Art Basel Miami Beach

Past
Nov 30 – Dec 5, 2021
Miami Beach

Art Fair Details:

Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center
Booth F08
Nov 30 – Dec 5, 2021

Connect:

(opens in a new window) Art Basel Miami Beach
(opens in a new window) @artbasel
(opens in a new window) @pacegallery

Above: Installation View, Pace Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach, 2021, Booth F08 © Pace Gallery

Our presentation at the 2021 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach will foreground artists in our program working with varied digital technologies, among them light, sound, video, and software.

Featured artists include DRIFT, JR, teamLab, and Leo Villareal. These artists are also represented by Superblue, an enterprise dedicated to experiential art with a presence in Miami. In addition to technologically engaged works, Pace will present pieces by Beatriz Milhazes, Maya Lin, Jules de Balincourt, Wifredo Lam, William Monk, and other artists.

Following the launch of Pace’s (opens in a new window) dedicated NFT platform in November, Pace will showcase two NFTs at Art Basel Miami Beach, underscoring its longstanding commitment to innovation and artists’ advanced studio practices. One such work is an NFT by DRIFT artists Lonneke Gordijn and Ralph Nauta, whose large-scale Meadow installation is on view at Superblue in Miami throughout the fair’s run. This new NFT, which will also be presented on the gallery’s own NFT platform, was created collaboratively with musician Don Diablo. The digital work is part of the artists’ augmented reality work Block Universe (2021), on view in their solo exhibition at Pace’s New York gallery through December 18. DRIFT is also the subject of a solo exhibition on view at the Shed in New York through December 19.

The gallery will also spotlight a hologram from Glenn Kaino’s digital art project Pass the Baton, which comprises baton NFTs inspired by track and field athlete Tommie Smith’s storied career, including his record breaking 1600- meter relay race in 1966. The project is one of many collaborations between Smith and Kaino, who joined Pace in 2021. As part of its online presentation for Art Basel Miami Beach, the gallery will present two other NFTs by Kaino on its dedicated platform.

Among the advanced studio practice highlights in Pace’s presentation is a new sculpture by Leo Villareal, who uses custom coding to create immersive visual experiences that explore the phenomenological effects of light. Two new videos examining histories of displacement and migration by Michal Rovner, who will open a solo show at Pace’s Palm Beach space in December, are part of the gallery’s Art Basel Miami Beach booth. Impermanent Life, at the Confluence of Spacetime New Space and Time is Born (2021), a new single-channel digital work by the collective teamLab, will also be on view in the booth. Work by teamLab also figures in the ongoing group exhibition Every Wall is a Door at Superblue in Miami.

In the way of paintings, Pace will present a vibrant new work, titled O Sanfoneiro alegre (2021), by Beatriz Milhazes. Pace’s presentation of this painting, which Milhazes created using her mono-transfer technique, will be followed by the artist’s solo exhibition at the gallery’s New York space in fall 2022. Milhazes was the subject of a solo show at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand in Brazil this year, and her solo presentation at the Long Museum in Shanghai continues through November 28. A painting by 20th century artist Wifredo Lam, whose work is the subject of an expansive survey at Pace’s 510 West 25th Street gallery in New York, will also be included in the booth.

A new work by Jules de Balincourt, who recently joined Pace, will be on view. Titled Blowhards and Blowbacks (2021), this painting depicts a dreamy forest caught in a gale, building on the artist’s explorations of humanity’s complex relationship with nature. Figuring in the booth are three new paintings by William Monk and Maya Lin’s sculpture Silver Columbia (2017), which traces the shape of the Columbia River in recycled silver and reflects the artist’s deep and ongoing engagement with environmentalism and climate change. Lin recently presented the public work Ghost Forest in New York’s Madison Square Park.

Programming focused on Pace’s artists will extend beyond the Miami Beach Convention Center. Pace has partnered with MSNBC and Perrotin gallery to screen the artist JR’s 2021 documentary Paper & Glue at the Fillmore Miami Beach on Friday, December 3, during the run of the fair.

Other notable exhibitions in the Miami area include Kiki Smith’s presentation of her installation Blue Night at Giralda Plaza in Coral Gables and the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s group exhibition Allied with Power: African and African Diaspora Art from the Jorge M. Pérez Collection, which features work by Sam Gilliam, Sonia Gomes, and David Goldblatt.

An exhibition of works on paper by Adam Pendleton will be on view at Pace’s Palm Beach gallery during Art Basel Miami Beach. Forthcoming winter season shows at the Palm Beach gallery include solo exhibitions dedicated to Rovner, Jeff Koons, Richard Misrach, Nigel Cooke, and Villareal.

NFTs

DRIFT

Founded 2006, Amsterdam

(opens in a new window) View NFT on Pace Verso

Glenn Kaino

b. 1972, Los Angeles, California

(opens in a new window) View NFTs on Pace Verso

Featured Works

Lynda Benglis

b. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana

Lynda Benglis has long been celebrated for incorporating varied and unorthodox materials in her work. Over the course of her career, Benglis has charted new frontiers of sculpture and painting, cultivating an idiosyncratic, abstract visual language in the process. The present work is titled Figure 1 (2012) and was cast in 2020. This aluminum sculpture reflects the artist’s interest in organic, lyrical forms. Intricate details on its surface form distinctive, mesmerizing patterns and textures. Intersecting and interlocking shapes lend the work an otherworldly quality. In keeping with Benglis’s innovative practice, Figure 1 reflects the artist’s uncanny ability to manipulate and transform her materials.

David Byrne

b. 1952, Dumbarton, Scotland

As Above So Below by David Byrne — David Byrne, *As Above So Below*, 2020, fadeproof waterproof ink on archival paper, 9" × 12" (22.9 cm × 30.5 cm), paper

Mary Corse

b. 1945, Berkeley, California

Over the last six decades, Mary Corse has investigated light, abstraction, and perception in her practice. She began her Black Earth series in 1970 after moving from downtown Los Angeles to Topanga Canyon, where she continues to live and work today. The series reflects Corse’s brief departure from the canvas in favor of the kiln. In these works, high-shine ceramic slabs are stacked parallel to each other. The ceramics mimic the topography of the earth with their undulating and irregular surfaces. Untitled (Black Earth) (1978/2021) is made up of eight identically sized tiles that fit together in an almost perfect union, much like the tectonic plates that make up the earth's mantle. Keeping with her innovative practice, the artist built her own kiln to fire such large pieces. She has said of this series, “I found myself needing to ground [myself], be aware of the body, touch the earth...No artist’s lines, getting rid of the ego.”

Jules de Balincourt

b. Paris, 1972

French-American artist Jules de Balincourt is known for colorful, radiant paintings that meditate on increasingly globalized social, political, and cultural dynamics. Shifting from a broader sociological view of borders, territories, and nation-states, the artist’s recent landscapes explore humanity’s complex relationships with natural and urban settings. The artist, who depicts the world with a dreamlike sensibility, utilizes a palette that emphasizes organic beauty. Blowhards and Blowbacks (2021) features a kaleidoscopic forest caught in a gale, with trees swaying so vigorously that they almost bend to 90-degree angles. De Balincourt employs pastel pinks, bright blues, and warm oranges and yellows in what may appear to be a nighttime scene, given the black sky in the background. On the nature of his practice, the artist has said, “I like the idea of placing the viewer at these crossroads of painting, in which one's emotive response hovers between rational realism or figuration, on the one hand, and the abstract subconscious [...] on the other.”

28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Collage dans les rues de Monrovia, in the street of Monrovia, Liberia by JR JR — JR JR, *28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Collage dans les rues de Monrovia, in the street of Monrovia, Liberia*, 2008, color print, mounted on dibond, mat plexiglas, flushed wooden black frame, 49-3/16" × 87-3/8" × 2-3/4" (124.9 cm × 221.9 cm × 7 cm)

JR

b. 1983, Paris

Glenn Kaino

b. 1972, Los Angeles, California

Glenn Kaino explores climate change, environmentalism, and stewardship of the earth in his recent sculpture Trees (Daimonji) (2021). The work connects to The Trees, a large-scale project by the artist set to debut in spring 2022. Trees (Daimonji) comprises gold and ruthenium plated model parts, cotton, insect pins, paint, and high-density urethane. In this work, the artist composes an image using the language of disassembly and reassembly, a practice derived from special effect designers who created models before the age of CGI. In producing this work, Kaino was inspired by the controlled forest burns at the Daimonji Festival in Kyoto, Japan. Each August, the festival transforms nearby mountainsides into works of art using controlled bonfires. Controlled burns have long been used by environmentalists and indigenous groups to promote the growth of trees, wildflowers, and other plants by recycling nutrients back into soil, reducing the overgrowth of flammable materials, and improving habitats for endangered species. They are an essential part of the lifecycle of a forest and Kaino invokes their history to shift assumptions about the destructive qualities of fire.

Maya Lin

b. 1959, Athens, Ohio

Maya Lin’s practice is engaged with various artistic traditions, including landscape painting, mapmaking, and sculptural waterways. Lin is fascinated by water, a substance she views as vital, mysterious, and essential to the shaping of life. The artist’s silver waterways, which depict bird’s-eye views of the Columbia, Hudson, Thames, Seine, Yangtze, and Nile rivers, reflect her cartographic interests. Lin started creating this series in 2008 and works of this kind trace the courses of rivers by casting their contours in recycled silver, representing water as a positive form with the surrounding land rendered as negative space. Lin’s belief in the importance of these bodies of water is evident in her choice of recycled silver as a material. She has said, “Using silver, a precious material that also has a reflective water-like quality, presents these rivers as extremely precious and jewel-like.”

Lin conducts extensive historical and ecological research on each body of water before completing a sculpture—this research also informs What Is Missing?, an ongoing project that draws attention to environmental degradation and mass extinctions. Amid the global climate crisis, Lin’s sculptures serve as monuments to these bodies of water and their environmental significance. “One by one, against that background—and by otherwise reducing the work’s background to a blank wall, letting the land through which these rivers travel simply fall away—Lin has created a memorable Gestalt out of enormous and enormously complex waterways, the fixed likenesses of inherently shifting, fluid entities...,” the critic and curator Robert Storr once wrote. “Lin has stilled those quicksilver waters even more, to conjure up counterimages of the lifelines of everything in our environment we depend upon and hold dear.”

Robert Longo

b. 1953, Brooklyn, New York

A key figure of the “Pictures Generation” of the 1970s and 1980s, Robert Longo is widely known for his large-scale, hyper-realistic charcoal drawings. Works of this kind have been central to the artist’s practice since the start of his career, with the charcoal and graphite series Men in the Cities, presented at his first solo exhibition at Metro Pictures in New York in 1981, among the most iconic artworks of the 1980s. The present work, Study of Hong Kong Protesters (2020), belongs to Longo’s Destroyer Cycle series, which he began in 2014. The work depicts protesters shielding themselves from a torrent of water that is being projected at them by authorities. These charcoal works, for which the artist has drawn inspiration from news photography and footage, focus on social and political crises of the current moment. Longo renders this tense, emotionally charged scene with painstaking detail, lending it a highly photographic quality. The final installment of the Destroyer Cycle was presented at Longo’s solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York during the fall of 2021.

Beatriz Milhazes

b. 1960, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Beatriz Milhazes’s vibrant, geometric works are often informed by the culture and landscapes of her native home in Brazil. A pioneering figure in the Brazilian Geração 80, or 80s Generation, which favored painting over conceptual artmaking, Milhazes has cultivated a practice that spans painting, collage, print, textile, and architectural installation. Engaged with both Latin American artistic traditions and European Modernism, the artist’s work features what she calls “chromatic free geometry,” colorful abstractions derived from decorative arabesque forms and the natural wonders of Brazil. The present work, a new painting titled O Sanfoneiro alegre (2021), reflects Milhazes’s uncanny ability to seamlessly combine multifarious hues, patterns, and forms into a unified, lively composition. For this work, the artist employed her mono-transfer painting method, which she has been developing since 1989. Painting directly onto firm plastic sheeting, the artist imprints her abstractions onto canvas. Through layers of different components and suggestions of varied textures, she imbues this painting with energy and vigor.

Duet For Debbie #04 by Richard Misrach — Richard Misrach, *Duet For Debbie #04*, 2021, pigment print mounted to Dibond, 47-3/4" × 118" (121.3 cm × 299.7 cm), image, paper and mount 48-3/8" × 119-1/2" × 2" (122.9 cm × 303.5 cm × 5.1 cm), frame

Richard Misrach

b. 1949, Los Angeles, California

Richard Misrach is known for his pioneering work with large-scale format and color photography. He began photographing the American West in the 1970s with an eye towards landscape, environmental awareness, and the politics of geography and infrastructure. His work captures the devastation caused by Anthropocene, including industrial development, nuclear testing, and petrochemical pollution. Duet For Debbie #04 (2021) belongs to the Shorebreak Variations series, which the artist began developing over the past year and a half. Inspired by the way music is composed using the same notes in various arrangements, the artist manipulates color to create multiple versions of the same photograph. The present work is comprised of two identical images of an empty stretch of shoreline. The natural colors have been manipulated to emphasize blues, oranges, yellows, and purples. Previously, Misrach has photographed the same view repeatedly in different states of weather and light, but now he shifts his focus to investigate variations within a singular image, producing new and unique ways of seeing.

William Monk

b. 1977, Kingston upon Thames, UK

Untitled (study for the ferryman III) by William Monk — William Monk, *Untitled (study for the ferryman III)*, 2019 - 2021, oil on canvas, 35 cm × 55 cm (13-3/4" × 21-5/8")

William Monk’s luminescent oil paintings are developed over time, often in series, and they frequently feature energetic surfaces and meditative depth. In Monk’s new series Untitled (study for the ferryman I–III) (2021), the artist presents what appears to be a shimmering, sacred mountain or perhaps the ornately carved and decoratively painted prow of a ship. Part 1960s animation, courtesy of Beatles film animator George Dunning, and part Stanley Kubrick vision, Monk’s Rorschach-inspired paintings suggest a new sensorial field of contemporary painting. His vibrant palette and engagement with surface and pattern suggest a unique and contemporary take upon psychedelia and the re-enchantment of painting as a ritual, active form.

Trevor Paglen

b. 1974, Camp Springs, Maryland

Michal Rovner

b. 1957, Israel

Michal Rovner’s multifarious practice deeply engages with histories of displacement and notions of identity, spanning drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation, and video. The artist is intensely interested in collectivity and universality as they relate to historical memory, and many of her works—including new videos Golden Field (2021) and Pastel (2021)—reflect investigations of this kind. The present works show groups of people moving across vast, anonymous landscapes. Differently sized silhouettes are situated across the screens in varying degrees of order and fragmentation. The abstracted terrains are rendered in warm yellow and deep purple, creating a mesmeric, otherworldly effect. These digital realms exemplify Rovner’s ability to omit details of time and place from her work while imbuing it with political and social tension. The artist has utilized images of unidentifiable, migrating figures in her practice since the late 1990s.

Joel Shapiro

b. 1941, New York, New York

Throughout his storied career, Joel Shapiro has said his interest in sculpture lies in “moments when it simultaneously configures and disfigures.” He is known for his innovative approach to figuration that examines the relationships between the human and the inanimate, the living and the sculptural. Untitled (2007–08) reflects the artist’s longstanding explorations of form, color, and movement. Here, the figure is distilled into five rectangular shapes, that convey dynamic motion and engage with the surrounding space in novel ways. Like other sculptures by Shapiro, the present work shows a figure in a choreographed act of moving and contorting. Untitled encapsulates Shapiro’s amalgamation of postmodernist Minimalism and geometric abstraction with a playful approach to color and composition.

Arlene Shechet

b. 1951, New York, New York

Arlene Shechet’s expansive approach to sculpture has led her to experiment with materials as diverse as plaster, porcelain, clay, and cast paper. In the last decade, Shechet has worked extensively with ceramics, engaging in the delights of a chance-based process allowing her to robustly manipulate materials—casting, painting, firing, carving, and stacking clay with no predetermined end. From a new series of work Together Again, begun in 2021, the present sculptures exemplify Shechet’s intense interest in madcap abstractions and unexpected material combinations. Following the artist’s well-known Together series, the titles of these sculptures reflect the marking of time during their creation—a naming system alluding to the medieval Book of Hours. In the same way that a Book of Hours delineated the seasons of harvest, spirituality, and celebration through richly decorated manuscript pages, Shechet—who views color as a “lifeforce”—finds in these sculptural pieces innovative ways to express the abstractness and subjectivity of emotional experience through time and form. Though titled to reflect the passage of time, these sculptures also harness the present moment through their seductively vibrant and chromatically rich nature.

Together Again: September Saturday by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Together Again: September Saturday*, 2021, Glazed ceramic and powder coated steel, 20-1/2" × 11" × 10" (52.1 cm × 27.9 cm × 25.4 cm)

Together Again: June Tuesday by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Together Again: June Tuesday*, 2021, glazed ceramic, acrylic paint, powder coated steel, 19-1/2" × 17" × 14" (49.5 cm × 43.2 cm × 35.6 cm)

Together Again: April Wednesday by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Together Again: April Wednesday*, 2021, Glazed ceramic and powder coated steel, 16" × 21" × 8" (40.6 cm × 53.3 cm × 20.3 cm)

Together Again: July Thursday by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Together Again: July Thursday*, 2021, Glazed ceramic and powder coated steel, 54" × 21" × 17-1/2" (137.2 cm × 53.3 cm × 44.5 cm)

Kiki Smith

b. 1954, Nuremberg, Germany

Multidisciplinary artist Kiki Smith is celebrated for her wide- ranging practice that explores the human form, mortality, and the connections between spiritual and physical realms. Swoon (2018) and Arc (2018) depict hands cast in bronze, a reoccurring motif within Smith’s practice and part of her exploration of the human form. Engaged with traditional and artisanal processes, Smith began working with bronze in 1986. The material parallels her experimentations with more contemporary materials and technological resources. She explains that “As artists we find what is significant to us in historical forms and content and we re-energize or re-vitalize the past. Along the way, we discover what is contemporary language and life.”

Swoon by Kiki Smith — Kiki Smith, *Swoon*, 2018, bronze, 10" × 18" × 8-1/4" (25.4 cm × 45.7 cm × 21 cm)

Repose by Kiki Smith — Kiki Smith, *Repose*, 2018, bronze and steel, 8" × 20" × 12" (20.3 cm × 50.8 cm × 30.5 cm)

James Turrell

b. 1943, Los Angeles

James Turrell, a leading figure of the Light and Space movement, has long devoted himself to explorations of perception with a focus on the materiality of light. Influenced by the notion of pureness in pictorial art, Turrell’s earliest works focused on the dialectic between constructing light and painting with light, building on the sensorial experiences of space, color, and perception. These interactions became the foundation for Turrell’s oeuvre. Exemplifying the artist’s ongoing investigation into the materiality of light and engagement with the limits and wonder of human perception, Ra (2021) is a continuation of his Medium Elliptical Glass works. Light sculptures from this series are all named after the concepts, philosophy, people, and phenomena connected to the myth of Atlantis. Turrell is deeply interested in the myths of the lost culture of Atlantis, particularly in modern attempts to locate the physical ruins of the sunken civilization and understand its history and downfall. According to Turrell, the story of Atlantis can be understood in the context of contemporary issues. The Atlanteans were light-worshipping people with advanced technology, constantly warring with the rest of the planet and ultimately meeting their demise after searching for God-like power.

Leo Villareal

b. 1967, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Leo Villareal investigates the ways sequences of light create immersive visual experiences through his captivating installations and sculptures. Using custom coding, he creates works that explore the structures and rules of natural and synthetic systems, the phenomenological effects of light, and art’s potential to elicit multifarious sensory reactions. Diffused Color (Large A) (2021), a new work by Villareal, engages with these interests. Incorporating LED lights, electronics, and custom software, this sculpture is among the artist’s latest technologically minded experimentations focused on perception and subjectivity. The work also features vibrant colors that set it apart from other recent pieces by the artist. Diffused Color (Large A) speaks to Villareal’s distinct use of abstraction and cutting-edge code in his boundary-pushing practice.