Art Projects, curated this year for the first time by Patrick Charpenel of Guadalajara, Mexico, features 13 projects by internationally renowned artists from seven countries. The projects will be installed in the outdoor public spaces of Miami Beach, within close proximity to the Oceanfront area and the Miami Beach Convention Center. These works engage directly with the spectator, interrupting the daily routine of passersby in poetic and surprising ways.
The 2009 edition of Art Projects will present a larger number of works, selected from proposals by the galleries of Art Basel Miami Beach with a particular sensibility to the social structures of the community of Miami Beach. In this context, the character of the selected works is not strictly contemplative – instead they are chosen by seeking to create synergies and contrasts in each context, by activating reactions in the visitors and dislocating daily routines. These are not merely static and motionless sculptures, but rather experiences that disturb the city?s dynamics.
Most of the 13 works are site-specific and commissioned for Art Basel Miami Beach, including the projects by Karmelo Bermejo, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jorge Mayet and Marc Swanson; Rirkrit Tiravanija will present a new site-specific performance in the W South Beach Hotel on Friday, December 4.
Below, you can find all the 2009 Art Projects artworks at a glance; a detailed description of each follows.
Eduardo Abaroa: Aerial Diary, 2009 | kurimanzutto, México D.F.
Karmelo Bermejo: The Grand Finale, 2009 | Maisterravalbuena, Madrid
Claire Fontaine: Capitalism Kills (Love), 2009 | T293 Gallery, Napoli
Cao Guimarães: Nanophany, 2003 | Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
Gonzalo Lebrija: Black Marlin, 2009 | I-20 Gallery, New York; Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris
Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Greenhouse (Prins Valedmar 1926), 2009 | Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami
Jorge Mayet: Deseo, 2009 | Galería Horrach Moya, Palma de Mallorca
William Pope.L: The Black Factory, 2002-2009 | Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
George Rickey: Two Lines Up Eighteen Feet III, 1982 | Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York
Santiago Sierra: NO, 2009 | Lisson Gallery, London
Marc Swanson: Untitled (Standing Deer, Upward Sweep), 2009 | Richard Gray Gallery, New York
Rirkrit Tiravanija: Untitled, 2009 | Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Franz West: Lying Not, 2008 | Gagosian Gallery, New York
Eduardo Abaroa: Aerial Diary, 2009
kurimanzutto, México D.F.
This project consists of an interactive event in which parasail rides are offered to the public. Each parachute has the day of the week written on it. The one reading “Friday” must be used on Friday, the one reading “Saturday” on Saturday, and so on, as if one had to be reminded of the day of the week during vacation.
Eduardo Abaroa (1968, Mexico City), lives and works in Mexico City
Karmelo Bermejo: The Grand Finale, 2009
Maisterravalbuena, Madrid
“The Grand Finale” consists of igniting a firework display showing the word “Recession”. The work spans the ritual of celebration commemorating failure. This is the paradox in which the performance operates. By constructing the word “Recession”, the work introduces an anomaly in the ostentation of the fireworks, intended by the artist to act as a cathartic moment in the current situation created by the worldwide economic crisis. “The Grand Finale” will be presented on Sunday, December 6 at 6 p.m. at 21st Street on the beach.
Karmelo Bermejo (1979, Bilbao), lives and works in Bilbao and Mexico City
Claire Fontaine: Capitalism Kills (Love), 2009
T293 Gallery, Napoli
For the artist collaborative Claire Fontaine, the market economy operates based on the exchange of material goods that reinvigorate social and cultural structures. The symbolic space and rituals of art are thus reduced to their minimum expression, limited to strictly technical communication. This material force annihilates fantasies and the most profound sentiments of the world. “Capitalism kills love” is the sentence embodying this contemporary condition in which there is no space for love.
Claire Fontaine (2004, Paris), artist collective lives and works in Paris
Cao Guimarães: Nanophany, 2003
Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo
The work “Nanophany” is a formalistic video that shows fragments of natural sites captured in soap bubbles that soar through the wind, following the sounds of a toy piano for a few seconds, then burst and dissolve. Flies appear intermittently between these suspended and fragile moments, shifting our view from this parallel world that floats in front of our eyes containing fractions of landscape.
Cao Guimarães (1965, Belo Horizonte), lives and works in Belo Horizonte, BR
Gonzalo Lebrija: Black Marlin, 2009
I-20 Gallery, New York; Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris
For this installation, Lebrija has created a sculpture of a hyper-realistic, life-sized marlin. Constructed in fiberglass and bronze, the work is fitted to pierce a wall perpendicularly, appearing to be suspended in mid-air. Conceived while on a sport-fishing expedition with Guadalajara-based artist Eduardo Sarabia, this work borrows from the practice of taxidermy. In making a reference to the theme of Man over Nature, Lebrija romanticizes the fish itself, exaggerating the elegance and lightness of the animal in its natural environment by way of the ironic removal from that milieu and placement in a foreign setting with a gravity-defying installation.
Gonzalo Lebrija (1972, Mexico City), lives and works in Guadalajara, MX
Cristina Lei Rodriguez: Greenhouse (Prins Valdemar 1926), 2009
Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami
A site-specific arrangement of sculpture inside a dome, designed for the viewer to enter and experience, this installation is about the isolation and incubation that takes place within the bubble. The bubble is the geodesic dome itself, which incubates the desire to control the exotic and the consumption of luxury. It is inspired by the Prins Valdemar, an old Danish warship that was on its way to becoming a luxurious floating hotel in 1926 – before it ran aground and blocked the Miami Harbor. This triggered Miami?s first real estate collapse, temporarily bursting Miami?s image as a prosperous tropical paradise.
Cristina Lei Rodriguez (1974, Miami), lives and works in Miami
Jorge Mayet: Deseo, 2009
Galería Horrach Moya, Palma de Mallorca
“Bohios” are the characteristic “domus”, or traditional Cuban dwellings. These rural constructions are spread all along this Caribbean territory and are in fact the most affordable type of housing. The hut called “Deseo” (desire), by Jorge Mayet, recreates this type of construction, but in this particular case the house is floating on the sea in front of Miami Beach’s luxury resort hotels. Mayet?s concept is to confront and juxtapose these luxurious buildings in the hotel area with the modest and unstable shack. On one side we find the sky, the sea and the impressive hotel complex, on the other side, the “floating house” with its palm-tree rooftop.
Jorge Mayet (1962, Havana), lives and works in Palma de Mallorca, ES
William Pope.L: The Black Factory, 2002-2009
Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New York
“The Black Factory” is William Pope.L?s renowned mobile art installation. Embodying “blackness” in a co-opted GMC truck, the “Black Factory” is a vehicle for generating cultural conversation and transforming social consciousness. At the Factory, “workers” engage in performances transforming objects donated by the audience. Participants are instructed to bring cultural materials that represent “blackness” to them, simulating a discourse on issues of social difference in America. Contributed objects are painted, destroyed or archived. Some are rendered into “Twice-Sold” works of art and sold in the Factory?s gift shop, along with canned goods that Pope.L buys at a local supermarket. “Twice-Sold” works are labeled with the Black Factory?s gold label and signed and dated by the artist. All of the proceeds from the Factory?s gift shop are given to a local charity.
William Pope.L (1955, Newark, NJ, US), lives and works in Lewiston (ME), US
George Rickey: Two Lines Up Eighteen Feet III, 1982
Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York
George Rickey first came to international prominence in 1964 at Documenta III in Kassel (Germany) when he showed a large two-bladed kinetic sculpture entitled “Two Lines Temporal I”, a 35-foot high sculpture that is now in the sculpture garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The sculpture exhibited for Art Projects is a 22-foot-high version of the MoMA sculpture. Executed in 1982, “Two Lines Up Eighteen Feet III” is the classical evocation of George Rickey?s graceful motion, randomly moving in the wind, yet controlled by the arc the planes proscribe.
George Rickey (1907 – 2002, South Bend, IN, US)
Santiago Sierra: NO, 2009
Lisson Gallery, London
Staged throughout Europe, Canada and the US, Santiago Sierra’s “NO” consists of a truck carrying a monumental sculpture in the shape of the eponymous statement. Conceived as an international touring work, it is key to the project that the piece will travel across different Western cities, acting as a prop against the background of different landscapes and scenarios and crossing sites marked by diverse and problematic histories. Describing the project, Sierra stated: “?NO? expresses a response to the universally recognizable imposition. ?NO? is the clearest exercise of the right to dissent before reality as a whole, and before the future that our contemporary state seem to project ahead of us.” For Sierra the open declaration “NO” is to be filled like an empty bottle with the specific realities projected by the individual viewer. It refuses to be immediately understood – rather it nags at the mind, imploring the individual to decipher their own relation to immediate and global reality. The international tour will be filmed in a style akin to a traveling documentary of a rock tour.
Santiago Sierra (1966, Madrid), lives and works in Mexico City
Marc Swanson: Untitled (Standing Deer, Upward Sweep), 2009
Richard Gray Gallery, New York
Marc Swanson grew up as the son of an ex-Marine and avid hunter in small-town New England. He then moved to San Francisco in the early 1990s, and became involved in the city?s gay counterculture and club scene. He did not feel totally at home in either place, and he began making crystal-covered deer head sculptures as a way to explore, both physically and spiritually, the duality of masculine identities he was experiencing. In recent years, he has been exploring different ways to expand the language of these works. Untitled (Standing Deer, Upright Sweep) is the largest rhinestone-based sculpture the artist has completed to date, made using nearly 200,000 silver rhinestones, each applied individually, by hand.
Marc Swanson (1969, New Britain, CT, US), lives and works in New York
Rirkrit Tiravanija: Untitled, 2009
Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris
Images of existing t-shirts (from all around the world, from a wide historical period) will be reproduced on new t-shirts that will be worn by “models” from different backgrounds. A performance will be presented on Friday, December 4th at 7.30 p.m. at the W South Beach Hotel, simulating a small parade where models will be walking through the hotel lobby into the pool area. With this action the artist opens a new perspective on cultural, political and economic differences in this global age.
Rirkrit Tiravanija (1961, Buenos Aires), lives and works in Bangkok, Berlin, and New York
Franz West: Lying Knot, 2008
Gagosian Gallery, New York
“Lying Knot” is typical of the large-scale outdoor works of Franz West, being both imposing in scale and playful in colour and form. At six meters long, the work will be installed at the beach, inviting the interaction and curiosity of the spectators.
Franz West (1947, Vienna), lives and works in Vienna
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