MIAMI ART BASEL'S 20TH ANNIVERSARY

DECEMBER 2022

Art Basel celebrated its 20th-anniversary edition in Miami Beach this year with 283 premier galleries, the largest show in Miami Beach to date, including 25 galleries participating in the fair for the first time. Over the past two decades, the fair has become the anchor of an entire creative ecosystem. Satellite fairs have been created (NADA, Untitled, Art Miami etc), helping to establish the innumerable events known as Miami Art Week, which takes place amid a dizzying array of brand partnerships, pop-up exhibitions, museum shows and Champagne-fueled parties. This year, tens of thousands of people attended Miami Art Week: seasoned art collectors, celebrities, party-goers, and newcomers came to view and purchase the high-quality art on display. Most works sold despite economic worries and inflation. Purchases were considered more thoughtfully by collectors, however...it was not as much of a frenzy as in years past. Still...a successful week was had by all who participated. 

Below are some stand-out works that caught our eye.

TAMMY NGUYEN

Tammy Nguyen's work reimagines lacquer painting. She employs intricate layers of densely packed imagery to reinvigorate biblical, historical, and contemporary themes. In Miami, she presented four paintings depicting The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Famine, War, Death, and Conquest.  The compositions are appropriated from an 1809 drawing of the horsemen by Italian artist Luigi Sabatelli. Nguyen cropped and zoomed in and out of Sabatelli's rendering so that the four paintings are somewhat distorted but still appear like they originate from one whole image.  She placed these horsemen in a tropical setting where wildlife further obscures the horsemen-- perhaps even consuming them.  Throughout the environment, there are playing cards flailing in the wind and tiny helicopters. These two symbols place the horsemen into the theater of the Vietnam War-- a frequent theme in much of her work.  Here, in the context of the looming apocalypse they also suggest relationships between fate, desire and capitalism.  

Born in San Francisco, Nguyen received a BFA from Cooper Union in 2007. The year following, she received a Fulbright scholarship to study lacquer painting in Vietnam, where she remained and worked with a ceramics company for three years. Nguyen received an MFA from Yale in 2013 and was awarded the Van Lier Fellowship at Wave Hill in 2014 and a NYFA Fellowship in painting in 2021. Her work is included in the collections of Yale University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MIT Library, the Seattle Art Museum, the Walker Art Center Library, and the Museum of Modern Art Library, among others.

SHYAMA GOLDEN

Based in Los Angeles, Shyama Golden is a Sri Lankan American artist with a background in painting and graphic design. Her oil and acrylic paintings use figuration to explore the complex and layered ways identity is experienced, performed, and reinforced. Her current works populate a parallel dimension with a cast of characters which include vine-covered trees suggestive of human archetypes, Sri Lankan devil dancers dressed as Yakkas who take part in exorcist rituals, and self-portraiture. Golden’s paintings depict the dancers in mundane American scenes, taking part in various rituals while going about their lives. These imagined realities reflect her desire to connect with parts of her cultural heritage which are disappearing, and have more relevance today as tourist spectacle than their intended purpose as an occult healing ritual. Many of her paintings take inspiration from the semi-wild and hilly Mount Washington neighborhood in Los Angeles where she lives.

Though she pursued a BFA in graphic design and spent a decade as a designer and illustrator, exhibiting her paintings only sporadically, Golden finally committed full-time to her art practice in 2020.

Ukranian artist Nikita Kadan presented a new body of work in the Nova section of the Art Basel fair that tackles the issue of ongoing violence and hostility manifested in mass killings of civilians, tortures, critical infrastructure and housing destruction. When the full-scale Russian military invasion started in February 2022, Kadan found refuge in an art gallery located in the center of Kyiv. It was there he created these charcoal drawings, often without electricity or heating, taking inspiration from wartime stories and echoing slogans that became an important part of the Ukrainian moral resistance. 

In the work above, "CHILDREN", written in his native language over a cloudy sky, relates to a tragic event that happened last March in the city of Mariupol. CHILDREN was written in giant Cyrillic letters twice next to the building of the Donetsk Academic Regional Theater, so as to be seen by Russian pilots from the sky. This was an attempt to protect civilians, mostly women and children who were hiding there from shelling. However it didn't prevent bombing: the theater was destroyed. 300-600 people died and the whole city was razed to the ground by the Russian army. 

Kadan graduated from the National Academy of Fine Arts in Kiev, where he studied monumental painting. He now works with installation, graphic design, painting, drawings, and posters in the city, sometimes in collaboration with architects, human rights activists and sociologists. His works are in numerous collections including the Centre Pompidou, Paris; the National Museum, Kiev; the Pinakothek de Moderne, Munich; among others. 

10% of all sales during the fair went towards supporting the Ukrainian arts scene. 

For over a decade, Allison Katz has investigated the ways in which aesthetic practices link and absorb autobiography, commodity culture, information systems and art history, using a diverse lexicon of imagery and recurring motifs. Katz’s interest in framing as both motif and subtext is a formal technique that investigates questions of identity and voice. The frame becomes a portal for making sense of the world. The windows and mouths that frequently appear in her paintings address a duality between the sensual and intellectual consumption of information, and synthesize different kinds of physical experience, such as taste and sight. 

‘Dry Goods’ (2022), featured here, is part of an ongoing series of mouth paintings that are inspired by a small woodcut made by André Derain in 1943 as part of an illustrated book of François Rabelais’ Pantagruel. The reproduction of this open-mouthed perspective is scaled up to Katz’s own height, transposing the intimate scale to one that is larger-than-life. This arresting framing device challenges the diverse scenes and ambiguous imagery revealed within, such as the daily view of Venice seen here. Katz’s use of the mouth as a frame of perspective is both literal and metaphorical. The frame is activated by ideas of taste, hunger, language, consumption, instinct and desire. ‘Dry Goods’ fixes its gaze on the transportation systems of Venice and reveals the everyday working life of the canals: a city built on water where the most humdrum of activities is elevated to near absurdity. For Katz, the Venetian canals can also be read as arteries, representing life and connectivity between generations. These transport links between people and places are the essential arteries keeping this city alive. In ‘Dry Goods,’ Katz’s clever use of language and humor, in both her choice of title and the image itself, is at play. The wetness of the mouth is juxtaposed with the delivery of dry goods, and above all else, the irony of keeping dry goods dry in a city built on water—a city that is at real risk of being consumed by the sea—is not lost.

Allison Katz was born in Montreal, Canada in 1980 and currently lives and works in London, England. She studied fine arts at Concordia University in Montreal and received her MFA from Columbia University in New York. Katz was included in the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.

Photos do not do justice to Arghavan Khosravi’s work; though they look flat and one-dimensional online, the artist’s canvases are emphatically sculptural in person, with intricate constructions, illusionistic uses of depth and surface, with incorporations of found materials. Their complex relations all serve to articulate an Iranian woman’s view of her homeland’s repressive religious and cultural mores. 

Our Hair has always been the Problem, seen here, is a clear statement of rebellion and cultural revolution. This multidimensional painting speaks to the unraveling of centuries of oppression against women in Iran. The Iranian woman in the painting confidently prepares to sever herself from her traditional hair, placing her locks into the mouth of a guillotine--the classic symbol of uprising against the privileged class. Behind her is a garden scene, reminiscent of the gardens in ancient Persian miniature paintings, which have for centuries used a flattened visual language and gender-biased storytelling to transmit cultural values that support the subjugation of women. 

Born in Iran shortly after its 1979 Revolution, Khosravi was raised in a contradictory culture where one repressive regime—an ancient monarchy—was overthrown and replaced by an even more repressive theocracy. Despite public adherence to the authoritarian political culture, however, many Iranians are looser and freer in their habits and beliefs when in private. This painting expresses the latest cultural shift with which Khosravi and all Iranians are grappling, as they push back against the autocracy to demand a more equitable society.

Arghavan Khosravi earned an MFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design after completing the studio art program at Brandeis University. Khosravi previously earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Tehran Azad University and an MFA in Illustration from the University of Tehran. Khosravi’s work is in the collections of the Rose Art Museum, Waltham, MA; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum; Newport Art Museum, Newport, RI; and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. She is a 2019 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s Painters & Sculptors Grant and a 2017 recipient of the Walter Feldman Fellowship.

Brooklyn-based artist Cielo Félix-Hernández works in oil on canvas with satin-fringed borders. Félix-Hernández produced a new body of work, a place to rest my palms, specifically for NADA Miami, marking her art fair debut.  

The “palms” evoked in the title of the presentation have a dual meaning: they reference both the branches of plantain trees that dot Félix-Hernández’s homeland of Puerto Rico, as well as the ideal of embodied respite for the artist and her community. The roots of Félix-Hernández’s paintings are autobiographical, referencing an upbringing caught between the island of Puerto Rico and the mainland of the United States.  They contain traces of the past which express the artist’s diasporic roots, as well as those of her mother and grandmother. Grounded in this family legacy, the paintings expand into the realms of the imagined and the possible.  Many of the works and their fringed borders are dyed using aqua de jamaica, a hibiscus tea and an organic material that ties the artworks to the natural world.  

Cielo Felix-Hernandez is a Puerto Rican transdisciplinary artist, living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Felix-Hernandez received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA and is included in her first museum exhibition at El Museo del Barrio in New York, NY through March 2023.

Esteban Jefferson's practice centers around issues of race, identity and the legacies of colonialism. Using photography, drawing, painting, and sound installation as forms of documentation, Jefferson paints the focal points of his compositions in great detail, creating a stark contrast between the subject or object in focus and the surrounding environment. The paintings are left intentionally unfinished, creating a raw style emblematic of his investigative process. Jefferson’s latest works consider the related symbolism of flags and toppling of equestrian monuments in New York, through the lens of racial and colonial legacies.

Esteban Jefferson was born in New York City in 1989. He received his BA and MFA from Columbia University. His works are included in the collections of The Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY and The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Quebec. Jefferson lives and works in New York City.  

Yulia Iosilzon’s paintings evoke a dreamworld of human-plant hybrids and playful childhood memory, tinged with the quiet menace of mythology. Figures and faces emerge from the surface of the canvases before dissolving into foliage, water, and the bodies of animals. The paintings contrast chaos with control, baroque abundance with boldly delineated segments of color. Iosilzon uses a soak-staining technique similar to that popularized by Helen Frankenthaler in the 1950s and 60s. She welcomes each random flare, embracing accidental artistry and incorporating improvisation into her painting practice, one that is grounded by much sketching but spurred on by spontaneity.

Yulia Iosilzon was born in 1992 in Moscow, Russia but is an Israeli artist who lives and works in London. She graduated both from the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal College of Art and has won several prizes for her work, including the Audrey Wykeham Prize in 2017 and the Bloomberg New Contemporaries prize in 2019. 

Seoul-born, New York City-based photographer KangHee Kim has created a series of collaged photographs that merge street scenes from New York with places she’s traveled throughout the United States. Due to restrictions on her VISA status, Kim is not able to leave the country if she wishes to return to the U.S. and has not been back to South Korea for over ten years. However, rather than fixating on the constraints of her situation, Kim’s work is all about transforming everyday experiences and the freedom that comes from creating surrealistic or fictional images through her photographs. Using mundane encounters from her everyday errands in New York as her starting point, Kim manipulates her photographs to construct images that convey a kind of surreal escapism, one that is free from the limits or restraints of reality.

KangHee Kim was born in 1991 in Korea but currently works and lives in NYC. She holds a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions throughout the US, South Korea and Japan.

Taking the form of mixed media painting and illustrated ceramic vessels, Astrid Terrazas’ symbolic work re-writes worlds. With unflinching vulnerability, Terrazas conveys stories that push personal and communal trauma towards tangible healing. Working in an illustrative, highly detailed style, Terrazas’ multimedia paintings resemble a visual dream diary full of transient figures, archaic symbols, and illogical narratives. Merging dreamscapes, Mexican ancestral folklore, lived experiences, and unearthly transfigurations, Terrazas’ personal range of recurring motifs function as artifacts of protection and evoke universal metaphors of transformation.

Terrazas received her BFA in Illustration from Pratt Institute in 2018. Her work is currently on view in 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone at The Aldrich Contemporary Museum of Art through January 8, 2023. 

A creative user of a wide variety of materials, Jonni Cheatwood is a Los-Angeles based painter who mixes oil, oil sticks, acrylics and textile in his works. The canvases are built out of pieces of fabrics, which are unified together almost like a puzzle. Cheatwood’s original inspiration for painting started in graffiti, moving onwards to painting abstract expressionism.  

During the past few years, however, abstract expressionism has made way for a figurative approach in Cheatwood’s works. Detailed interiors and characters are created in the artist’s signature style that makes use of sewing machines and different textiles together with oil paints and transparent mylar fabrics as the newest addition. Cheatwood’s works evoke a warm, nostalgic sensation similar to browsing through one’s familybook photographs, and although the people depicted in his works aren’t specifically always based on his own relatives or friends, the works are still about people he can relate to. His canvases also reflect his multicultural background (his ancestry is Brazilian, African, English, Native American, and Scandinavian).

In his multi-media practice, Yashua Klos explores themes of identity, memory, and African Americans' relationship to American labor. Unlike traditional collage arranged from ready-made source material, Klos creates all his collage material through a unique method of woodblock printing and monotypes: carving, inking, and hand-pressure printing to create his own source material for collaging. He then cuts and arranges these separate printed elements to form exquisitely textured, amalgamated portraits.

This current body of work sees Klos reflecting and expanding upon the recent momentous experience of reconnecting with his estranged paternal side of the family. Studying and recreating the faces of his family members opened an intimate space of contemplation for Klos, tracing in their features shared physical lineages. Intertwined Michigan wildflowers and overlaid Art Deco motifs reference the shifting environmental identity of Detroit, where Klos’ family has resided since the Great Migration. Adorning the portraits, these elements speak to the aesthetic ambitions of the city’s economic past, and the underlying resilience of natural forms to reclaim the urban landscape and imagine restorative spaces of leisure.

Yashua Klos  was born in 1977 in Chicago, IL and received a BFA from Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and an MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York, both in Fine Art. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Seattle Art Museum, WA, Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, MI, and the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. Klos is the recipient of a 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation grant and a 2015 New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship. Klos currently lives and works in Harlem, NY, and the Bronx, NY.

Philippe Parreno creates artworks that question the boundaries between reality and fiction, exploring the realm in which the real and the imagined blur and combine. Working in a diverse range of media including sculpture, drawing, film, and performance, the internationally acclaimed French artist seeks to expand our understanding of duration, inviting us to radically re-evaluate the nature of reality, memory, and the passage of time. Central to Parreno’s practice is his quest for an ultimate form of communication capable of transcending language.

This year's Art Basel "Banana" was an ice sculpture first created for the 1995 outdoor exhibition "Ripple Across the Water" in the city of Aoyama, Japan. Iceman in Reality Park consists of stone buttons and eyes and tree-branch arms embedded in an ice sculpture of a snowman. Throughout the duration of the fair, the stones and branches slowly fell off as the sculpture melted. The ice sculpture was displayed on a plinth and left behind the stones and tree branches. The amplified sound of dripping water echoed throughout the booth.

Philippe Parreno studied at École des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble, and Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. He lives and works in Paris, France. His work is held in the collections of various institutions including: Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; LACMA, Los Angeles; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Pinault Collection, Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Modern, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo.