Ethically Compromised and Culturally Richer: Basel 2012

Assume Vivid Astro Focus

__

"What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture." Robert Hughes

This is the quote I was turning around in my mind as I flew towards Miami. Your virtuous young narrator had a lot of preconceived ideas about this colossal, annual art happening. More specifically, I was expecting a total shit show, with a who's-booth-screams-louder mentality and corporate tie-in's down to the toilet paper level - all in the neon-lighted, silicon-augmented context of South Beach, Miami. A place fittingly described in my Wallpaper guide book as 'a sunny place for shady people.'

Fresh from the emphatically not-commercial Documenta exhibition in Kassel, Germany, your virtuous young narrator arrived with a lofty air of skepticism about this base spectacle of consumerism and celebrity. A thin veneer allowing for unguilty participation in activities that fundamentally offend ones better judgement. There aren't many opportunities to see this scope of work, I reasoned and I have good friends flying in from all over who I'm happy to see. As one gallerist later put it, 'a nice chance to see some art, go to some parties and get a tan before the holidays.'

I arrived at the (not quite) freshly opened Freehand Hostel in Miami, helmed by the hotel group behind the NoMad and the Ace New York, featuring a maritime-meets-flea-market ambiance by the gifted interior designers Roman & Williams. We had secured a private 'quad' for our variable group, with bunk beds and a sleep away camp for 20-somethings vibe. In the morning, I borrowed one of the communal red beach cruisers and made my way down to the press preview of the main Art Basel show. I checked in, received my credentials and sat uncomfortably through some profuse thanking from the mayor and entirely unmemorable comments from the directors and a wealth management fund or something. By the time the show opened at 11, the motley cast of press, adorned in wreaths of ostentatiously colored credentials, were drinking complimentary champagne beside a gaudy cigar brand pavilion and perusing artist-embellished luxury-brand racing cars.

Allora & Calzadilla / Gladstone Gallery

It's with mild exaggeration that one could describe the full scope of Art Basel and it's countless satellites as byzantine. Art Basel being the official epicenter, orbited by fairs like Nada, Untitled, Pulse, Art Miami, Design Miami, Scope, Miami Project and Aqua; and permanent collections like the Rubel, Margulies and De La Cruz; and museums like the Bass and Moca; and special installations, exhibitions, conversations, screenings and events in myriad hotels, stores, clubs, mansions, boats, airstreams, and airplanes.

Your virtuous young narrator began methodically traversing the fair, row by row, sparingly rationing attention for the pieces with the loudest siren song. Several hours later, feeling significantly reduced, I recessed for a bathroom break, some deep breathing and a recalibration of what could realistically be accomplished in my time here. I gave up on my methodical approach and proceeded with a liberating, follow the wind, work, crowd, light, feeling, friend or pretty girl approach - which closer resembles the way I proceed through life.

The art was world class. Established artists shown beside emerging artists and galleries from every corner of the world. Almost on par was the people-watching and eavesdropping. Fashionable art world insiders, wealthy collectors, celebrities, aspiring artists, scenesters, snowbirds, obvious locals (with tanned, overflowing breasts and muscles), and beautiful and seductive gallerinas with names like Salame (I'm not making this up).

 Jason Middlebrook / Dodge Gallery

I collected some memorable vignettes and impressions; A tour of shiny, wide-eyed sexagenarians nervously fingering their pearls as a docent/consultant type assured them you can find an Anish Kapoor in the dining room of any serious collectors home (I heard the same anecdote a half an hour later substituting fireplaces for dining rooms). A technical and tedious conversation about a Bill Viola new media piece, centered on logistical installation, maintenance (tech support?) and international tax code. A fairly constant ratio of 2:5 people on their cellphones. Unprecedented, for me at least, volumes of floral print and loafers. And children, seeming to enjoy the art and experience exponentially greater then their adult counterparts, in sync with the child-like abandon requisite to create great works of art in the first place.

Regretfully, all of the illuminating 10am conversations between the directors of the worlds finest art institutions were invariably slept through. My Basel was an ebb and flow of dilatory, diurnal culture consumption and nocturnal moral negotiation. Exclusive events seemed to overshadow art as a conversation topic. It felt as though many conversations were a variation on the theme of exclusivity, espoused to status, in a self-policing, relationally-determined social hierarchy. From the hysterical throngs of guests throwing designer-purse-embellished elbows, vying for entree through the velvet rope, to admonitions like 'to really experience the fair you have to get into the closets, all the best work is kept in the closets,' this refrain kept resurfacing like a ritornello. As unpleasant as it may be, there is a genuine reason for this exclusivity. In a word, finiteness. There are only so many works of enduring beauty and significance to collect, only so much space at that momentous party, and only so many places in those of upper echelons of social strata that shape the contemporary art landscape.

Jon Kessler / Salon 94

In this frenetic milieu, I found moments of absolute serenity. Glithero's Lost Time installation of hanging illuminated pearls reflected in a cool black pool at the design Basel show - tucked away in dark stillness from the anxiety-generating opening ceremonies. 12 Gordon Park prints at the Margulies collection that say more about civil rights in America, than I learned in my entire formal education. Adarsha Benjamin's Kurt Cobain-centric performance, featuring a superlative cast of artist friends and a resounding battle cry to choose love over fear. A saintly portrait of Marina Abramovic, in breathing white linen, cradling a goat, that will likely reside permanently in my mind. And many other moments of joy and fascination. Dap's impeccably curated selection of art books. Meals at the wondrous Haitian eatery (and informal cultural center) Tap Tap. Unscheduled and regenerative dips in the glowing, saline Atlantic. A forward looking exhibition of GIF's staged in a giant pitch-black warehouse space. Jon Kessler's insane mind. A swirling, stop-and-go Kentridge video piece. 4am, shiny, undulating disco bliss at Chez Andre. And plenty of impromptu conversations and jaunts with new found friends.

Your virtuous young narrator's Basel experience concluded with a slippery, alcohol-lubed nocturnal capitulation into a hazy cab ride towards a strip club in downtown Miami hosting a closing party. Not long after, fending off lap dances and watching naked daughters and sisters rub against one another in a violent precipitation of dollar bills and brown liquor. Sigh. Onwards, through my sui generis moral Manichaeanism, ethically compromised and culturally richer.

And now I sit and reflect in McNally Jackson bookstore on a crisp and chilly afternoon in Nolita, listening to baroque classical music, sipping hot hibiscus tea and typing these impressions. Outside, familiar faces, in their familiar context, walk by on Prince street and I idly envisage my return next year.

Text and photography by Perry Shimon for Pas Un Autre. See more photographs below. 

__

Brice and Regis Abby

Snarkitecture's Drift Pavilion for Design Miami

 Art Basel Main Fair 

Marina Abramović / Gagosian Gallery 

Taryn Simon / Gagosian Gallery

Rad girls outside Moving the Still GIF Exhibition 

Glithero x Perrier-Jouet / Design Miami

Holton Rower / The Hole Gallery

IMG_8031

Beautiful young lady at the Design Fair behind a Corbusier mural (super cool parents not pictured)

IMG_8398

Beach Babe

IMG_8250

Ed Ruscha  / Plane Text 

IMG_8107

Onlookers

photo 2 (1)

Retna / Michael Kohn Gallery

IMG_8324_2

Adarsha Benjamin / KURT / Olympia Theater  

IMG_8481-2

Gordon Parks / Margulies Collection 

photo 3

Fried Yucca, Okra and Plantains, Avacado Salad / Tap Tap Restaurant

IMG_8782

International Art Police, issuing citations for infractions like 'excessive tax on audience time,' 'famous artist, but not for this one' and 'who cares?'

photo 1 (1)

Steve Powers / Joshua Liner Gallery

My dOCUMENTA (13) by Perry Shimon

Documenta is a contemporary art exhibition that happens every 5 years for 100 days in the decidedly uncool town of Kassel, Germany. Armed with a map, a new friend and a bicycle, I set off on a tour of museums, galleries, train stations, bakeries, hospitals, libraries, planetariums, back alleys, parks, public squares, contentious religious sites, campy hotels, department store windows and nondescript, unmarked sheds to engage with art of nearly every conceivable medium. There are hundreds of artists who participate under the curatorial purview of Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the past head curator for P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center and Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Turin.

Experiencing the expansive breadth of the work could very well take the full 100 days and I spent 4 days there, which allowed me to see the majority of the show and much of it in haste. Walking into the Fridericianum, the central museum of the Documenta which houses the 'brain' of the exhibition, I got a feel for Carolyn's distinctly light touch - works like “I Need Some Meaning I Can Memorise (The Invisible Pull),” by Ryan Gander, which is nothing more than a cool breeze blowing through the cavernous gallery and Ceal Floyer's 'Til I Get It Right,' a warm, scratchy, saccharin loop of 'so I'll just keep on…til I get it right." These pieces set the tone and my expectations for the show; restrained, intelligent, subtle, poetic, conceptual, lyrical - a change of pace from super-sized commercial art fairs, Deitch grandiosity, YBA-ness, Louis Vuitton Collaboration's and the such. What followed next, was a sprawling, city-wide, choose-your-own-adventure. The sheer amount of relationships between artists, viewers and spaces is immeasurable, that is to say, there are infinite ways to experience the documenta and what follows here are my most resonant impressions and pictures:

Sitting in a wooded patch of Karlsaue Park encircled in the sound cathedral created by Janet Cardiff and George Buress Miller. A cleansing rain washes away a soaring airstrike and blooms into a transcendent choral piece which blends into the light filled spaces between the gently pendulating leaves.

The metronome of Kader Attia's slide projector, firing images of extra occidental masks, objects, scarification, deformation and repair in concert with western faces, deformed and mutilated, in the dark shadows of colonialism. 

William Kentridege's locomotive, swirling, immersive, existential, mathematical, fantastical Refusal of Time; hommage to Georges Méliès with a Loie Fuller phoenix rising and a dramatic procession of silhouettes summoning Kara Walker and Plato.

Geoffry Farmer's field of American LIFE. 

Opening a door and walking into the pitch black of an unmarked shed in the lushly green courtyard of the Hugenottenhaus. Inching forward into the complete darkness that begins to hum with the sound of layered voices warming-up and then erupting into a celebratory a-capella arrangement of Good Vibrations by the Beach Boys. The paling of the dark and recognition of the dancing and singing performers around me. The joy of dancing and harmonizing human voices. The new visitors cautiously inching into the complete unknown. The feeling of seniority, knowing, belonging. The quickness of the cycle. (Tino Sehgal)

Rabih Mroué's pixelated, obsessive exploration of technology's role and implications in the Arab Spring. 

Entering the baroque orangerie, ambling through the Cabinet of Astronomy and Physics and happening upon the love machine synthesizer, lovingly constructed by the finnish philosopher-composer Erkki Kurenniemi, which requires the touch of 2 or more people to generate sound. The inborn ability of his machine to bring together complete strangers in giddy wonder and human touch. People from disparate ages, countries and social strata holding and touching each other in different ways to change the tones. The universality of music. The power of human touch. 

Goshka Macuga's bright and ethereal mash up of history and medium, arcing around the broad rotunda of the Fridericianum - self-referential, anachronistic and vertiginous

Listening to the almost uncomfortably candid thoughts of Janet Cardiff in my ears, as I followed her augmented video tour of the old train station on an iPhone.  Experiencing the very real, ebb and flow of station as I simultaneously experience Janet's augmented, non-temporal, immortalized experience of the same space - Perplexed staring from onlookers - Wandering through the back staircases of the station. 'No matter how much you love someone, no matter how hard we cling to hold onto them, we will always be separate from them.' - Jeers from a young man I cut off stepping back into the realtime flow of station - Standing in a carnally vacant, digitally augmented corner, with tears in my eyes, watching lilliputian dancers in a pas de deux expressing that echoing, magnificently lonely sentiment. 

Text and photography by Perry Shimon for Pas Un Autre