MIAMI BASEL 2011

PHOTOS HERE (please be patient and I'll add all the attributions)

Viva umm'd and ahh'd but finally it was time for her to be kind to herself and take a holiday. But being Viva the workaholic she couldn't just slump into a man or a deckchair without intellectual edification. Miami Basel Art Fair here she went. After months of nothingness on the website here's a load of photos for your delectation. Don't have a clue what happened to Mr Fish my enthusiastic but somewhat errant snapper. I mentioned Miami and he went bright red! I guess there's unfishfined business down there. I rang 1-800-FISHBOWL and all I got was a gurgling. Whether the sharks finally caught up with him or not I don't know.

But Viva's back in charge - but for all the winking and beguiling she couldn't get her friend into the Scope closer party at Mokai: he was chastised for wearing shorts! Can you believe it? Shorts in Miami! HA! What cared we after a great evening of gallery crawling along North Miami Ave. The cavernous Zadok Gallery with art that really wasn't pandering to any aesthetic alongside Calder prints; a brand new little gallery We Are Here, a pop-up with flagons of wine and a curator who said he'd hung out and worked with art lover/collector Dennis Hopper. A fantastic thrift shop with a $5 honky-tonk piano/pianola and my insignificant other ;) bought me an early XMas prezzie. And low and behold another art fair Fountain (after the Duchamp urinal and housing the NYC Bushwick crowd) with a hugh pink bunny thing and a man reciting anti-Iraq war stuff whiles being body-painted, thence climbing a ladder to the roof and wondering/threatening to walk an adjutting plank. The crowd cheered his decision to err on discretion as the better part of valor. A change from some of our planet egging on the destruction of the human race.

Within the warehouse some really chilled out art. A gallery (whose name I'll add when I find the card) whose friends include Jonas Mekas, a chick from LA who does alluring ball-point pen totems of female something or rather, some tiny painted wooden plaques like the Bless This House embroideries that would hang on your mum's wall - only these were poignantly painted cries from the victims of economic downturn. And then a girl with the most beautiful hands I've ever seen who (very usefully) seems to do pretty much everything including tax. A multi-tasking gal after Viva's heart.

Sunday was spent at the private collections in the barren wastelands of Wynwood - teeny oasis (plural?) of culture among civilizations ruins. At the Rubell Family Collection a fantastically simple piece by the Rubell daughter Jennifer with dripping honey. A few feet away was a rather anemic booth with two 'nurses' dispensing yogurt that you would then reach out to top on your yogurt pot. Apparently the artist wasn't expecting all the bees coming to chill out at the 'bee bourbon' bar. A couple of days before the wind was blowing and honey was spitting everywhere. Last year Jennifer also constructed a breakfast piece. And the main collection is really superb with even the familiar names present with the best examples of their work.

Well - I'm off to catch what's left of the satellite fairs today and then get me some of that Wild Turkey I was swigging from Erwin Wurm's installation at the Bass museum opening Tuesday night. Another really simple yet inherently complex piece. Were there lines of transgression? Should one clean the glass of another (there weren't many), how much should/could one drink? Was the daring do you do really that daring at all!

Bottom line is if it weren't for the main Miami Basel Fair none of the other fairs would exist. NADA had great new emerging work, so did Scope and Pulse as well as SEVEN (that none of the other fair booths seem to know about) but hey - that's the fun of discovering stuff you never knew was there. A living room being winched into a black hole in the wall was one highlight, along with Leslie Thornton's work and some fab animation.

As fairs go it's all quite well co-ordinated with regular shuttle buses to Wynwood and all the other far flung places. Although I did experience 'art shuttle rage' when the sundown air chilled and collectors and public great and small were humbled into equality as there wasn't even an empty cab for love or money.

well - hope I made up for months of pixel neglect….
I'm sure I'll post agin before XMas ….famous last words

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