Miami, Part IV: Rebecca Morgan’s eye on the figurative (and a bit of abstraction)

Guest Contributor Rebecca Morgan / The Miami fairs constitute true spectacle. I enjoyed watching it happen from a safe distance, and found it even more exhilarating to be present and in the thick of it all. The general atmosphere across the fairs and social scenes throughout the week was congenial and bright, celebratory and effervescent. The most fruitful aspect of the fairs for me was meeting the  any artists, gallerists, and curators I had not encountered before in New York or elsewhere, and knew only via the Internet. And I was able to see firsthand work which I had only seen images of online or merely heard about.

The satellite fairs of NADA, Untitled, Miami Project and Pulse were exceptionally valuable for showcasing emerging and mid-career artists. Many of the artists I encountered were peers from New York and abroad, and I felt as if being able to show at these fairs was an attainable goal insofar as they tended to reflect the kind and caliber of work on display at many a gallery in Bushwick, the Lower East Side, and Chelsea as well as at pop-up and grassroots venues elsewhere. These fairs emphasized painting and sculpture, and did so in a more down-to-earth way than the slick, up-market Art Basel Miami Beach. In this vein, it was at once exciting and grounding to see Hyperallergic host Hypersalon in an airbnb apartment,
which consisted of a week of salon-style exhibitions, daily artist talks, and “hosted conversations on the conditions of networked culture in contemporary art.” 

Instagram and social media reigned, �capturing� the fairs in their fantastical art-tropical surroundings. More broadly, the fair illustrated
how Instagram was becoming an absolutely essential tool in the art world. Although the many reflective and mirrored sculptures and paintings gave fair-goers some opportunity to ensure that they weren’t missing anything they might want to see in the peripheries of their chosen paths, one could cover considerably more visual ground by investigating hashtags for the respective fairs, geotagged locations, and @ mentions to link up with artists, locations, and individuals. These tools continually kept everyone informed about what to see, who to see, and what they missed on their first pass.

 

 

Finally, I loved seeing how each gallery came up with its booth concept and how it informed or skirted the general aesthetic of each fair. For me, the fairs amounted to a State of the Union message about the art world at large, a sociological as well as a substantive education, and a lot of fun.