Art Basel Miami Beach

Booth A12, 6–10 December 2023
  • TACITA DEAN, Purgatory (Mount II), 2021

    TACITA DEAN

    Purgatory (Mount II), 2021

    This major work relates to Tacita Dean’s sets for the ballet, The Dante Project. Inspired by Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, The Dante Project is an epic odyssey through the afterlife created by some of the most pioneering names on the contemporary art scene, with choreography by Wayne McGregor, composition by Thomas Adès and set and costume design by Tacita Dean. For the second act Purgatorio, Dean made large-scale photographs from negatives of Jacaranda trees, which she photographed while in Los Angeles. The trees, blooming May–June in hot climates, are remarkable because the entire foliage turns into purple blossoms, without any sign of leaves.

     

    Printing the photograph as a negative, Dean saw that the purple became an otherworldly green. The background streetscape has been muted by white coloured pencil meticulously worked over the photo’s surface, further emphasising the strange intermediary state the piece symbolises.

     

    This piece was included Tacita Dean’s solo exhibition at MUDAM. Her work is the subject of a large-scale exhibition at MCA Sydney from 8 December 2023 – 3 March 2024.



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  • MAŁGORZATA MIRGA-TAS, Romane Ryćhine, 2023

    MAŁGORZATA MIRGA-TAS

    Romane Ryćhine, 2023

    Małgorzata Mirga-Tas’s practice addresses anti-Roma stereotypes and engages in building an affirmative iconography of Roma communities. Her work depicts everyday life: relationships, alliances and shared activities. The artist’s vibrant textile collages are created from materials and fabrics collected from family and friends, which imbues them with a life of their own and a corresponding immediacy.

     

    Patchworks made of curtains, jewellery, shirts, and sheets are sewn together to form so-called 'microcarriers' of history, just as resulting images revise macro perspectives. Pieces such as this one depict a society which is physically and emotionally close. The work is inspired by overheard conversations, scenes of work, leisure and rest, which are interwoven with such motifs as the sun, flowers or domestic animals. Ordinary life and people are thus transformed into Romani archetypes.

    Mirga-Tas's solo exhibition at the Andalusian Center for Contemporary Art, Seville continues until March 2024.



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  • THOMAS SCHÜTTE, Frauenkopf, halb Nr. e.a., 2022

    THOMAS SCHÜTTE

    Frauenkopf, halb Nr. e.a., 2022

    A bust of a woman in blue glass, Frauenkopf, halb Nr. e.a. has gently downturned eyes and an ambiguous expression. The head is hollow at the back, allowing light to enter, creating a range of luminous effects. Where the glass is thicker, the bust darkens, heightening the details, curves and hollows in the sculpture, lending mystery to her translucent features. Thomas Schütte, recognised as one of the ‘principle reinventors of modern sculpture’, works with a range of mediums, from ceramics to bronze. He has been working with Murano glass since 2011.

     

    A major retrospective of Schütte's work will be held at MoMA, New York in autumn 2024.
  • CORNELIA PARKER, Falling Façade, 1991

    CORNELIA PARKER

    Falling Façade, 1991

    Falling Facade is a classic early suspended Installation composed of the artist’s signature flattened silver trophies which here seem to float out of a mirror’s surface and escape its bounds. The mirror rests on an easel, that might support a painter’s canvas or a classroom blackboard. The trophies call to mind victories in sport or essay writing while at school, proudly displayed and then gathering dust on mantelpieces across the land. The doubling of the objects in the mirror in this unusual work anticipates Parker’s famous Alter Ego series.


    Cornelia Parker's work is included in The Sky’s the Limit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts NWMA Washington, DC until 24 February 2024.

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  • JUAN USLÉ, Crossing (Horizon), 2022

    JUAN USLÉ

    Crossing (Horizon), 2022

    The abstractions of Juan Uslé  evoke a range of associations, from the cadence of human breath and the beat of a pulse to the environs and energy of his homes in northern Spain and New York City.  The paintings and works on paper might resemble a landscape even as they present a manifestly abstract pattern of subtly controlled mark and colour, often evoking a piece of music or the rhythmic transcription of a recording device.

     

    ‘I move the brush and press down until the next heartbeat occurs’, says Uslé. ‘I try to follow a sequential rhythm, marked by the beating of my pulse … and in general it turns into a sequential field or territory of marks and routes reminiscent of the sea, a landscape, or a pentagram.’

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  • SHILPA GUPTA, Stars on flags of the world, 2012–2023

    SHILPA GUPTA

    Stars on flags of the world, 2012–2023

    Using embroidery, Shilpa Gupta portrays the stars on the flags of several officially recognised and unrecognised nations. The flag, a symbol of power and identity, strength and stability, is transformed into fine, delicate thread, suggesting the instability of the nation-state. Gupta questions the concept of "homeland" and how nationality is determined in border areas where everyday life is shaped by historical and social affinities, geographical continuity and economic imperative. Here, the stars usually portrayed on a specific flag are gathered together on one, ideal flag, where the different symbols and reoccurring, juxtaposed colours are erased, erasing in turn their own individual meaning, breaking down codes, boundaries and borders.


    Shilpa Gupta's solo exhibition 'I did not tell you what I saw, but only what I dreamt' continues at Amant, New York until 28 April 2024.

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  • POLLY APFELBAUM, Dancing on the Walls for Tony and Fred (tall), 2020

    POLLY APFELBAUM

    Dancing on the Walls for Tony and Fred (tall), 2020

    This Jacquard weaving is dedicated to Polly Apfelbum’s friend and fellow artist Tony Feher. The bright pink colours and the shape were inspired by Feher's installation at the Everson Museum of Art Syracuse, where Apfelbaum was also showing work. In this exhibition he suspended long strips of shocking pink flagging tape from the high ceiling of the sculpture court which danced in the breeze.

     

    Footprints are a motif Apfelbaum has worked with before and here they belong to dancer, choreographer and Hollywood star Fred Astaire. The piece is inspired by a memorable scene where he dances on the walls and ceilings in the film Royal Wedding (1951) in the number ‘You’re all the world to me’. They could be seen as a dance diagram, inviting the viewer to defy gravity and soar up the wall.

     

    Polly Apfelbaum is included in the exhibition Braided Histories Modernist Abstractions and Woven Forms at The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC until 28 July 2024.



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  • POLLY APFELBAUM, PA Abstract Square Patch Star, 2021

    POLLY APFELBAUM

    PA Abstract Square Patch Star, 2021

    PA Abstract Square Patch Star is part of body of work which Polly Apfelbaum developed for her 2022 exhibition For the Love of Una Hale, at Arcadia University, Pennsylvania.

     

    These often highly personal pieces were created at the University's ceramics studio which provided both the freedom to experiment as well as an opportunity to develop her skills. Each work in the series is made from terracotta; a robust and tactile clay which is red when fired. The clay slab is covered in white slip which Apfelbaum then draws or inscribes with a pattern.

     

    The exuberant colour palette of these pieces, which read like abstract paintings, often derives from memories of early exposure to Pennsylvania German art; the surface patterns evoking the composite fabric patches of quilts.

     

    Polly Apfelbaum is included in the exhibition Braided Histories, Modernist Abstractions and Woven Forms at The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC until 28 July 2024.

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  • DAYANITA SINGH, Studio Contact Sheet, 2023

    DAYANITA SINGH

    Studio Contact Sheet, 2023

    Dayanita Singh’s practice focusses on the ways viewers engage with photography. Driven by a determination to liberate the image from the wall, Singh has been developing her ‘photo-architectural’ structures for two decades. Underpinned by a lifelong interest in the archive, these teak ‘mobile museums’ enable the artist to choreograph a bodily encounter with her photographs, constructing spaces for conversation and facilitating the endless rearrangement of images.

     

    ‘Studio Contact Sheet’ (2023) is a continuation of Singh’s investigation of architectural spaces. Here, the twelve selected images are uniquely abstract, emphasising line and form to blur the boundaries between photography and drawing. Taken in an architectural studio, Singh selects images that range dramatically in scale and perspective, removing any tangible sense of space.

     

    Dancing with My Camera continues at Museu Serralves, Porto until 3 March 2024.



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  • CALLUM INNES, Untitled Lamp Black / Magenta, 2023

    CALLUM INNES

    Untitled Lamp Black / Magenta, 2023

     

    One of the most respected painters working today, Callum Innes’s practice interrogates the qualities and possibilities of oil paint. He is known for luminous abstractions which expose the fundamentals of painting: pigment, surface and space. Moving between the solid and the seemingly permeable, his works invoke a dynamic conversation between presence and absence. Through this uniquely spare vocabulary Innes achieves a vast range of atmospheres and effects.


    Innes works in series, allowing processes to build upon each other and gradually evolve. He makes several kinds of painting at the same time, each discreetly different yet informing and reflecting upon the others. The Untitled series exemplifies his technique of creating a play between addition and removal, resulting in a luminous, shifting surface that evokes different registers of colour and even time.


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  • MASSIMO BARTOLINI, Dew, 2017

    MASSIMO BARTOLINI

    Dew, 2017

    Dew is a subtle monochrome painting made with industrial enamel paint on aluminium. Its surface is covered with a delicate layer of artificial dew. The moisture seems fleeting, even incidental, as if it was a reaction to atmospheric changes or the breath of a passer by.

     

    Bartolini's practice conjures a particular energy between the gallery space and the viewer. Using both artificial and natural materials, he creates installations of heightened sensory intensity often interweaving sounds, images and light effects. Landscape is a recurring theme in his work – for the artist a landscape is a space of abstraction as much as nature, a site of meditation on permanence and impermanence.

     

    Massimo Bartolini will be the official Italian representative at the Venice Biennale in 2024.

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