Art Basel’s new sector, Survey, will launch in Miami Beach this December with a strong selection of thirteen art-historical projects, providing insights into the work of artists Rosemarie Castoro, Ralston Crawford, Henry Darger, Lenora De Barros, Niki de Saint Phalle, Valie Export, Paul Feeley, Poul Gernes, Tetsuya Ishida, Alison Knowles, Andrei Monastyrski, Lydia Okumura, Gina Pane, Lotty Rosenfeld, Alfons Schilling, Marcel Storr, Michelle Stuart, Taller Torres-García and Alfredo Volpi. The 13th edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach, whose Lead Partner is UBS, will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 4 to December 7, 2014.
The first edition of Survey will feature nine solo shows and four thematic presentations. Charim Galerie from Vienna will present a group show with work by Actionists Andrei Monastyrski, who played a key role in late soviet and post-soviet conceptual art; Valie Export, the pioneer feminist experimental filmmaker; and Alfons Schilling, considered one of the early representatives of Action Painting. The exhibition at Art Basel will include rare vintage prints and a selection of objects by Andrei Monastyrski, conceptual photographs by Valie Export, and two rare spin paintings by Alfons Schilling.
Broadway 1602 from New York will feature a presentation of four women artists working with geometric abstraction in a groundbreaking and experimental as well as genre-transcending practice that originated in the 1960s and 70s. The exhibition will bring together ‘Stripe, Rake’ (1969), French conceptual artist Gina Pane’s homage to Malevich; large-scale minimal paintings and sculptures by New York painter Rosemarie Castoro; site-specific geometric abstractions by Japanese-Brazilian artist Lydia Okumura and ‘Ping Poema’ (1999) by Brazilian artist Lenora De Barros.
Also presenting a Brazilian artist will be Galeria Bergamin from São Paulo. The gallery’s Survey presentation will focus on the work of Alfredo Volpi, one of the most influential Brazilian painters from the mid-20th century, linking the second generation of Modernist painters from the 1940s and the concrete Brazilian artists of the 1950s.
A Constructivist art movement and studio workshop founded by the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torres-García, Taller Torres-García was the most significant Latin American workshop of the 1940s and 1950s. Cecilia de Torres’ Survey exhibition will provide a comprehensive view of this still little-known artistic practice from which artists of international stature emerged.
Espaivisor from Valencia will also focus its Survey booth on Latin American art by presenting ‘A Mile of Crosses on the Pavement’, comprised of works by Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld, made between 1979 and 1999. Being presented for the first-time within an art-fair context, Lotty Rosenfeld’s work is an example of the politically charged public art in Latin America in the 1970s. The exhibition will include photographs, slides and videos.
New York’s Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects will present works by Michelle Stuart from 1969 to 1979. Now at the forefront of the renewed interest in the evolution of Land Art, feminist and conceptual art practices, Stuart’s intimate and monumentally scaled works synthesize drawings with the post-minimalist sculpture and the discourse surrounding site-specific Land Art.
Balancing the tangible and the abstract, Menconi + Schoelkopf, also from New York, will present work by the Canadian artistRalston Crawford, a luminary of Precisionism – a uniquely American Modernist Movement. On display will be a series of photographs from the 1950s, alongside a series of watercolors and gouaches.
Garth Greenan Gallery will present a solo-exhibition of the work of American artist Paul Feeley. ‘Paul Feeley: An Artist’s game with Jacks’ will feature five paintings and two sculptures made between 1962 and 1966, reflecting the artist’s ongoing interest in seriality. The exhibition will include some of the last works made by the artist before his death in 1966.
Further sculptural works will be presented by Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois from Paris who will show two rare ‘Tir-Assemblages’ by Niki de Saint Phalle from the early 1960s. In these works, and throughout her practice, the artist retained a form of narration which set her apart as a unique figure among the Nouveaux Réalistes.
James Fuentes Gallery from New York will dedicate its Survey presentation to Fluxus artist Alison Knowles, showing the artist’s ‘Big Book’, which was first exhibited in1966. An eight-foot-tall walk-in construction, the book is anchored by a large metal spine with pages equipped with casters, so visitors can walk through the book as they explore its pages.
Andrew Edlin Gallery’s subtle reflection on outsider art will pair double-sided watercolors by American artist Henry Darger with a series of paintings by French self-taught artist Marcel Storr. Darger’s drawings and voluminous writings were only discovered posthumously and Storr’s art – of which there are only 63 existing works – is thought to have been largely destroyed or lost.
Galleri Bo Bjerggaard will dedicate its Survey booth to the work of Danish artist Poul Gernes, presenting the artist’s Masonite series and corroded cubic sculptures. The exhibition has been co-curated by the artists’ youngest daughter, Ulrikka Gernes.