Okay, Im going to slightly retract my last entry on my blog due to a good family friend showing me the light of South Florida, Miami.
Miami is filled with gorgeous beaches, beautiful people and it has quite the grip on the art thing as well as it is has one of the largest art districts in America. There is an 80 square block area of Miami called Wynwood which encompasses many private collections and galleries that contain everything from contemporary to classical. Not only does Wynwood house the mainstream galleries but also a lot of newer urban art and visiting artists from other parts of the country doing work there. Oh yeah, not to mention that Miami hosts Art Basel from Decemeber 1st-4th which is the United States' most important art show. People from all over the world come to Miami to attend this 4-day event.
I started my tour of Miami with an art show called Private Eye that was put on by LegalART. My 'light-shower' (Jackie Falcone) helped curate this show so this is why I attended. LegalART is Miami's first live-in artist residency program which offers legal aid to the artists to protect their art and their future endeavors as artists. The night was fun, I enjoyed the atmosphere but most of all I enjoyed the art that was up for auction...
I stayed the night in Miami and my guide took me to 2 private collections the next day.
We first went to The Margulies Collection which is in a 45,000 sq. ft. warehouse in Wynwood. The collection is owned by Martin Z. Margulies, who is a prominent art collector in the Miami area. His collection consisted of installations, paintings, photography and sculpture from all over the world. I was mostly interested in the sculpture seeing as this is what I will start studying this coming semester, but there were a ton of interesting pieces that caught my attention.
Donald Judd's pieces are minimalist in nature and I think thats why they are appealing to me. Conceptually speaking I think he has nailed it with this as he does many of his pieces. Clean, open-spaced, and well constructed.
Magdalena Abakanowicz has been creating these human figures for quite sometime now. From my research of her, I have gathered that most of the pieces like this are women and children casted out of bronze vice these which are molded from burlap and resin. Im normally not a fan of pieces that have the human figure as the concentration but these are phenomenal pieces. I really enjoy her work.
I couldn't find much info on Barbier but I will say this, I do like this installation. Again, I don't really care for human figure pieces but this got the obvious attention it should due to the decrepit superheroes.
Gilles Barbier
The second private collection we went to was the De La Cruz Collection. The space that the collection is presented in was built exclusively for this purpose, with a full wall of glass windows to let natural light in to show off the artwork. The collection had many interesting contemporary pieces and installations, some of which I could grasp the concept, some which I could not. Here are a few pieces I enjoyed.
Cesar Trasobares
unknown artist
The last part of my art adventure in the Wynwood district of Miami concluded with the second Saturday Art Walk. The Art Walk is when all the galleries and collections stay open until about 10pm on the second Saturday of the month. It gives an opportunity for a lot of people to see the new artwork that has been put up and its nice to get the art community together to experience each others art. Here are a few pieces that I liked and then just some randoms of inside the galleries.
Random art on a wall in a gallery.
Ellis G. was visiting from Brooklyn and was showing as well. I knew exactly who this was when I saw the shadowed bike in front of the gallery from stuff i've seen in NY.
Okay, so I am going to stand true to my words and say South Florida is horrible BUTTT, I do have to say that Miami's art scene does make up for a lot of what this place lacks. I was very fortunate to be shown 'the light' and I am very appreciative of it. I actually like the art scene in Miami SO much I might apply for residency at legalART next summer. I am stoked to see the scene in Miami so big and I am even more excited to see how much better it gets when I get the chance to come back down here.
Bravo Miami!
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