The ninth edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, which runs through Sunday, got off to a big start last night with Isabella Rossellini, Lance Armstrong, Naomi Campbell, and Danny Glover purportedly prowling the aisles and a roster of international galleries reporting healthy sales. Particularly strong this year is the Art Positions section, with its younger galleries surrounding an artificial, rolling, grassy lawn, complete with real palm trees. Three New York galleries look especially good here: Foxy Production, with a single sculpture by Hany Armanious, Australia’s representative to the next Venice Biennale, that repositions traditional monuments; ZieherSmith’s bold offering of Eddie Martinez’ graffiti-inspired, expressionist triptych that filled the whole booth; and Simon Preston Gallery’s enchanting presentation of Kara Tanaka’s mechanically spinning silk skirt.
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Earlier this week Paul Laster told you about the latest from Gilbert & George — the tweed-loving odd couple of British contemporary art — and their new Jack Freak Pictures series. The Guardian just posted a new video interview with the “living sculptures” wherein they discuss how their art is both “capable of bringing out the bigot inside the liberal” and getting them through airport security without a hitch. Read More »
Working collaboratively for more than 40 years, Gilbert & George have consistently been at the forefront of British contemporary art. Starting out as “living sculpture” — making “Art for All” — they evolved into fearless “picture”-makers, willing to tackle a broad range of social subjects. Inspired — or traumatized, as they call it — by their own recent retrospective, which traveled to six museums in Europe and the US, the two set to work on a new series of pictures, their largest ever, and are now debuting selections of the 153 unique works from the Jack Freak Pictures in Berlin and Paris.
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