Miami Art Fair Week brings scores of art fans, art fairs and art dealers to South Florida resulting in noteworthy art sales and big wins for artists. While final numbers are still begin tabulated, following are news highlights from Art Basel Miami Beach and the Satellite art fairs that make the art fair week a notable one.
ARTIST PRIZE WINNERS
Several of the art fairs select artists who stand out among the crowd. They include PULSE Miami Beach, NADA Miami Beach and Art Basel Miami Beach.
PULSE Miami Beach awarded its PULSE PRIZE to Tony Gum for her portrait series "Ode to She." The award is given to an artist of distinction at the fair. Tony Gum receives a cash grant of $2,500.
Based in Cape Town, South Africa, Gum presented five large portraits in a solo booth presented by Christopher Moller Gallery of South Africa. The work, made to commemorate this year's Women's Month, held in August, considers what it means to be a Xhosa woman through narratives that capture the changing world. Tony Gum was selected by a jury of curators made up of Tommy Ralph Pace, Associate Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Lolita Cros, independent curator; Kathryn Mikesell, founder of Fountainhead Residency; Roya Sachs, Curator of Lever House Art Collection and Artistic Director of Spring Place; and Piper Marshall, curator and PhD student at Columbia University.
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"Xhosa Woman - Umfazi" by Tony Gum, 2017. Courtesy Christopher Moller Gallery and PULSE Miami Beach.
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"Xhosa Woman - Intombi I'" by Tony Gum, 2017. Courtesy Christopher Moller Gallery and PULSE Miami Beach.
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NADA Miami Beach selected Carolin Eidner for its 2017 Artadia Award winner. The award acknowledges innovative voices working in contemporary art. Eidner receives $5,000 as prize. Her work was presented in a solo show of her concrete paintings at Natalia Hug of Cologne. Eidner's art considers the concept of singularity through a broad spectrum of media, techniques and materials to make her conceptual art that creates enigmas to examine relationships between digitization and dematerialization and materials that stretch from ancient to modern, according to the art fair. Her art was selected by a jury panel featuring Jose Carlos Diaz, Chief Curator at the Andy Warhol Museum of Pittsburgh, and Andria Hickey, Senior Curator of MOCA Cleveland. This is the first Artadia Award presented to a European Artist.
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Art by Carolin Eidner from the series "Particularities of Gravity Demands," 2017. Pigmented plaster, mounted on styrofoam, 23.5 x 19.5 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy NADA.
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Art Basel and BMW Art Journey announced three artists who are shortlist for its joint initiative. The experiential award is designed to recognize and supports emerging artists worldwide. Artists selected for the shortlist are A.K. Burns of Brooklyn who exhibited with Callicoon Fine Arts of New York; Jamal Cyrus of Houston who exhibited with Inman Gallery of Houston; and Mariela Scafati of Buenos Aires who exhibited with Isla Flotante. The trio was selected by an international jury. Each artist exhibited at the Positions Sector at Art Basel Miami Beach which features emerging artists. The artists will now each develop a proposal for their ideal journey which allows for the development of new ideas and creative projects that can take place anywhere in the world. The winner will be announced in early 2018.
ART ACQUISITIONS
Art Miami reported several million dollar sales straight from the gate, all taking place within one hour of opening the fair. Making early sale headlines were Marilyn by Andy Warhol, 1962, selling for $5.5 million by Michael Schultz Gallery, and L'oiseau bleu by Sigmar Polke, 2005, selling for approximately $4 million by Galerie Terminus, according to Art Miami. Also noteworthy within the first hour was Antoine Helwaser Gallery's sales of From Bedroom Painting #42 by Tom Wesselmann, 1978/91, and two Yayoi Kusama paintings, Oil No. 7 and Nets 45, for a total sale of $1.5 million, according to Art Miami.
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"Nets 45" by Yayoi Kusama,1998. Acrylic on canvas, 13 x 10 inches. Image courtesy Antoine Helwaser Gallery and Art Miami. Photo by Phoebe d’Heurle.
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The Perez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) selected Untitled #1 by Chemi Rosado-Seijo, 2017, of Puerto Rico for the NADA Acquisition Gift Fund. The work was exhibited by Embajada Gallery and is part of the artist's series "One Thousand Four Hundred and Seventy One Rides." This is the first year for the new NADA Acquisition Gift Fund which is designed to foster a relationship between the art fair and the fair's international roster of exhibiting galleries with the art institutions of Miami-Dade County of South Florida.
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"Untitled #1" by Chemi Rosado-Seijo, 2017, exhibited by Embajada at NADA Miami Beach. Image courtesy NADA..
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ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH NEWS
Art Basel Miami Beach reported attendance of over 82,000 visitors for its 16th edition in Miami Beach, held from December 7 to 10, 2017. The art fair edition presented 268 galleries from 32 countries. Specific art sales are not reported by Art Basel although sales were described from the fair as "strong...across all levels of the market."
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