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.
Other standouts at this year’s fair include Beatriz Milhazes’ decorative black-white-and-gold tile floor, filling the space of Foundation Beyeler; Ivan Navarro’s glass and mirror phone-booth-like structure with lighting above and below that magically extends the view to infinity at Paul Kasmin Gallery; Nick Cave’s giant, ritualistic figures covered in white buttons at Jack Shainman Gallery; a room full of vintage Man Ray photographs, sculptures, and paintings at Francis M. Naumann Fine Art; a mix of modern and contemporary masterpieces in Galerie Gmurzynska’s booth, which is dynamically designed by Zaha Hadid; and AXA Art’s museum-like display of 20th century design objects from Miami Beach’s Wolfsonian Museum and Poul Kjaerholm and Greta Magnusson Grossman’s modernist furniture in the Collectors Lounge.
Click through below for a selection of our favorite works from the fair.
Sicardi | Houston | Oscar Muñoz | El juego de las probilidades (The Game of Probabilities) | 2001/2008
Hauser & Wirth | Zürich | Paul McCarthy | White Snow Dwarf (Sleepy) | 2010
Gemini | Los Angeles | John Baldessari | Foot and Stocking (With Big Toe Exposed): Brienne | 2010
Lehmann Maupin | New York | Tony Oursler | H2Out | 2006
Salon 94 | New York | Jon Kessler | The Last Bird Runner | 1994
Snitzer | Miami | Rashaad Newsome | Shade Compositions | 2009
Greve | St. Moritz | Louise Bourgeois | Heart | 2004
Kaplan | New York | Geoffrey Farmer | I am by nature one and also many, dividing the single me into many, and even opposing them as great and small, light and dark, and in ten thousand other ways | 2010
Baudach | Berlin | Thomas Zipp | Les Demoiselles d’Avignon | 2010
Lisson | London | Cory Arcangel | Drei Klavierstücke op. 11 | 2009
Bernier/Eliades | Athens | Gilbert & George | BRITAIN | 2008
Crousel | Paris | Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla | Fishing Net | 2010
Capitain | Köln | Monika Sosnowska | Untitled | 2009
Arndt | Berlin | Thomas Hirschhorn | Untitled (Ingeborg Bachmann 1942/43) | 1998
Neugerriemschneider | Berlin | Pawel Althamer | Common Task | 2009
Perrotin | Paris | Piotr Uklanski | Untitled (Menorrhagia) | 2008
Kicken Berlin | Berlin | Hannah Höch | Lebensbild | 1972/73
Skarstedt | New York | Cindy Sherman | Untitled #27 | 1979
Sommer | Tel Aviv | Yael Bartana | Entartete Kunst Lebt (Degenerate Art Lives) | 2010
OMR | México D.F. | Jose Dávila | Untitled | 2009
Sprüth Magers | Berlin | Barbara Kruger | Untitled (Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is) | 1984
Presenhuber | Zürich | Steven Shearer | Riff-Lash | 2010
Zeno X | Antwerpen | Mark Manders | Large Figure with Thin Newspaper | 2010
Metro Pictures | New York | Isaac Julien | Glass House (Ten Thousand Waves) | 2010