reflect this artist’s background.  In creating these mosaics, Farmanfarmaian worked closely with Iranian craftsmen whose skill set is traditionally passed from father to son.  Individual mirror pieces were carefully constructed and painted then arranged and applied to a wooden backing to create each elaborate geometric shape according to the artist’s design.  All of the mosaics in this series fit within the diameter of a 100 cm circle.

Pentagon 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Aside from being aesthetically compelling through shape and the brilliant reflection of light, Farmanfarmaian’s works in mosaic contain profound symbolic meaning.  In Persian culture, the mirror represents life.  Furthermore, the carefully designed geometric shapes reference abstract ideas of creation and existence.  The circle is an important symbol that is representative of origin and of eternity; the triangle evokes the concepts of harmony and the human soul.  Numerical symbolism derived from Islamic geometry applies further meaning to the shapes.

Square 2008, Courtesy the Artist and the Third Line

Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian attended the Fine Arts College of Tehran and later the Parsons School of Design (1949).  The artist has shown extensively internationally and was included in the exhibition East-West Divan:  Contemporary Art from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan at the 2009 Venice Biennale.  The artist’s work can be found in the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, London and the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia – in addition to other important institutions.  Farmanfarmaian lives and works in Tehran.

Art Basel Miami Beach continues through 6 December 2009.

Art Basel Miami Beach, a cultural and social highlight of the contemporary art calendar, opens today at the Miami Beach Convention Center, drawing legions of artists, curators, critics, collectors, and dealers from across the world. With over 250 exhibitors from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, the show will exhibit works by over 2,000 artists. This year’s program includes the new Oceanfront area at Collins Park, a venue for cultural events, such as Art Basel Conversations, Art Perform, Art Video and Art Film. Pae White has designed a social space using theatre scrim, scaffolding, and bleachers at the Oceanfront area, the first commission of its kind by Art Basel Miami Beach.

Follow DailyServing for live coverage from the fair and surrounding events, including coverage of satellite fairs such as NADA Art Fair, SCOPE, and Pulse ,plus much more.

Art Basel Miami Beach takes place from December 3-6, 2009.

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