Untitled from outside (Vittoria Benzine)
Basel isn’t the only show in Miami this week
Brooklyn artists are well-represented at both the Untitled and Scope art fairs, adjacent to the big show in South Beach
The Untitled Art Fair and Scope Art Fair both take place during Miami Art Week, on the actual sands of South Beach. Throughout the weekend, each event holds its own at the same time as, and adjacent to, heavyweight Art Basel, with renowned artists blazing their own way in the international community. As with Basel, Brooklyn-based artists abound.
Untitled Art Fair
Vibes are high at Untitled this year, where the fair’s 140 exhibitors have brought a wider range of mostly brand new artworks than the straightforward canvases currently dominating Basel, including paintings draped with stuffed snakes and conch shells filled with flashing lights. Some gallerists (we’re not naming names) even said Untitled is their favorite event on the whole art world calendar.
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East Williamsburg gallery Carvalho Park leveraged the fair’s platform to introduce attendees to artists from their international roster, like London-based Yulia Iosilzon and Berlin-based Maximilian Rödel. Brooklyn-based Ara Thorose tied the booth together though, with a set of the artist’s signature 7M chairs, also in the permanent collection of the Cranbrook Art Museum in Michigan. These two were made specifically for Untitled — Iosilzon and Rödel even sent Thorose photos of their paintings in progress for optimal color coordination.
Summer Wheat sent several vivid works of acrylic paint and gouache on aluminum mesh to Untitled with Zidoun Bossuyt Gallery. Based between Luxembourg, Dubai, and Paris, the gallery learned of Wheat’s work through her friend, Japanese artist Tomokazu Matsuyama. Exhibition director Leslie Chasey told Brooklyn Magazine that Wheat’s got a busy year ahead, including a mixed media installation at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, and her first book with Rizzoli, both dropping next fall.
Summer Wheat, ‘Perm,’ 2022 (Vittoria Benzine)
San Francisco-based Eleanor Harwood Gallery has been working with Paul Wackers since 2005. The artist himself set up shop in Greenpoint during 2007, a lifetime ago for the neighborhood. Harwood herself told Brooklyn Magazine the artist has officially hit his mid-career stride. Numerous fair attendees recognized his distinct, winsome works of acrylic on canvas on sight at their booth.
Paul Wackers, ‘Quietly Loud,’ 2022 (Vittoria Benzine)
New York art dealer Sarah Crown serendipitously presented a full booth of four Brooklyn artists all from different cultures of origin, including Italian painter Elisa Bertaglia, Texas-born multimedia artist Dov Talpaz, 3D printing duo Amy Lemaire and Nicolas Touron, and abstract sculptor Reuven Israel—who splits his time between Brooklyn and Tel Aviv. Their group exhibit was deliberately harmonious in aesthetics, though Crown didn’t curate for Brooklyn specifically. Bertaglia, for instance, recently relocated to the borough. Welcome!
Ceramicist CJ Chueca has been having a serious moment since her successful two-woman show at Kates-Ferri Projects’ new headquarters deep in the Lower East Side this spring. The gallery team told Brooklyn Magazine that Chueca’s full series of airplane windows pictured here had sold out by Thursday, snapped up by an array of different collectors. The rising artist is still riding the wave, too — next year, the artist will conclude her current artist residency with her first-ever museum show at East Harlem’s Sugar Hill Museum.
Gallerist Natalie Kates with CJ Chueca’s sold out ceramics (Vittoria Benzine)
Scope
Just four blocks down the beach, Scope has 10 years on Untitled yet still presents the most countercultural work in South Beach’s fair setting. Although the presence of NFTs was slightly diminished, blockchain art still held its own despite crypto’s implosion. Graffiti artists and those with a new contemporary bent still comprise the event’s bread and butter, though.
Works by two of Brooklyn’s biggest names — Basquiat and KAWS — appears just inside Scope’s sole entryway with Taglialatella Galleries. Known to blend urban aesthetics with blue chip price tags, Taglialatella opted to present series of editioned screenprints by both creative heavyweights, across generations. Gallery staff from their various locations in New York, Toronto, and beyond were on the scene to share information about their booth, as if these artists need any introduction.
Jean-Michel Basquiat, ‘Superhero Portfolio’ (‘Riddle Me This,’ ‘A Panel of Experts,’ ‘Piano Lesson,’ and ‘Flash in Naples’),1982-87 (Vittoria Benzine)
Bridgeport, CT-based URSA Gallery first opened as Dam Stuhltrager gallery in Williamsburg in 1998. Co-founder Cris Dam claims they were among the first to bring serious art to the neighborhood, today known as a global creative hub. He’s faithfully showed up for Scope since 2003, even with their rebrand. Bushwick-based Carol Salmanson caught a lot of eyes with brightly colored LED artworks that shine like neon without all the nasty chemicals. Red Hook-based Takeshi Miyakawa designed the furniture for their booth, too.
Light work by Carol Salmanson (Vittoria Benzine)
Mortal Machine Gallery reliably brings southern hospitality to Scope from the Big Easy each year, holding it down on the fair floor and at South Beach’s legendary watering hole Mac’s Club Deuce almost every night during Miami Art Week. Crown Heights-based Hydeon returned for the festivities too, this year showing a new work of gouache on canvas called “Judgment Day” that places a semi truck between apparent portals to heaven and hell. Why choose?
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Untitled (which runs through Saturday) and Scope (through Sunday) both hold their own with Basel also in terms of entrance fees. A single day ticket to Untitled costs $45, and the same pass for Scope is $60—which costs even more than Art Basel, but comes with extended extracurriculars like morning yoga classes, DJ sets, and evening parties. Pick your poison.
