Art Basel Miami Beach

Past
Nov 29 – Dec 3, 2022
Miami Beach

Art Fair Details:

Art Basel Miami Beach
Miami Beach Convention Center
Booth F13
Nov 29 – Dec 3, 2022

Connect:

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

Above: Jeff Koons, Nike Sneakers (N110 D/MS/X), 2020-22 © Jeff Koons

Pace is pleased to announce details of its presentation at the 2022 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach and its participation in an off-site NFT exhibition that will take place in Downtown Miami during the fair.

The gallery’s booth will feature pieces by contemporary artists across Pace’s program—including Lynda Benglis, DRIFT, Torkwase Dyson, Elmgreen & Dragset, Sonia Gomes, Robert Irwin, Matthew Day Jackson, Jeff Koons, Robert Longo, Beatriz Milhazes, Julian Schnabel, and Lee Ufan—alongside masterpieces by 20th century figures John Chamberlain, Keith Haring, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Richard Pousette-Dart, Antoni Tàpies, Andy Warhol, and John Wesley, among others.

A highlight of Pace’s Art Basel Miami Beach booth will be the first US presentation of Jeff Koons’s polychromed bronze sculpture Nike Sneakers (N110 D/MS/X) (2020-22), which was developed for the artist’s recent solo show at the DESTE Foundation’s Project Space in Hydra, Greece. This dynamic work reflects Koons’s longstanding engagement with popular culture as well as notions of aspiration and accomplishment. The sculpture can be understood in conversation with Koons’s iconic Equilibrium works—highly innovative installations informed by the work of Marcel Duchamp that feature basketballs in the centers of water-filled tanks—and his Nike posters. In 2023, Koons will open his first major solo exhibition with Pace in Los Angeles.

Study for Colossal Ashtray – Model (1974-75), a steel sculpture by Claes Oldenburg, a leading figure of Pop Art movement who died this year at age 93, will also figure prominently on Pace’s booth at the fair. Combining simple geometric forms that stand in for discarded cigarettes and an ashtray, this sculpture exemplifies Oldenburg’s ability to transform familiar objects, forms, and materials into animated sculptural entities. The artist is widely celebrated for his large-scale public projects around the world—which he realized with his wife and longtime collaborator Coosje van Bruggen—and Study for Colossal Ashtray – Model sheds light on his process for creating these monumental odes to the playfulness of the everyday.

Artists with recent and ongoing exhibitions at Pace’s global locations will feature on the gallery’s Art Basel Miami Beach booth. Pace’s presentation at the fair will include a 2019 bronze sculpture by Lynda Benglis, whose solo exhibition at the gallery’s Palm Beach space will be on view from November 30 to December 31, bringing together several bodies of work that reflect the breadth of the artist’s practice. Paintings by Antoni Tàpies and Beatriz Milhazes, who were the subjects of solo exhibitions with Pace in New York this fall, will also be shown on the gallery’s booth. A hanging sculpture by Sonia Gomes, a new painting by Torkwase Dyson, and a 1957 painting by Richard Pousette-Dart—all of whom have solo exhibitions on view at Pace in New York concurrently with the fair—will be displayed along with a monumental charcoal drawing of Yankee Stadium by Robert Longo, whose solo show at Pace’s Los Angeles gallery continues through December 17, and a new wall-mounted sculptural work by Yin Xiuzhen, who is presenting a solo exhibition at Pace's Hong Kong gallery through January 5, 2023.

Among the major contemporary works in the gallery’s Art Basel Miami Beach presentation will be a 2021 sculpture from Robert Irwin’s ongoing Unlight series, in which the artist engages with the experiential possibilities of ambient illumination, shadow, and tonality. Challenging viewers to see their environments in new and unexpected ways, this work, titled “C and C” (Complex/Coherent), incorporates constellations of unlit fluorescent fixtures and tubes, installed in vertical rows directly on the booth’s wall. A new documentary tracing Irwin’s career, A Desert of Pure Feeling, had its world premiere at the 13th annual edition of the DOC NYC festival this November.

Contemporary highlights also include a new interactive work by the artist duo DRIFT, displayed on the booth’s outside wall; a new, never before seen sculpture by Elmgreen & Dragset; a new three-panel landscape painting by Matthew Day Jackson, who joined Pace’s program in 2022; JR’s politically resonant collage The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America, Work in Progress #3, USA (2018) and his dynamic photo Trompe l'oeil, Greetings from Giza, 24 Octobre 2021, 16h46, Giza, Egypte (2021); a painting created this year by Maysha Mohamedi, who is newly represented in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; a vibrant 2022 painting by Julian Schnabel; a 2022 canvas by Lee Ufan, who recently opened an extension of his foundation in Arles, France; and a Murano glass and wood sculpture by Fred Wilson.

The booth will also showcase John Chamberlain’s 2005 painted and chromed steel sculpture Rev. E. Piscpalian Swifty, which features lively plays of color; Keith Haring’s 1982 steel and enamel sculpture Baby; a dynamic 1987 wall-mounted gold anodized aluminum sculpture by Donald Judd; an iconic Flowers painting created by Andy Warhol in 1964; and John Wesley’s 1996 horizontally oriented painting Show Girls, which depicts the semi-obscured faces of two women and exemplifies the artist’s ability to imbue his figurations with mystery and humanity.

Beyond the fair, JR will bring his participatory Chronicles project, through which he creates murals celebrating the cultural landscapes of major cities, to Miami—his resulting mural, which will feature collaged portraits of locals captured by the artist in his roaming studio from November 18 to 29, will be unveiled in the city in the coming months. The experimental art collective Random International, known for its large-scale, interactive works, will present its new installation Living Room, commissioned by Aorist and presented in partnership with Faena Art, in a purpose-built pavilion at Faena Beach from November 29 to December 4.

On Thursday, December 1, web3 projects by Tara Donovan, John Gerrard, and Loie Hollowell, released this year as part of a multifaceted partnership between Pace Verso, the gallery’s web3 hub, and the leading generative art platform Art Blocks, will be exhibited in (opens in a new window) The Gateway: A Web3 Metropolis, a sprawling NFT event in Downtown Miami organized by the digital platform nft now and running concurrently with Art Basel Miami Beach. This showing of NFT projects from the Art Blocks x Pace Verso partnership, which encompasses NFT releases, exhibitions, and community programming, will be presented during Art Blocks’s week-long immersive activation in The Gateway: A Web3 Metropolis.

Open to the public and running from November 29 to December 3, The Gateway: A Web3 Metropolis will span 12 buildings and two city blocks in Downtown Miami, spotlighting the work of artists, performers, speakers, and other members of the web3 community. To learn more and RSVP for a free ticket to the event, please visit (opens in a new window) nftnow.com/the-gateway-2022.

In addition, Random International’s new virtual sculpture developed as part of its recently released generative NFT collection Life in Our Minds—created in collaboration with multidisciplinary digital artist Danil Krivoruchko and co-produced by Pace Verso, the web3 hub of Pace Gallery, and Snark.art’s OG.Art NFT platform—will be the top lot in Next Wave: The Miami Edit, a curated, fully on-chain sale by Christie’s 3.0. Titled Mother Flock, this evolving, interactive work derives its source data from the individual NFTs in the Life in Our Minds project. Viewers can physically manipulate a flock of thousands of swarming pieces of bird-like origami in Mother Flock. Bidding in Next Wave: The Miami Edit will be open on Christie’s 3.0 from November 30 to December 7. To learn more about the Life in Our Minds collection, please visit (opens in a new window) og.art/collections/liom.

Featured Works

Lynda Benglis

b. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana

John Chamberlain

b. 1927, Rochester, Indiana
d. 2011, New York City, New York

DRIFT

Founded 2007, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Torkwase Dyson

b. 1973, Chicago, Illinois

Sonia Gomes

b. 1948, Caetanópolis, Brazil

Sonia Gomes’ Untitled, from Pendentes Series (2021) belongs to her esteemed Pendentes series, a body of suspended fiber works composed of fabric and lace. Untitled contains variegated elements which bulge and narrow, stacked atop one another, cascading toward the floor with the weight of gravity. The potential energy of its pendulous shape endows Untitled, from Pendentes Series with an urgency that stands in contrast to the rich history embedded in the work as a result of its found textiles. Precipitating from the ceiling, Untitled, from Pendentes Series recalls a stalactite as a register of history and time. The elaborate layers of differently textured materials give the work an undulating, energized quality. Cords and tassels contribute to this sense of choreography and motion, and the sculpture’s largely subdued color palette is punctuated by bursts of vibrant green and red fabric emerging from pockets and other openings. Gomes often draws inspiration from popular Brazilian dances as well as sacred objects of Brazil’s African diaspora, and her practice is deeply engaged with themes of memory and erased histories.

Keith Haring

b. 1958, Reading, Pennsylvania
d. 1990, New York City, New York

Robert Irwin

b. 1928, Long Beach, California

Virginia Jaramillo

b. 1939, El Paso, Texas

Throughout her six-decade career, Virginia Jaramillo’s dramatic large-scale paintings have contended with the inexplicable and the mystical, incorporating her lifelong studies of mythology, classical and sacred geometries, geography, Japanese aesthetics, and cosmology. The artist’s wide-ranging interests culminate in Site: No. 4 24.4354° N, 123.0112° E (2018), a stunning work from her Foundations series, a body of paintings each related to an architectural or archaeological site identified by the painting’s titular coordinates. The present work derives from the Yonaguni Monument, an undersea rock formation off the coast of one of Japan’s southernmost islands. Archaeologists and geologists have debated the origins of the site; some argue that its structure is the result of natural processes of erosion and tectonic activity, while others believe that the Yonaguni Monument bears evidence of human-made structures and markings and may be the long- lost, legendary civilization Mu, fabled to have sunken beneath the waves of the Pacific Ocean. Believers of the human-made theory cite sheer walls, apparent roads, a pyramid, and reliefs, among other evidence. The jagged geometric shape in the upper- right corner of Jaramillo’s Site: No. 4 24.4354° N, 123.0112° E alludes to the remarkable undersea formation, while the vast textural darkness of its surroundings evokes the ancient mystery of the site. Paintings from Jaramillo’s Foundations series similarly touch on sacred sites around the world, resulting in geometric abstractions of geographical history and mythology. In art historian Matthew Jeffrey Abrams’ essay for the artist’s lauded 2018 showcase of her Foundation paintings, he pointed to the “stunning, jagged filigree” of the vibrant shape in Site: No. 4 24.4354° N, 123.0112° E, noting that in Jaramillo’s paintings, these archetypal forms are the source of the painting’s electricity: “This is where we catch a painting’s scent, where we begin to explore its forms, where we see how the composition could quite easily move beyond its stretchers and into a greater expanse.”

Trompe l'oeil, Greetings from Giza, 24 Octobre 2021, 16h46, Giza, Egypte by JR JR — JR JR, *Trompe l'oeil, Greetings from Giza, 24 Octobre 2021, 16h46, Giza, Egypte*, 2021, Color print, mounted on dibond, mat plexiglass, american flushed walnut frame, 48-7/16" × 72-1/16" × 2-9/16" (123 cm × 183 cm × 6.5 cm), overall

JR

b. 1983, Paris, France

Donald Judd

b. 1928, Excelsior Springs, MO
d. 1994, New York City, New York

Jeff Koons

b. 1955, York, Pennsylvania

A meticulously rendered bronze sculpture of the iconic American brand’s sneakers, Jeff Koons’ Nike Sneakers (N110 D/MS/X) (2020–22) is crafted with the exceptional attention to detail characteristic of the artist’s longtime interest in cast metal readymades. With bronze laces tied together and strung from a large nail-like projection in the wall, Koons’ polished sculpture draws comparisons to the practice of throwing sneakers with tied laces over telephone wires, leaving them suspended in the air. Koons has long rendered everyday objects in metal, bringing the quotidian into the realm of fine art while also translating the ephemeral—sneakers, inflatables—into metal to transform them into permanent fine-art archetypes. At the same time, this elevation from utilitarian shoe to high art eliminates the functionality of the sneakers as footwear, defying reason and material use. Koons’ engagement with Nike began as early as 1985, when he included unaltered Nike posters depicting basketball players in his show of the same year, Equilibrium, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Koons explained that the players in the Nike posters presented illusions of grandeur: “The Nike posters were the Sirens—the great deceivers, saying Go for it! I have achieved it. You can achieve it too!” At once hard and soft, familiar and uncanny, Koons’ Nike Sneakers (N110 D/ MS/X) exemplify his career-spanning interest in materialism and commercial culture.

Lee Ufan

b. 1936, Kyongsang-namdo, South Korea

Robert Longo

b. 1953, Brooklyn, New York

Robert Longo’s Untitled (Ghost Stadium) (2022) is a haunting scene of isolation, one in Longo’s recent body of Destroyer Cycle works in which he has rendered poignant scenes of a country in crisis. These eerie and deeply compelling pieces center around events and collective experiences related to the political climate of 2020 and the devastation precipitated by the Coronavirus pandemic. This large-scale charcoal drawing is based on the Seattle Mariners’ stadium, T-Mobile Park, in Washington state; the artist’s labor-intensive process of drawing each seat one-by- one became an act of filling up a space that individuals could not occupy, as baseball and other long-heralded American pastimes were put on pause during this period of fear and desolation. The graphic nature of the image situates it in the liminal space between representation and abstraction, which Longo has explored throughout his career. The artist is acclaimed for his career-spanning work with charcoal in such detail that it lends a photographic quality—his famed Men in the Cities series, first exhibited at Metro Pictures in 1981, depicts images of people in moments of turmoil, seemingly in freefall. Throughout his career, Longo has been drawn to emotionally-charged and aesthetically profound images, masterfully capturing in charcoal the precarity of the present.

Beatriz Milhazes

b. 1960, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Radiating concentric rings of vibrant textures, kaleidoscopic patterns, and vivid fields of color comprise Beatriz Milhazes’Roda Coração III (2021). The painting’s title translates from Portuguese to heart wheel, underscoring both the painting’s hypnotic circularity as well as its electricity, each of its bands evoking the vital pulsations of the heart. The artist’s vivid, expansive paintings are frequently informed by the culture and landscapes of her native Brazil, where she was 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, engaging with both Latin American artistic traditions and European Modernism to produce what she calls “chromatic free geometry:” colorful abstractions derived from decorative arabesque forms and the natural wonders of Brazil. These forms unfold zealously across Roda Coração III, exemplifying Milhazes’ uncanny ability to seamlessly combine polychromatic hues, patterns, and forms into a unified, lively composition.

Claes Oldenburg

b. 1929, Stockholm, Sweden
d. 2022, New York City, New York

Richard Pousette-Dart

b. 1916, Saint Paul, Minnesota
d. 1992, New York City, New York

Julian Schnabel

b. 1951, Brooklyn, New York

Antoni Tàpies

b. 1923, Barcelona, Spain
d. 2012, Barcelona, Spain

Andy Warhol

b. 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
d. 1987, New York City, New York

John Wesley

b. 1928, Los Angeles, California
d. 2022, New York City, New York

Likened to Pop Art and Surrealism, John Wesley’s iconic body of work has come to eschew categorization, landing in between figuration and abstraction. Show Girls (1996) is a singular example from the revered artist’s oeuvre. From cartoon-like, eroticized flattened figures to powder-coated pastels with stark black outlining, the present work is emblematic of Wesley’s signature painting style. Show Girls is the first in a small series of four paintings, each with seemingly similar imagery of two women’s faces, closely cropped around their eyes and decontextualized within space. In his Show Girls works, Wesley individualizes each image, their differences almost unrecognizable from subtle changes in the outlining of their faces and coloring of minimal forms. Imbuing these various trace changes between each painting, Welsey subverts and aggrandizes the Pop Art trope of serialized imagery—nodding to the mechanics of silkscreening by creating four near-identical paintings while also inserting the artist’s hand with ever-so-slight formal discrepancies. The other paintings in this series include Show Girls (1998), with the woman’s lips a deep-red hue and now in the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee; Show Girls (1998), the one smaller version of these paintings at 16.7 x 22 inches; and Showboat (2000), which has a closer cropping of each face. Akin to his appropriative Pop Art and Postmodernist contemporaries, Wesley culled source imagery for his paintings from popular culture and print media. For his Show Girls, the artist used imagery most likely from cosmetic advertisements in The New York Times. Before transposing them onto canvas, he would begin sketching studies for the desired close cropping of each woman’s face. A rare example of Wesley’s later career and matured work, Show Girls exemplifies the artist’s mastery of cultural commentary through his deft use of composition and image.