Miami Beach Convention Center, Wednesday December 4, 2024
The quiet calm of Untitled spread throughout the Miami Beach Convention Hall. Arriving a little early, I went upstairs, grabbed a spinach empanada and settled into a chair on the roof terrace. Here, Miami revealed its magic: brisk breezes rocked the palm trees, their shimmering leaves catching the light and inviting a moment of calm.
At 11 a.m., I joined the queue to enter the huge room. To avoid looking directly at the others, my eyes shifted to their style of clothing. To some, the fair seemed as much about an expression of personal style as it was about Art. A woman's straight blue hair streaked with silver. A textured jacket for men with laser-cut petals. Gold leather moccasins. Fringe details on a denim dress. A red muslin cape.
All around, voices throbbed – French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Russian, Korean, Mandarin – languages superimposed, each vying to be heard.
What first struck me was a fascinating installation that, from a distance, looked like framed abstract paintings, but up close appeared to be made of photographic paper. I spoke with Peter at Galerie Buchholz about Wolfgang's work.
Gallery Buchholz, Wolfgang Tilmans, Silver installation IV2008
Peter: “Wolfgang works in different ways when making abstract photographs. The series Silver here is a photograph without a camera. These pieces are all made in the darkroom using photosensitive paper, light and chemicals. These are the original, unique pieces of paper he works with in the darkroom, and they bear the traces of their development process. So you can see there are some streaky lines on this piece. It may be a roller with chemicals that has not been cleaned properly and is leaving traces of emulsion that remain on the surface. At times, creasing or wrinkling may be part of the process. The installation is very specifically designed by the artist and includes 23 unique elements.”
Galerie Buchholz, Yair Oelbaum, Untitled (citric repository)2018
Peter: “Yair is a young artist and we will have our first exhibition with him in January at our New York gallery. His photographs are quite mysterious. He doesn't reveal much information about the models (the constructed objects) he photographs. He uses elements that are somewhere between organic and plastic, and whose materiality we cannot fully understand. Is it resin? Is it plastic? Is it this thread? Or some of the plant matter? You wonder what the reality is. And as a photographic object, it is very precise on the frame. For me, it is a poetic proposition. »
Teresa Margolles' work exemplifies a repetitive grid structure, a format that I also resonate with in much of my work. His work also recalled the achievement of Offeringan installation created in collaboration with thecreativedestruction that paid tribute to missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Galerie Peter Kilchmann, Teresa Margolles, city waterDallas, 2016
“The work The city water, Dallas by Teresa Margolles documents the murders in Dallas in 2016. Margolles and volunteers visited each murder site, the soaking process was repeated over and over, until the bucket was filled with siphoned “dirty” water . of the location. Every bucket for a homicide. The buckets were labeled with the location, the victim's name, age and details of the murder. Most of the victims were non-white men. city waterDallas is linked to Margolles’ project created for the 2016 Dallas Biennial.”
In the next room, I walked into embedded metal sculptures and photographs of bodies hugging them. Rafael de Piedras Galerias graciously spoke more about the artist and his work.
Piedras Galeria, Jimena Croceri, series Impossible Jewel2024
Rafael: “Jimena is an Argentinian multidisciplinary artist. And his work is about opportunity, collaboration and communication. In his series Impossible Jewelshe created nine bronze sculptures. She invited different people to kiss the bodies or try to find connections with their body cavities. It became a sort of performance with the piece and referenced the use of ornaments for their talismanic power in pre-Columbian Andean cultures. We call it Impossible Jewel because we can't wear them like the jewelry we know. To wear them, you must maintain certain positions and connections with other people, find the right location or placement of the piece with your body and/or others.”
Tensions and connections between bodies also run through Joanna's work. I spoke with Matteo from Madragoa Gallery to find out more.
Madragoa Gallery, Joanna Piotrowka, Untitled2014-2022
Matteo: “Joanna Piotrowska is a Polish artist. His installation is a dialogue with family ties, social situations and constructions. Many of the pieces on display come from the series Frowst where she goes into people's homes, looks at family photos together and then puts them back together with the same family members, creating this new tension between bodies.
Joanna Piotrowska (Warsaw, 1985) lives and works in London, United Kingdom.
In 2013, she earned a master's degree in photography from the Royal College of Art, London, and in 2009, a bachelor's degree in photography from the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, Poland. She recently exhibited at the ICA Philadelphia, and in 2022 she was included in The Milk Of Dreamsthe 59th International Venice Biennale, curated by Cecilia Alemani.”
The installation by another Polish artist that also touched me contained an equally touching story about the gallery's founder.
Gunia Nowik Gallery, Teresa Gierzyńska Installation (1979-1993
Gunia: “This installation represents Teresa's introspective exploration of female identity, typically using herself as a model in her key series About her. She performed on camera in carefully staged situations, each paired with meaningful headlines that reflect the experiences of many women. The images address themes such as introspection, abandonment, pressure, loneliness and feelings of worthlessness. Created decades ago in communist Poland, these works were radical for their time, especially given the limitations of resources and access to space and materials. Despite these challenges, Teresa never stopped working. The process of rediscovering her practice began around 10 years ago, ultimately culminating in her first institutional retrospective at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art in 2021. Now 77, Teresa participated in an exhibition last year collective at the Walker Art Center and will be presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and his works have been acquired by collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Center Pompidou, the Erste Bank in Vienna and the Kunsthaus Zurich. I am happy that she can experience this deserved recognition for her work after so many years.
Learning about Teresa's story of empowerment in her practice helped me realize that my path forward was also about freeing myself from past experiences that had held me back from pursuing the work I really wanted to do. During the pandemic, I turned a corner and decided to change my life. That’s when I founded my own gallery, built with a horizontal structure with our team of five women. As one of the youngest galleries at the fair, established just three years ago, we are delighted to exhibit for the first time at Art Basel Miami with a personal presentation by Teresa Gierzyńska.”
Other familiar photographic works included:
Robert Mapplethorpe, American Flag1977, Gladstone
LaToya Ruby Frazier, Grandma Ruby and Me2005, Gladstone Andreas Gursky, Stieiff, Höchstatt, 1991, Sprüth Magers
Jeff Wall, Insomnia1994, White Cube
Gillian Wearing, Self Portraits (2023), Regen Projects
Thomas Struth, Sorghum, Danforth Plant Science Center, 2017, Marian Goodman Carrie Mae Weems, Laying on the Hands, 2002, Galerie Barbara Thumm Vanessa Beecroft, VB62, 003, VB 2008, Lia Rumma
CYJO
About the Author: CYJO is a Korean American artist based in Miami whose work, since 2004, focuses on the identity of person and place, exploring existing cultural constructs and categorizations. She is also co-founder of thecreativedestructionan artistic collaboration with Timothy Archambault, and a long-time contributor to L'Oeil de la Photographie. www.cyjostudio.com @cyjostudio
