Miami: Part Two

Hopped on a shuttle Friday morning and headed back to Miami’s Wynwood Arts district to make my way towards two private collections, The Margulies and Rubell Family collections. One idea for the organizers of the Miami fairs: Please figure out a way to coordinate one single comprehensive shuttle system that stops at all the major locations. The current system seems to be certain individual fairs sponsoring their own shuttles, which make the arduous and time consuming haul from Miami Beach to the arts district, drop-off and pick-up at disparate locations, and just doesn’t work well. A circuitous route with shuttles running every 15 minutes would be much better.

After a 15 block walk from the closest shuttle stop, I joined my Chicagrapher pals at the Margulies Collection at the Warehouse. This private collection rivals the Menil Collection in Houston, and honestly is worth a trip to Miami in itself. In it’s current installation, you are greeted by major work by Sol Lewitt, Richard Serra, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, George Segal and more. That’s just the beginning. The cavernous warehouse seems unending, and two mezzanine spaces contain even more art. The Margulies collection is balanced between major works of 20th century art and contemporary art, representing all mediums, and especially my favorite – photography.

Ranging from a great installation from the New York photo league of the 30’s and 40’s and early photographs by Margaret Bourke-White to contemporaries Justine Kurland and Alec Soth, the photography work here is amazing. A favorite of mine: Jason Schmidt's portraits of artists, of which I have seen a few, but the Margulies collection displayed ninety-four.

I could go on and on about this collection, but time does not permit. More favorites below.

Danny Lyons, 74 photos from 'Conversations With the Dead.'

Paul Fusco images from the Kennedy Funeral Train

Ursula Schulz, bus stops

Justine Kurland

Angel Marcos, Un Coup De Des #16

An incredible light installation by Anthony McCall, You and I, Horizontal (III), which pictures cannot really capture the experience of

The Olafur Eliasson skylight rooftop installation Your Now is My Surroundings

Chul-Hyun Ahn's Well


After the art overload of Margulies, we headed a few blocks over to the Rubell Family Collection. It was also impressive, but very postmodern by our analysis. images below.

Matt Siber studies Piotr Uklanski's Nazis, 1998, perhaps my favorite piece in the collection

Uklanski's Untitled (American Eagle)

Kelly Walker's "Black Star Press, Star Press Star, Black Press (Rotated 90 degrees clockwise)" and Wade Guyton (from Hammond, IN) X

Gallery of work by Aaron Curry

A great set of early Cindy Sherman prints, Untitled #427-446 from 1976


We left the Rubell and promptly recaffienated at a great little local cafe. We then headed to Pulse, which was a great fair. I'll have to blog that in the next post - back to the fairs for now!

Miami: Part One

Above, Workshop Workshop at Design Miami

The brutal 6am flight to Miami via Baltimore became worthwhile when I stepped off the plane into 86 degree heat, a welcome change from the waning temperatures in Indiana. I dropped my bags, devoured a plate of fish tacos (the kind that you get in the south with cabbage and vinaigrette), removed my socks and diligently headed toward the art fairs.

For those not familiar with the Miami art fairs, let me say this: They are THE events in the US for art galleries to showcase and sell new work. Here is a link that I am using with a comprehensive look at the fairs, just to give you an idea of the scale: http://www.boydlevel.com/pdf/MiamiGuide2009_FinalV3.pdf. Take these 24 fairs and multiply by VIP parties, brunches, lectures, and book release parties, and you get a sense of the overwhelming nature of this week.

First stop – the Design District to catch Photo Miami and Design Miami.

This is my first trip to the fairs in Miami, so I have little context for the changes which have occurred year to year. I’m told by friends that some photo dealers have left Photo Miami for the other contemporary fairs Pulse and Art Miami. Knowing some of those galleries, I could see their absence as lessening the overall impact of Photo Miami.

As a conceptual fine-art photographer myself, my first pass through photo Miami left me disappointed for a few reasons: First, because there was so much large-scale diasec-style (front-laminated print to acrylic) work which had so little substance – a trendy presentation method with little photographic mojo to back it up. Secondly, there were so many highly-romanticised photoshop-created works which relied upon misty sepia tones or depth-of-field manipulation or fauvistic color to create a dreamy yet contrived surrealism… I just couldn’t stomach most of these, yet I know that people buy them. People buy precious moments figurines too. Third, there was so little work that was about anything. Maybe I’m the one falling behind, but I find substance and depth in serial works of photography that dance around a concept. One more thing – and this is a straight up diss from me personally, a large-format photographer: If you’re shooting 35mm or medium format or even digital, don’t blow your prints up to 6’. Why would anyone intentionally lose the quality in their image to gain some massive proportion? Bigger is not better. Better is Better.

All that said generally about the fair, there was some great work to be seen. The work shown by Stephen Cohen Gallery (Los Angeles) was strong. In particular, I really liked the images of Icebergs in Greenland by Olaf Otto Becker.


They were peaceful and beautiful and relevant. I also liked Austrian Josef Hoflehner’s images of posts and sticks – immaculate and finely printed work which reminded me of Harry Callahan’s work, but a bit broader and more interesting.



Of the more abstract work, I admired (but was not totally taken by) the work of Nicholas Ruel, represented by Galerie Orange of Montreal.


These layered images are printed on aluminum or stainless steel, which can be entirely gimmicky. But these were the first I’ve seen that tonally blended well with the metal, utilized interesting photographs (which might stand alone) as layering material, and just presented a comprehensive and interesting image a la Rauschenberg, but different.

My favorite gallery and artwork of Photo Miami was MR Gallery (Mother River) of Beijing, China. Work by Tibetan artist Mo Yi (pictured below)


documents cultural phenomena of his neighborhood in objective series. I was also very fond of the work of Qiang Jin, who photographed Chinese villagers in reenactments of iconic catholic religious history, including the birth of Jesus and the last supper. At first I thought these were constructed images which spoke to the nature of China and how it’s growth and change was subsuming American Culture. Then, when speaking to Mr. Toni Nan Li from MR Gallery, I got the real story. These remote villagers from Liuhe Village had been converted to Catholocism 200 years ago and were devout. The photographer discovered this, and asked the villagers to re-create these historical Biblical scenes, which they did to glorify God and serve Him. I found this story very interesting in light of China’s changing culture… not to mention that the pictures were immaculate.




Also notable was the disturbing series of images from Jasper Debesier titled ”Udongo.” Irvine Gallery from Washington DC showed nice work by Phil Nesmith titled “Flight Patterns,” which were exceptional photograms on emulsified black glass, as well as some incredibly rendered fictional photographs (yes, photoshop constructed!) by Kahn & Selesnic.

I really loved Design Miami. My friend Dung Ngo, a Senior Editor at Rizzolli International publishers, curator and all-around design guru, told me that the fifteen or so exhibitors at the fair was about ten less than last year – a sad consequence of the economic downturn I’m sure. Below I'll post some of my favorites from Design Miami without much elaboration due to my time constraints - but great design speaks for itself as you will see.

After the fairs, I hit a whirlwind of mixers including a Rizzoli book launch party for "Indochine-Stories" at the fabulous Mondrian Hotel; Next met up with Chicagraphers Brian Ulrich, Matt Siber and John Gitelson at a really mediocre event party hosted by the Scope Fair where the muscle at the door turned away VIP Scope guests (me included) who failed to procure a blue wristband during the day; And finally we hit a party hosted by David Byrne promoting his work with bicycles at the amazing Standard Hotel. We didn't get to meet David, but we did sip cocktails waterside in the ocean breeze and geeked out with our iPhone apps for a great end to a long day.

Lamp and Table by Tom Dixon:



Amazing work by Maarten Baas:





"Tassenkast" by Lotty Lindeman:


Now, back out into the wilderness for more...

Catching Up

It's been a busy few months and I've neglected my blog. I knew this would happen. As I try to balance my architectural work with my photography, sometimes photography gets the back burner.

A few weeks ago I did complete nine days on the road working on Economic Entropy, focusing specifically on one aspect of the project - Whitewashed. It was refreshing to take time and focus on shooting without any distractions. Here are a number of iPhone pics from the trip: