Art Miami 2021

With the much anticipated offline edition of Art Miami 2021 just around the corner, we would like to give you the opportunity of witnessing the Art Fair if by some reason you will not be physically present in Florida next week or would love a live preview of our forthcoming curation!

We are delighted to be returning to Miami for the fantastic Art Week with our exciting curation. You will  find us at booth AM100 @ Art Miami Pavilion   (One Herald Plaza, NE 14th Street & Biscayne Bay, Miami, FL 33132). The Fair will be open to the public from 11am-7pm from Wednesday 1st December to Sunday 5th December. 

Roman born Fabiano Parisi came to photography through a project researching abandoned buildings which are still the subject of his art practice today. The title of one of his ongoing series: Il Mondo Che Non Vedo (The World I Do Not See) – is taken from a collection of poems by Fernando Pessoa, a hint at the poetic qualities of Parisi’s work. Parisi is a regular visitor to the States, where in 2017 he shot the historic former boxing venue in Philadelphia, featured in the Rocky film series. The Ring magazine voted it the number-one boxing venue in the world, and Sports Illustrated noted it as the last great boxing venue in the country.

Parisi uses only natural light, shooting early in the morning. The colours and chiaroscuro are at their best at this time of day, and are left untouched by digital image manipulation software. Parisi’s photographs have an honesty and integrity that is part of what makes them so inviting, while his method highlights the patina of these forgotten places. 

This year Klari Reis opens a new chapter of her oeuvre, debuting her new Botanical series at Art Miami. These bright wild landscapes are also peaceful places where comfort and serenity may be found. Plants in the home are known to benefit mental and emotional health, but these are not the common house plant. They are dreamscapes with pigmented epoxy resin, drooping teal leaves on fluorescent pink stems, which require the imagination to place their location. They are visual imaginings into the ideal: a world without global warming, with lush forests, and eradicated greenhouse gases. Glossy and hopeful with a visceral application of handmade marks, these botanicals may possess therapeutic properties or exert beneficial pharmacological effects. Strange and familiar at the same time, they are playful and exotic as they engage the viewer. 

These botanical works are the latest in Reis’s ever-changing artistic exploration of biology and of beauty and design exhibited by nature. Engaging with these systems has taken the artist on a journey from microscopic workings of cells, as far afield as the uncanny re-envisioning of city maps as biological blueprints, to these newest, macro paintings of nature triumphant, imposing its own order on the world. 

Crystal Latimer was born in Hollywood, CA but grew up in Ellwood City, PA. In 2010, Crystal completed her BFA Slippery Rock University. She then went to receive an MA and MFA from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2013 and 2016, respectively. After graduating, Crystal taught several courses at Penn State New Kensington and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Punxsutawney and has lectured at Slippery Rock University and Carlow University.

KEEPSAKES is an ongoing series of painted tapestries that depict stories of inner strength. A keepsake's value is in its sentiment, its worth a reflection of the owner's relationship to the memento. KEEPSAKES:Storied is the present phase of evolution in this series, digging deeper into the existing concepts and expanding upon a wilder nature.

Historically, tapestries have been a feminine artform that also symbolized the interior, domestic spaces traditionally engendered as female. The painted tapestries of this series present a similar expanse of feminine artistry and allegory, while simultaneously illustrating the awakening of a previously dormant female power. The artwork empowers the audience to look inward, and see a reflection that expands outward. 

Storied is consequently feminine at first appearance, yet a closer look reveals an unexpected balance of masculine and feminine energy. As the cowgirl of KEEPSAKES reclaimed the masculine archetype for the feminine, Storied expands upon that reclamation by taking the audience into the wild. Wolves and bears are present alongside and in addition to cheetahs, nodding to other expressions of the female archetype in folklore.The “Mama Bear” and “She-Wolf” concept have been passed down through the generations in stories as wild, instinctual, creatures capable of both great power and great compassion. However, we know that this duality is continually challenged as the wild woman is conditioned out of her truest nature; the raw essence that authentically expresses the human self. These animals are surrounded by portraits of women, arresting in their gaze and purposefully confrontational to the viewer. Flora symbolize rebirth, while birds allude to freedom. An abundance of decorative gilding and jewel-toned palettes underscore the message of worth. Gilded-edged designs and tassels bring the paintings to life and transform the tapestries into a dimensional form.

Storied may be rooted in allegory and history, but its sentiment lies in the stories women tell about themselves.The lives we lead are guided by the stories we inherit, the roles and attitudes we assume, the glass ceilings that are present in women's lives. Each of us are an embodiment of our truest beliefs. KEEPSAKES: Storied is an outward reminder of the expansive stories we can choose for ourselves. To reveal, in spirit, both the masculine and the feminine, wild and refined.

‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ - Estelle Lovatt FRSA

Deborah Azzopardi acquired her worldwide fame for the joyous Pop Art images she has created over the past 35 years. Her unique and feminine take on contemporary art is best described by the esteemed art critic Estelle Lovatt: ‘America has Lichtenstein, we have Azzopardi!’ Lovatt goes on to comment: “Sometimes you just want to curl up under a blanket. With a good book. A piece of chocolate. A man. This is what Deborah Azzopardi’s pictures make me feel like doing. They are me. They remind me of the time I had a red convertible sports car. I had two, actually. And yes, they are you, too. You immediately, automatically, engage with the narrative of Azzopardi’s conversational visual humour. Laughter is the best aphrodisiac, as you know. ... There’s plenty of art historical references from... Manet’s suggestive ‘Olympia’; Boucher’s thought-provoking... ‘Louise O’Murphy’ and Fragonard’s frivolous, knickerless, ‘The Swing’.... Unique in approach, you easily recognise an Azzopardi picture. ... Working simple graphics and toned shading (for depth), the Pop Art line that Azzopardi sketches is different to Lichtenstein’s. Hers is more curvaceous. Feminine.”

The world is familiar with Azzopardi’s artworks, as many of them have been published internationally. Her original paintings, such as the Habitat ‘Dating’ series (2004/08), the iconic ...One Lump Or Two? (2014) and Love Is The Answer (2016), created by the artist at the request of Mitch and Janis Winehouse as a tribute to their daughter, are in great demand.

UK-born Matt Smith is well known for his site-specific work in museums, galleries and historic houses. Using clay, textiles and their associated references, he explores how cultural organisations operate using techniques of institutional critique and artist intervention. He is interested in how history is a constantly selected and refined narrative that presents itself as a fixed and accurate account of the past and how, through taking objects and repurposing them in new situations, this can be brought to light. Of particular interest to him is how museums can be reframed into alternative perspectives.

In 2015 / 2016, Matt was Artist in Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2009 he received the ARC Award for Craft from Aspex Gallery and was awarded the inaugural Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize in 2014. At Collect 2018, he was awarded "Object of the Show" by Ekow Eshun. For Collect 2020, Cynthia Corbett and Matt Smith co-curated a site-specific installation featuring textiles and black parian works. The curation was extremely well-received, and Matt was awarded the inaugural Brookfield Properties Crafts Council Collection Prize, which allowed the Crafts Council to purchase six artworks for the Council's collection. The V&A Museum's Design and Textiles department also acquired one of Matt's subversive embroideries.

Matt regularly exhibits his work at public collections including Coming Out, Walker Art Gallery 2017, A Place at the Table, Pallant House, 2014; Subversive Design, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, 2013; DIY A Revolution in Handicrafts, Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburg, 2010.

Matt Smith started his career at the V&A before developing exhibitions at the Science Museum and the British Film Institute. After retraining as a ceramicist, his work has often taken the form of hybrid artist/curator. His large scale solo shows have addressed themes including the legacy of colonisation in Losing Venus (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford) and Flux: Parian Unpacked (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge), LGBT visibility in Queering the Museum (Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2010) and Other Stories (Leeds University Art Collection, 2012). Matt co-directed and curated Unravelling the National Trust which saw over thirty artists working with contemporary craft (including himself) commissioned to respond to the histories of the National Trust properties Nymans House, Uppark House and The Vyne. Matt holds a practice-based PhD from the University of Brighton. The PhD explored the use of craft techniques in contemporary art by artists exploring identities. He is Professor of Ceramics and Glass at Konstfack University of the Arts, Stockholm and Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies. His work is held in the collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery and the Fitzwilliam Museum as well as numerous private international collections.

Lluís Barba constructs his huge photographs with minute attention to detail. During the last twenty years he has developed his distinctive iconography, each work including visual references as people, paintings and his own artworks are transferred to new compositions. Just as artists have for centuries teased their audience with allegory and symbolism, so Barba’s jigsaw of iconography presents a maze of allegorical pathways, the symbolism of the historical sources overlaid with that of the contemporary characters, reinforced by our own personal knowledge and experience and the gravitas afforded by column inches, art criticism and saleroom prices. In Barba’s work we can read the growth of celebrity currency, commentary on recent history and also his own personal reflections: like many historical artists, Barba’s work is also ultimately a giant autobiography. We see photographs of collectors or visitors gathered from trips to international art fairs, including images he has been asked to take by people viewing his own work; there are his motifs such as barcodes, imprinted on his characters; and the rainbows and flowers, his symbols of hope. Wry humour and ironic cross-references colour his visual commentary, as we are invited to navigate between images in the contemporary world, instantly recognisable art historical references and the ever-changing landscape of celebrity icons. When you stand in front of one of Barba’s enormous photographs you are literally in the space of the art as it spreads out before you, sometimes extending into the viewing space with flooring or sculptures spilling from the image.

Born in Spain and educated at the Escola Massana Centre d’Art, Barcelona, Barba has exhibited his work in the United States, Europe, Latin America and Canada. His work is held in major public collections and his private collections include, Jorge M. Pérez, Miami, Rick & Kathy Hilton, California and Wendy Fisher, London.

Lluís Barba was one of the first finalists of the inaugural 2009 Young Masters Art Prize in London. The artist exhibited at the European Pavilion of the 2017 Venice Biennale.