MIAMI, FLA.- A decade after its inauguration in 2005, Kabinett has become a much-loved and highly praised sector of the show in which galleries display concise curated installations within their booths. This years 27 curated exhibitions will feature work by Eduardo Basualdo, Adolfo Bernal, Chris Burden, Waltercio Caldas, Michael Craig-Martin, Suzanne Duchamp, Jan Fabre, Li Gang, Al Held, Glenn Kaino, Joseph Kosuth, Dr. Lakra, Deana Lawson, Jochen Lempert, Isa Melsheimer, Meuser, John Miller, Chris Ofili, Richard Pettibone, Sigmar Polke, Stephen Prina, Ana Sacerdote, Zilia Sánchez, Alan Sonfist, Stanley Twardowicz, Agnès Varda and Nari Ward.
Art Basel, whose Lead Partner is UBS, runs from December 3 December 6, 2015.
Highlights this year include a new installation by Glenn Kaino (b. 1972, United States) at Kavi Gupta. The Internationale (2015) is comprised of a recreation of a 19th-century Pierrot and the Moon automata installed within a pitch-black room. Triggered by the presence of spectators, the moon will trace the movement of visitors with its eye, speak fragments of seminal texts on post-colonial theory, and sing 'The Internationale', the classic French song of the 19th-century socialist movement.
Text will be a point of entry for Galleria Lia Rummas presentation of neon works by Joseph Kosuth (b. 1945, United States). The series, conceived in 2010, features sentences formed in white neon installed in a floor-to-ceiling matte black space. From one angle, the phrases will appear to be composed of small points of lights, however on shifting ones point of view the words can be read clearly, bringing into question the viewers relationship to language. Likewise, Casas Riegner will present a selection of text-based pieces by Adolfo Bernal (b. 1954 d. 2008, Colombia). Comprising one- or two-word posters to vintage photographs and objects from the late 1970s and early 1980s, all of which highlight his interest in the visual power of words.
Reflecting on seminal works by Chris Burden (b. 1946 d. 2015, United States), the acclaimed artist who passed away this year, Galerie Krinzinger will exhibit his 'Deluxe Photo Book 1971 1973', a hand-painted binder containing all of the photodocumentation and explanatory texts of the first three years of his performances. This will be accompanied by material from Burdens later 'Bridges' series, as well as works on paper and smaller sculptures.
New works by Nari Ward (b. 1963, Jamaica) at Lehmann Maupin will reflect on his ongoing concerns with how the art object can challenge societal power structures. The centerpiece is We Shall Overcome (2015), a large-scale wall installation that brings to mind both the African American Civil Rights Movement from the 1960s and current issues of race, identity and politics. Photographs by Deana Lawson (b. 1979, United States) inspired by the materiality and expression of black cultures globally will be on view at Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Drawn from across the last decade, the presentation will be a collective portrait, which investigates black aesthetics through the body, the domestic environment and various settings of ritual or celebration.
Kabinett will include several works that have rarely and in some cases never been seen before. Bringing together the feminine and the erotic, a selection of shaped canvases by Zilia Sánchez (b. 1926, Cuba) will be presented by Galerie Lelong. Since the 1950s, Sánchezs unique approach to formal abstraction has rarely been seen outside of Puerto Rico. At Art Basel in Miami Beach Galerie Lelong will feature recent and historic works such as Antigonía (1970), Módulo Infinito (1978) and El Silencio de Eros (1982-1990), along with works on paper from the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Galerie Nathalie Obadia will feature photographs by Agnès Varda (b. 1928, Belgium) created from 1962 to 1963, four years after the Cuban revolution. Many of the vintage prints that will be on view which capture the islands post-revolutionary ambiance and the premises of a Latino-socialism utopia have never been exhibited before. A selection of assertive, freehand India ink drawings by Al Held (b. 1928 d. 2005, United States) from 1960 will be on view at Van Doren Waxter; the works foreshadow the hard-edged geometry that he was to become known for in his later paintings.
Two Kabinett presentations will be located within the Edition sector. Alan Cristea Gallery will install new editions and mono-prints by Michael Craig-Martin (b. 1941, Ireland), including the world premiere of a new set of letterpress editions and a grouping of screenprints that will be shown for the first time in the United States. Two Palms will present Black Shunga (2008-2015) by Chris Ofili (b. 1968, United Kingdom), a suite of 11 erotic line etchings printed on specially prepared paper with a dark blue color-shifting metallic surface. The series refers to Shunga, a Japanese style of erotic art that peaked in the Edo period (1603-1867). Ofilis etchings reveal themselves slowly; upon close inspection, fine lines emerge depicting figures entwined.
Provocative and sometimes aggressive sexual imagery forms the basis of new work by Dr. Lakra (b. 1972, Mexico City). kurimanzuttos installation will pair Lakras well known works on paper adaptations of vintage advertisements and pornographic pin-up pictures with a series of vitrines housing totemic amalgamations of toys, deities, animals and other characters borrowed from both pop culture and art history. Often irreverent and playful, his work explores themes of death and desire, high and low culture, attraction and repulsion.
As part of Kabinett, visitors will have the opportunity to enter a unique world of metaphors, fantasies and symbols with a series of drawings scrawled in blue pen by Jan Fabre (b. 1958, Belgium) at Magazzino. Galeria Raquel Arnauds feature of Waltercio Caldas (b. 1946, Brazil) will center on the installation A Tale (2015), in which Caldas returns to the themes of nature and culturally manufactured objects that marked his early career. Hirschl & Adler Moderns exploration of the Abstract Expressionist painter and photographer Stanley Twardowicz (b. 1917 d. 2008, United States) will pair several large-scale canvases from the 1950s and 1960s with a selection of black and white photographs of the same period. The presentation will offer a bold counter-point to the American Modernist works on display in the rest of the gallerys booth. Francis M. Naumann Fine Arts booth will be comprised of drawings and watercolors by Suzanne Duchamp (b. 1889 d. 1963, France). Created after the mid‐1920s, when she abandoned her earlier experiments in Modernism to develop an intentionally primitive or naïve approach, the pieces are confined primarily to portraits, landscapes and still lifes in vivid colors.
At Metro Pictures, six paintings rendered in bright, fluorescent fauve colors with flat perspectives by John Miller (b. 1954, United States) will be exhibited publicly for the first time since they were shown in 1984 and 1985. Petzel Gallery will suspend a pair of triptych paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Prina (b. 1954, United States) in the middle of its booth. Painted in primary colors on commercial linen window blinds, Prinas works are simultaneously paintings, sculptural objects and metaphoric disruptions of illusion of painting as a window. Jorge Mara - La Ruche will feature explorations of the correspondence between painting and music by the pioneering painter Ana Sacerdote (b. 1925, Italy/Argentina), reflecting her lifelong search for a form within visual art akin to the musical systems of Johann Sebastian Bach. Meanwhile Eduardo Basualdo (b. 1977, Argentina), will present a panoramic installation of landscapes painted on window grilles at Ruth Benzacar Galería de Arte.
Sculptural highlights will include Meyer Rieggers installation of new works by Meuser (b. 1947, Germany), who creates autonomous narratives about people, situations, places and actions using materials sourced from junkyards. Structured around the Brutalist architecture movement that flourished from the 1950s to the mid-1970s, installations by Isa Melsheimer (b. 1968, Germany) at Galerie Jocelyn Wolff will pair a set of architectural gouaches with a series of cement sculptures. Incorporating materials such as wood, foam rubber, fabric, mirror and glass, the assembled sculptures play with proportion, scale and perspective. Installed low and scattered on the floor, the works will appear to grow organically from the ground. Alan Sonfist (b. 1946, United States), whose early work in the 1960s and 1970s helped to pioneer the burgeoning movement of site-specific sculpture, will be the focus of Fredric Snitzer Gallerys curated Kabinett. Bronze sculptures such as Bronze Limbs Rising (1975) and Bronze Protector (1978) will be paired with performative photographs from the 1970s.
In Polke and Photography Kicken Berlin will consider the groundbreaking experimentation of Sigmar Polke (b. 1941 d. 2010, Poland) and his impact on Modernist photography, placing key works by Polke in dialogue with seminal photographic works by the artist from the 1960s to the 1980s. This project will be curated by Veit Loers and presented in collaboration with Sies + Höke.
Another photographic highlight will be on view at ProjecteSD with a precise selection of hand-printed, black and white photographs by Jochen Lempert (b. 1958, Germany). Lempert photographs the animal world in diverse contexts the natural habitat, the museum of natural history, the zoo and the urban environment and amasses the results in a vast archive that simultaneously explores the properties and materiality of the photographic image.
Additional highlights will include Richard Pettibones (b. 1938, USA) signature recreations of famous avant-garde artworks at Galerie 1900-2000 and the emerging artist Li Gang (b. 1986, China), whose work at Galerie Urs Meile will reflect an experimental use of materials, including canvases made of hemp string produced in his hometown in Chinas Yunnan province.