Combining art exhibitions with an intense program of cultural activities, exhibitions, parties, and multidisciplinary events in music, film, architecture, and design, Art Basel Miami took place from December 2 to 5.
Leading galleries from five continents have shown significant works by masters of Modern and contemporary art, as well as the new generation of emerging stars, reporting a sucessful return to the fair with strong sales.
There seems to be more and more fashion products and collateral cluttering up the commercial side of the fair, presenting the highest quality of artwork in all mediums, from painting and sculpture to photography and digital works.
Following its success in Basel and Hong Kong, Art Basel Live amplified onsite presentations in Miami Beach, with a digital program comprising Online Viewing Rooms, virtual walkthroughs, live-streamed conversations, and social media broadcasts transmitting the vibrancy and excitement from the show floor to the broadest possible global audience.
Diversity has become more present at Art Basel 2021
The Art Basel Miami Beach selection committee seems to have relaxed its requirements for galleries this year, in an attempt to allow in newer spaces to diversify the exhibitor list. Black-owned spaces became more present, such as Housing and Kendra Jayne Patrick, as well as a few more galleries from Africa, including Zimbabwe’s First Floor Harare and Nigeria’s Rele Gallery. There was a greater emphasis on the work of young black artists and strong exhibitions of art by artists of all generations from Latin America.
Architecture firm OMA is creating a seven-mile-long underwater sculpture park to bolster the Miami Beach shoreline. To help fundraise for this venture, the artists Charlotte Taylor and Nicholas Préaud auctioned off a short film NFT envisioning what OMA’s architecture studio lead Shohei Shigematsu’s sculpture will look like after several years under water.
For the first time in art market history, art viewers will interact on a large scale with NFT artwork. The “Gateway exhibition” presented a labyrinthine network of rooms, depicting artwork from 34 NFT artists, including Andre Oshea, Ash Thorp, Chad Knight, and Sarah Zucker.
The crowning artist in the showcase is Refik Anadol, whose vibrant Artificial Intelligence depictions of coral attempt to shed light on climate change. He used NVIDIA’s (NVDA) StyleGAN2 ADA generative modeling to create “Machine Hallucinations: Coral” — a 40 x 40-foot AI data sculpture based on 1,742,772 images of coral.
Art Culture Inside 