Art Basel
in Miami Beach

It is not easy for a design fair to have an overarching theme at any time. But in the middle of another chaotic year, it is probably even harder. Still, in line with a curatorial overview introduced by Aric Chen after he was named Design Miami’s curatorial director in 2018, the practice is being sustained by Wava Carpenter, who took over the position in 2021. Fortunately, the chosen theme for this year is “Human Kind”, which gives a fair amount of interpretative scope.

While deliberation of design as a social practice will be played out more particularly through a talks programme that includes some star names including the artist Daniel Arsham and the fashion designer and artist Samuel Ross (in the hope, presumably, that some of Design Miami’s influential VIPs will sit up and pay attention), there is also a fundraiser in the works to create scholarships for Bipoc creatives. “We need to bring in a greater diversity of voices,” Carpenter says, “and open up the creative world to as many people as possible.” Equally, she says, there have been plenty of conversations about remembering the local audience and, with the scattering of Studio Proba’s sculptures throughout the Design District—super-sized candy-coloured anthropomorphic works upon which people are invited to sit and play—even the least design-minded resident will feel involved.

The Cuban American artist Jorge Pardo is constantly engaged in dialogue—within his work, and with his surroundings, his past and his influences. These range from his family’s escape to the US after the Castro regime wrestled control of Cuba, to the Abstract Expressionist painters that first grabbed his attention when he began to study art.

But he is far from stuck in the past. His work, which inhabits a space between art, design and architecture, is very much of the present. His techniques are modern to the point that they rely almost completely on technology, but the work itself does not seem futuristic.

His current show, Jorge Pardo: Mongrel, occupies the Skylight Gallery at the Museum of Art and Design at Miami Dade College. Comprised of 25 new drawings, Modernist chairs and exquisitely complex chandeliers, Mongrel pushes visitors to think about how shapes and hues that are steeped in a hidden narrative affect each other.

The snowbirds of Palm Beach are now year-round beach birds, and the recent influx of dealers and bankers to the Florida enclave—who followed the super-rich south in autumn 2020—are there to stay. Acquavella gallery has signed a lease until June 2022. Paula Cooper, which initially committed to a six-month lease, is now there for the foreseeable future. And Pace looks to be a long-term prospect, having sold out shows of works by Sam Gilliam, Robert Nava, Julian Schnabel and Tara Donovan last season and recently hired former Salon 94 specialist Allison Raddock to run the space.

The Sotheby’s Palm Beach outpost is also “pretty permanent”, says David Schrader, the auction house’s global head of private sales, noting that the space is open seven days a week year-round, along with the other art businesses located at the Royal Poinciana Plaza shopping mall.

Clearly, the influx of collectors since the start of the pandemic brought success for Palm Beach’s new arrivals. “We were really impressed by the number of people who came in,” says Steve Henry, a partner at Paula Cooper, of the gallery’s pop-up experience in Palm Beach last season. He says the gallery connected with new collectors from not only New York and Florida, but also Boston, Philadelphia, Canada, the West Coast and South America. “In New York people are trying to see 15 to 20 shows in an afternoon. It takes a little while for them to come back around to you,” Henry says. “In Palm Beach there are six or eight galleries. There’s not a hell of a lot to do there so people come to the galleries a lot.”

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Since the early 1990s, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has been considered one of contemporary art’s most high-profile provocateurs. His praying schoolboy Hitler (Him, 2001), meteorite-struck Pope John Paul II (La Nona Ora, 1999) and fully functioning 18-carat gold toilet (America, 2016) have all garnered headlines. But Cattelan surpassed himself with his 2019 showstopper at Art Basel in Miami Beach. Comedian was just a banana attached to the wall with grey duct tape—but the conceptually audacious, over-ripe readymade drew crowds and divided critics. We asked Cattelan about his work on show this year at the fair—and how his art resonates in the age of Covid.