Our choice of exhibitions throughout Artwork Basel in Miami Seaside

By Marlan McCarthy Last updated Dec 11, 2021

My name is maryan
Until March 20, 2022 at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami
The Polish-born Jewish artist Maryan was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp as a child and left Auschwitz in 1945 as the only survivor of his bloodline. His life from there was a very productive and progressive artistic life, one that spanned the beginnings of Israel, the avant-garde art schools of Paris, and the bohemian subcultures of New York, but his work stayed within the canon of art history. Maryan’s name remains hidden even to many art students. But now, thanks to extensive new scientific knowledge and in-depth research, as well as the discovery of a vast treasure trove of never-before-seen works, Maryan’s name could establish itself as one of the most significant and illustrious figures in post-war art history. Today, Maryan is considered to be one of the few important artists who directly experienced the most extreme and traumatic manifestations of the Holocaust. Yet he did not want to be defined as a Holocaust artist; he strove to make his life and work more than the unthinkable and total horror he was exposed to as a child.

Carlos Maritel, Mediterráneo (Mediterranean) (2017). Courtesy area 23.

Witness: Afro perspectives from the Jorge M. Pérez collection
Until February 1st, 2022 at El Espacio 23
Witness is the second exhibition at El Espacio 23, a contemporary art space founded in 2019 in Miami’s trendy Allapattah neighborhood by local real estate tycoon and collector Jorge Pérez. With 100 works by artists from Africa and the African diaspora, the exhibition follows the center’s goal of “presenting a new facet of the community in South Florida and exploring how seemingly distant cultures influence our own everyday lives,” says the curator of the Pérez Collection , Patricia M. Hannah. The exhibition addresses issues such as identity and oppression and invites visitors to bear witness to the challenges that are passed on from one generation to another. The exhibition is curated by Tandazani Dhlakama from Zeitz MoCAA in Cape Town in collaboration with Hannah and her colleague Anelys Alvarez, writer David Koloane, whose work deals with human rights issues and political injustice.

Installation view: “Betye Saar: Resurrection: Site Installations, 1977 to 1987”, Main Art Gallery, Visual Arts Center, California State University, Fullerton, 1988. Courtesy of the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles.

Betye Saar: Serious moonlight
Until April 17, 2022 at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami
The celebrated artist Betye Saar – who is best known for her sculptural assemblages on the topics of spirituality, cosmology and the African diaspora – created a series of installations in the 1980s and 1990s that expanded the “altars” she started in the 1970s. This under-explored phase of her career was inspired by her research into animistic religious practices during her travels to Nigeria, Haiti, and Mexico. The complex, room-sized works immerse the viewer in the esoteric world of the Saar and are “beautiful, strong and offer new perspectives on Saar practice, but have hardly received any institutional attention,” says Stephanie Seidel, deputy curator of the museum. The ninety-year-old Los Angeles-based artist has written extensively about her influences, which can be seen throughout the show. One of the highlights of The Trickster (1994) is a quote from the American author and voodoo researcher Zora Neale Hurston, who wrote: “Voodoo is a blade that is a blade that cuts in both directions.”

Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Mexican Modernism from the Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection
Until February 6, 2022 at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach
The exhibition features more than 150 works of art of Mexican modernism, including significant works by Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, compiled by Jacques Gelman and Natasha Gelman – Eastern European immigrants who moved to Mexico in the 1940s, where they became avid collectors of Mexican art became. To fit the work of Kahlo and Rivera into the broader narrative of Mexican modernism, emblematic pieces by other Mexican artists such as Bride from Papantla (Portrait of Rosalba Portes Gil) (1944) by María Izquierdo are also on display. “The scope of the [the exhibition] brings important works of Mexican modernism back into the context in which they were created – in a collaborative artist community that seeks to create authentic Mexican modernity by exploring and embracing common roots and folkloric traditions, ”says Ellen E. Roberts, the American art curator of Norton.

Bob Dylan, Emmet Street (2020). Courtesy of the artist.

Bob Dylan: Retro Spectrum
Until April 17, 2022 at the Frost Art Museum at Florida International University (FIU)
Bob Dylan, ten-time Grammy winner, songwriter, Nobel Prize winner and visual artist, took cinema inspiration for his latest series of paintings, Deep Focus. “All of these images are from films,” he says. “They try to highlight the different dilemmas that people find themselves in. Whether James Cagney or Margaret Rutherford, the dreams and plans are the same – life as it comes in all its forms and shapes. ”Around 40 new paintings make their debut in this exhibition and mark the most comprehensive exhibition of Dylan’s art, the has ever been shown in the United States. These new works are accompanied by around 160 paintings, drawings and sculptures from six decades. “Seeing many of my works years after they were completed is a fascinating experience,” says Dylan of the exhibition. “I don’t really associate it with any particular time, place, or state of mind, but rather consider it part of a long arc; a continuation of our path in the world and the way in which our perceptions are shaped and changed by life. “

George Clinton, unleashed! (2020) Courtesy of the artist.

George Clinton: Funkbasel
Until January 31st at Soho Beach House, with an artist talk on December 4th
Throughout his career, Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton has worked hard to get people to loosen up, feel the flow, and embrace the funk. His mission hasn’t changed, just his medium. The music he made with the group changed his mind, opened his eyes and made people sweat in the best possible way. But music has always been inextricably linked with aesthetics. Few can claim to have influenced so much art, both acoustically and visually. And with the possible exception of jazz musician Sun-Ra, no one has done more than Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic to promote Afrofuturism as a concept, aesthetic and way of life. Clinton’s approach to painting is not dissimilar to his approach to music. Flow is important, as is knowing your limits. “When I realized that I could apply the same theory that I use to making music, that I can go against the grain, it all made sense,” he says. “I’m color blind so I had to learn to read the notes and values. How to gradually change colors and mix things up. It’s all in that feeling that I get when I do what I do my way. When I get a rhythm like this, I can actually trust my feelings, whatever that new logic is. Because right now everything is at stake. The whole reality is at stake. “

Installation view by Jorge Pardo: Mongrel in the Museum of Art and Design at the MDC. Photo: Karli Evans. Courtesy of the Museum of Art and Design, Miami Dade College.

Jorge Pardo: mixed breed
Until May 1, 2022 at the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College
The Cuban-American artist Jorge Pardo is in constant dialogue – within his work, with his surroundings, his past and his influences, which range from his family’s flight to the USA after the conquest of Cuba by the Castro regime to the painters of the The range of abstract expressionism that caught his attention when he began to study art. But he’s far from stuck in the past. His work, which moves between art, design and architecture, is very topical. His techniques are so modern that they rely almost entirely on technology, but the work itself doesn’t seem futuristic. His current exhibition includes 25 new drawings, modernist chairs, and exquisitely complex chandeliers that inspire visitors to ponder how shapes and colors permeated by a hidden narrative affect one another.

Alex Israel x Snapchat, Self-Portrait (Palm) (2019). Courtesy of the Bass Museum.

Alex Israel x Snapchat
Until May 1, 2022 at the Bass Museum of Art
Known for his hugging and infiltration of pop culture, artist Alex Israel has teamed up with social media giant Snapchat to give his works an augmented reality boost. Five of Israel’s Alfred Hitchock-inspired self-portrait silhouette paintings – a long-running series for the artist – are on display in Bass, and when viewed through the Snapchat app, each creates a dynamic augmented reality (AR) experience, the Israel Designed in collaboration with the AR team at Snap Inc. The kitschy maximalistic effects vary from picture to picture: A self-portrait invites you to take a psychedelic journey through Los Angeles, in others a palm tree or a pelican protrudes, another shows the artist as if he were trapped in his own self-portrait. And while that iconography is clearly LA, where the artist and social media company are based, it carries over seamlessly to the Miami landscape.