Politics Highlight at OVR: Miami Seashore

By Marlan McCarthy Last updated Feb 16, 2021

It’s 2020. So forget about the swimming pools, beach parties, and dazzling artwork that usually come with the year-end jamboree of Art Basel in Miami. What would have been the 19th edition of the fair is instead another Online Viewing Room (OVR: Miami Beach) – and offers art that reflects the turbulent times.

This year’s divisive US elections are very present at an event that falls between the presidential election and the inauguration. President Trump, who at the time of writing had accepted a transition to President-elect Joe Biden despite still denying defeat, plays a major role in a new work by American artist Jim Shaw on the Simon Lee Gallery’s virtual booth (“The Master Mason ”, $ 75,000).

The uncomfortable history painting shows the president in Masonic attire and surrounded by what Shaw calls “enabling sycophants,” including Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon. The President’s wife, Melania Trump, and his two ex-wives sit at the side of the screen, a new dystopian political work on display in Lee’s gallery in London (Hope Against Hope, through January 16, 2021).

Jenny Holzer’s “Happening with Russia” (2020) detail. Text: US Government Document, 20 etched copper plates © 2020 Jenny Holzer, Member of the Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Courtesy of Sprüth Magers

Lee says it is particularly fitting to include the work for the Miami OVR. Trump’s October 15th City Hall was broadcast by the Pérez Art Museum Miami and Lee says, “Miami is a place that seems symptomatic of Trump and his aesthetic – Mar-a-Lago is not far away – so it’s a good one Time to give something to current politics a bit of a voice. “The response so far has been” incredibly positive from the liberal arts community, as you can imagine, “he added.

Bannon is also mentioned in a new work by Jenny Holzer, “Happening with Russia” ($ 425,000), which is on display at Sprüth Magers Galerie in the OVR of the fair. The piece consists of 20 etched copper plates, each of which reproduces a published, edited interview from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election. These include words from Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and the President’s aide, Hope Hicks. The persistence of the metal plate engravings shows how “these documents are being engraved as wounds in the history of the American people,” the gallery says.

‘Make America Red Again’ (2016) by Native American artist James Luna © ShootArt Mobile 1; Courtesy of the artist and the Garth Greenan Gallery, New York

The Garth Greenan Gallery is showing 10 limited-edition sculptures by the late Native American artist James Luna, including the beaded and feathered “Make America Red Again” cap (2016, $ 35,000, edition of five) that Luna wears in a performance revolving around Trump’s election promises to build a wall on the border with Mexico. “The reference to ‘red’ aborigines is deliberately laden with the idea of the red and blue states with which we are so familiar,” says Greenan.

Acquavella Galleries is showing new work by Tom Sachs using popular imagery in intentionally wobbly paintings like “American Flag” and “Airforce I” to bring a political point home. Sachs said of the works, which will also be part of a solo exhibition in the New York gallery until December 18 ($ 75,000 to $ 250,000), “When I look at these pictures, they all speak of power for me. There is power in logos and power in good advertising. “

“American Flag” (2020) by Tom Sachs

There is also visual power in pop pictures and in works with overt political messages, a necessary side effect of online viewing that does not take into account the economies of scale possible in real life. “It’s an inevitable challenge [to stand out] on a digital platform with 250 galleries and thousands of images. But some works can still really burst, ”says Noah Horowitz, Director of Art Basel for America.

In view of the dominance of American politics in the world at the moment, gallery owners are also moving into the spotlight politically motivated works that find renewed resonance – even without making them fat. “Certain images that you can only see through the lens this year,” says Horowitz. This includes the large-format photo by Thomas Demand of close-meshed voting booths “Ballot” (2018, 140,000 euros, edition of six, Esther Schipper-Galerie), which “is impossible to look at without thinking about what’s going on”. , Says Horowitz.

‘Ballot’ (2018) by Thomas Demand © Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn

While the majority of artists and market pros express their relief that the end of the Trump presidency is in sight, there is also a feeling that this was only part of a deeper and longer problem. Permanent socio-political problems in the USA, especially racism, are also dealt with in several works in the Miami Viewing Room.

The Jack Shainman Gallery is showing contemporary works – including Kerry James Marshall’s “Untitled (And, so …)” (2020), a commission for the cover of Vogue magazine in September (price approx. USD 3 million) – as well as a Photo of Gordon Park’s painful “Segregation Story” series “Outside Looking In, Mobile, Alabama” was included for Life Magazine in 1956 but was not printed until 2012, six years after Parks died.

American artist Nate Lowman uses the past to highlight the present in “Katrina” (2020, 300,000 US dollars) on David Zwirner’s virtual booth. Speaking of the painting, which is based on an eye-wall graphic of the hurricane that devastated New Orleans’ poorest neighborhoods 15 years ago, Lowman says: “The wanton disinterest that both the Bush and Trump administrations have in dealing with their respective disasters expressed was eerily similar. . . The nature of culture is change. To see that persistence of poverty and systemic racism from 2005 – and before – through 2020 is still essentially unchanged and neglected is appalling and confusing. “

Monika Sprüth, co-founder of the Sprüth Magers gallery, makes a similar point by seeing another Holzer work, a dark labradorite footstool with the artist’s notorious truism “abuse of power is no surprise” (2015, 200,000 US dollars, edition of six ). The sentence that Holzer first brought to the public on a sign in New York’s Times Square in 1982 was also the artist’s Twitter post on November 11, a day on which Trump repeatedly tweeted “We will win!”. Sprüth says: “It is important to repeat some things over and over again. Unfortunately, they will likely be relevant as long as humanity exists. “

OVR: Miami Beach is on artbasel.com from December 2-6