Art Basel Miami Beach is America's biggest art fair, and each year it features hundreds of the world's hottest visual artists, from world-famous art stars to freshly emerging talents. Although it would be impossible to pick out the definitive best of the bunch, here we have a collection of art world fresh meat which is sure to make your mouth water. Know these names now before they blow up and we promise it will pay off. We bring you the new blue chip artists of Art Basel Miami Beach 2011.
Fresh Meat of Art Basel
(01 of14)
Superman and the Birds, 2002by Ghada AmerPrint"At first glance, Superman and the Birds appears to be a simple pattern--lines of a repeated image of the super hero jumping into the void--that is broken by scattered, colorful birds. A second viewing reveals the optical illusion of the piece: the fact that the pattern is overlaid with the image of two women kissing while they open their legs to one another. By combining the three references--super heroes, birds in flight, and female pleasure--Amer implies that there is freedom, power, and even heroism in sexual freedom."
(02 of14)
Reply to Hayter, 1999by Louise BourgeoisPrint"Printmaking was an important part of Bourgeois's practice beginning in the 1940s, when she worked at Atelier 17, an intaglio workshop begun by William Stanley Hayter, for whom this work was named. Hayter was a British artist regarded as one of the most significant printmakers of the 20th century and known for his innovative work in the development of viscosity printing. From 1994-95, the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted an exhibition entitled The Prints of Louise Bourgeois, for which they published a comprehensive catalog. This lithograph was included in the exhibition and is also part of MoMA's permanent collection."
(03 of14)
Into the New Sea (Nomad), 2009by Xaviera SimmonsPhotograph"Into the New Sea (Nomad) depicts an empty field of wheat punctured only by the sinuous curve of Simmons's body, which is draped in a striking red shawl that recalls a traditional African outfit. In motion, the artist appears mid-glance, leaving the viewer to construct their own theories as to why she is there and what she may be looking at."
(04 of14)
The Divine Gas, 2006by Chiho AoshimaPrint"This work embodies both the sweet and the sinister elements that run through Aoshima's work. The image depicts an overgrown girl essentially "passing gas," an emission Aoshima transforms into a beautiful landscape of billowing lavender, and is based on a mural of the same title commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston's Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall."
(05 of14)
Where all Harmonies are Tuned, 2011by Marcel DzamaPrint"Like most of Marcel Dzama's drawings, this print of old-fashioned circus performers is reminiscent of antique illustrations from the 1900s. However, the simple rendering and elegant composition belie the dark subject matter. The work is like a bizarre dream set to the music that lines the background: an opera of sexual aggression, lust, and murder."
(06 of14)
amour vivacité ardeur fantaisie, 2011by assume vivid astro focusPrint"This piece, exclusive to Artspace, is a digital remix derived from two earlier wallpapers fabricated by assume vivid astro focus. The first wallpaper - entitled butch queen realness with a twist in pastel colors 4 - was used in a 2005 installation at Tate Liverpool and is the source for the little boy with flowers on his head in our image. The second, called Rickiminicensces, was reproduced on the cover of avaf's monograph published by Rizzoli in 2010. Similar works were also remixed for a collaboration between avaf and Commes des Garçons, the fashion brand, in 2011 and can currently be seen gracing the Company's marketing materials worldwide.The title of this work, like most by avaf, is an acrostic play on the letters "a" "v" "a" and "f." The combinations of these letters frequently appear as names of performances and installations, as well as on the signatures of emails and correspondences between the collective and the outside world."
(07 of14)
Performance Sketches (11)by Ragnar Kjartansson"This Performance Sketch is a photograph taken from Ragnar Kjartansson's elaborate performance piece The End - Venezia, developed for the 2009 Venice Biennale. Kjartansson set up a painting studio in the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusa by the Grand Canal, where each day for six months he painted a portrait from life of a slim young man, fellow Icelandic performance artist Pall Haukur Bjornsson, wearing only a black Speedo.In the performance Kjartansson plays the role of the cliché artist, with slicked back hair and a beard, smoking cigars and drinking beer, while his subject languishes like a blasé Dorian Gray. The piece is both reverent of art and the artistic process, while also mocking the fantasy of the Bohemian artist and his muse."
(08 of14)
Notes From A Limerent (preparing to play Taiwan) production still, 2011by Kalup LinzyPhotograph"Soap operas, so named because of the products associated with their early sponsors, are open-ended narratives that relate weekly or daily dramas set in familiar interiors. Kalup Linzy's performance pieces subvert this traditional narrative structure to address issues around race and sexual identity and to generally poke fun at outmoded stereotypes.This photograph depicts Linzy, in character, be-wigged and in drag, sitting in front of a mirror. It's impossible to discern what follows next but whether singing a slow, drawn-out Billie Holiday number or relating the latest trials of rural life to the neighbor next door, it's sure to entertain."
(09 of14)
Poppies (Study #4), 2010by Kristin OppenheimDrawing"Kristin Oppenheim's Poppies series references classic still-life imagery. Pleasantly nostalgic and lovely to behold, these watercolor and acrylic paintings become almost silent backdrops for everyday dramas: domestic conversations, family scenarios, and morning rituals."
(10 of14)
STARS DONT STAND STILL IN THE SKY, 2011by Lawrence WeinerSculpture"Whimsical and bold, Lawrence Weiner's sculpture STARS DONT STAND STILL IN THE SKY employs the bright colors of Pop art and Weiner's signature use of language and instructions. The blue arrow, red star, and yellow tags playfully depict a kind of navigational sign. "Stars dont stand still in the sky" and yet where they're going is left to interpretation: "wheresoever," "whensoever," or "howsoever."Artspace is proud to be working with Lawrence Weiner on this exciting project, the first in a series of limited edition sculptural commissions with top contemporary artists."
(11 of14)
Untitled, 2009by Peter DoigPrint"Doig's use of unusual colors and abstract depiction of figures on what appears to be a canoe or shallow bottom boat gives this image an other-worldly quality. A cross is emblazoned on the mast and a flag-bearer leans forward as if charging ahead, while the central figure defiantly holds what might be a sword. In the background, an empty orange landscape gives way to mountain green.The canoe is a recurrent theme in Doig's
(12 of14)
MONEY CREATES TASTE, 2007by Jenny HolzerSculpture"Holzer's famous Truisms, such as "Abuse of Power Comes as No Surprise," the piece "Protect Me from What I Want" and the title of our work, "Money Creates Taste" have appeared on posters, condoms, benches and electronic LED signs. Her work is also featured on a 65-foot wide wall of light in the lobby of 7 World Trade Center.Money Creates Taste is a work that questions consumerist impulses. In this object - a spoon for eating - Holzer inscribes the title on the curving part of the spoon, a word play that is representative of her famous pithy social judgments, formally known as Truisms."
(13 of14)
Soundsuit #1, 2009by Nick CavePhotograph"Suggestive of both African ceremonial costumes as well as Parisian high fashion, Nick Cave's Soundsuits - named because of the sounds they make when worn - are created from scavenged materials such as beads, old bottle caps, rusty iron sticks and hair. They combine Cave's interests in fashion, culture and the intersection of politics. By concealing their wearers' race, gender and class, Cave's works allow individuals to escape or transcend prescribed identities."
(14 of14)
Ocean Without a Shore, 2007by Bill ViolaPhotograph"Presented as a series of encounters at the intersection between life and death, the work documents a succession of individuals slowly emerging out of darkness and moving into the light. The figure in the composition must then break through an invisible threshold of water in order to pass into the physical world. Hauntingly eerie and magnificently ghostly, Viola's figure is a modern day Orpheus emerging from the underworld back to life."
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