Here’s something you don’t see every day in today’s art—a hunky, heroic worker. That’s the point Esther Shalev-Gerz hammers home in “Describing Labor,” her elaborate conceptual project at the Wolfsonian that involved immersing herself—and a group of advisers—in the collections of decorative arts, propaganda, architecture, and industrial and graphic design from the period 1885–1945. They picked images of work and workers that themselves became the basis of the new multi-media pieces in the show.
Esther Shalev-Gerz, Describing Labor – Work for America!, 2012, color photograph.
Nearby, a new fair called “Moving the Still,” a collaboration between Tumblr and Paddle8, spotlighted the suggestive, hypnotic computer animations that are created with the Graphics Interchange Format and known as GIFs. (The format is 25 years old, but people are still arguing over how to pronounce it.)
The works, assembled after an open call and selected with the help of a committee including Roselee Goldberg and Michael Stipe, feature quick movements–a smiley face melting, a banana being peeled–repeated in endless loops.
Not Just Any Body…
On Hyperallergic, Hrag Vartanianreports being surprised during his own perambulations about the absence of contemporary renderings of the human figure. But animals were everywhere–dead ones especially. Judging by the offerings in Miami, taxidermic creatures have become the new trophy heads.
Some animals are more creepy than others. On the sinister end of the spectrum, the caged cat (with a bird on top) that Eva and Franco Mattes once passed off as a Maurizio Cattelan stood guard near the door at Seven, courtesy Postmasters Gallery. More endearing were Marcus Kenney’s creatures at Jonathan Ferrara’s stand at Pulse, which brought a Mardi Gras bling to the conventional hunter’s trophy by using real animal parts mixed with buttons, fabric, feathers, sequins, leather, shells, beads, glass eyes, silk, and more.
Marcus Kenney, Stellah Terrah, 2012, reclaimed taxidermy, fabric, feathers, plastic, acrylic, beach glass, beads, paper, cotton, twine, thread, bronze, silk, polish, buttons, fur, synthetic hair, metal, pins, etc. At Pulse.
Best in Show Ged Quinn’s bizarre felines, part of the Bass’s crowd-pleasing exhibition of artists riffing on the Renaissance, included a stigmata-bearing kitten wearing a crown of thorns, another going medieval on a mouse, and this one, Who Killed Walter Benjamin. (The German Jewish writer committed suicide in 1940 in flight from the Nazis.)
Ged Quinn, Who Killed Walter Benjamin, 2012, oil on linen.
COPYRIGHT THE ARTIST/IMAGE COURTESY THE ARTIST AND STEPHEN FRIEDMAN GALLERY, LONDON/PHOTOGRAPHY MARK BLOWER.
Don’t Call it a Comeback
Like Duchamp, Benjamin was a haunting recurring presence in Miami. Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain reproduced the writers’ works in the font Helvetica Concentrated, making them impossible to read. The piece, Benjamin Concentrated, is in “Unsaid/Unspoken,” a show about language and its limits at the Cisneros-Fontanals Collection.
Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, Benjamin Concentrated, 2012, 17 digital prints on paper kozo Awagami 70g.
COPYRIGHT THE ARTIST/COURTESY THE ARTIST AND THE ELLA FONTANALS-CISNEROS COLLECTION, MIAMI, FL.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction?
Abel Barroso, Ipod Touch, 2012, xylograph on wood. In Art Miami.
IMAGE COURTESY FERNANDA TORCIDA.
Good Vibrations
With work in a spectrum of galleries from the U.S., Brazil, and Europe, Venezuela’s kinetic-art pioneer Jesús Raphael Soto was a huge presence at Art Basel Miami Beach. His friend and colleague Antonio Asis, an Argentine-born master of Op who moved in 1956 to Paris (where he still resides), is having a moment of his own, with a solo show at Kabe Contemporary in Wynwood.
Antonio Asis, Maquette 1, # 3056, 1961, acrylic on paper.
Still Life with Nipples and Press-ons
Dead tulips and a skull are two of the few more conventional elements in Jessica Stoller’s update on the nature morte tradition, which also includes bejeweled manicures and random breasts.
Jessica Stoller, Selfless/Selflesh, 2011, porcelain, china paint, luster and mixed media. At Seven.
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND P.P.O.W GALLERY, NEW YORK.
Plate tectonics
Amid all the luscious ceramics on offer it was surprising to spot some relatively dowdy flea-market finds on a back wall at Design Miami. This was the stand of the Tel Aviv-based Design Space, featuring plates that Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum had selectively and strategically sandblasted to remove parts of their original glaze. The resulting ghostly images reflect the circumstances in which the original plates were made, as well as a new historical reality. The plate at top center here, originally made in Bavaria, bears an image of the wall separating Israel and Palestine.
Noam Dover and Michal Cederbaum, “Sandblasted,” ceramic plates. At Design Miami.
I’ll be your mirror
There was a profusion of reflective artworks at the fairs, among them Monica Rowe’s untitled piece at D’Amelio. In a sense, these provided the figures: they were us.
Heather Rowe, Untitled, 2012, wood, mirror, frames. At Art Basel Miami Beach.
Use Your Illusion
As the fair recedes in the past, a lingering impression remains. Chul Hyun Ahn’s Railroad Nostalgia tricked the eye, the mind, and the camera.
Chul Hyun Ahn, Railroad Nostalgia, 2012. At Art Miami.