Dresses swish as fast as palm tree leaves in Miami, where the entire art world gathers for the annual spending spree. Alicia Eler’s daily blog clues you in on finds at the fairs, from the established Art Basel Miami Beach (the mother of all the Miami art fairs) to Chicago’s born-and-bred emerging art fair, Bridge. Tips of the day provided by Kansas City-based artist Peregrine Honig.
Monumental Art: When bigger is better
Should you pull out the big guns at the beginning, or wait till later? Do it now while viewers still have energy and open eyes, because after a week of looking at thousands of booths filled with art, even a Gerhard Richter might start to look like an Andy Warhol soup can.
Sies + Höke Galerie must have had that same thought when they decided to bring Kris Martin’s “For Whom…” (2008), which takes up the entire Düsseldorf-based gallery’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach. Borrowing from John Donnes’ eponymous line, Martin’s bell swings, hitting hard metaphorically but not literally precisely because of what it lacks: the pendulum. The nearly 100-year-old bronze bell, originally built in 1929, hangs from the top of a 216.54-inch tall steel support. In its original church context, this bell wouldn’t serve its purpose of keeping track of time, signaling a call to prayer or signaling ceremony commencements. In the white-cube context, one watches the bell swing back and forth, hearing only its whistling movements drift through the air. Posing existential questions about our own mortality and the fate of a flawed system that keeps going despite its lack of working parts, Martin’s piece stuns like a Jenny Holzer truism.
Monumental takes on another form at SCOPE’s grown-up carnival land installation “Fun House” by Miami-based collective FriendsWithYou. One merely slips off their shows and enters the giant inflatable bouncy house through a large circle entrance. Jumping up and down releases any stress and channels the oft-forgotten inner child.
Read the entire story on Newcity: http://art.newcity.com/2008/12/04/day-one-miami-art-fairs-when-bigger-is-better/
Continue on to day 2 coverage: https://aliciaeler.com/2008/12/05/news-day-miami-art-fairs-picture-newcity-newspaper/
