Sean Kelly Gallery, Los Carpinteros, Kosmaj Toy (2012).

All images by A.M. Ekstrand for ArtObserved, on location at Art Basel Miami Beach Fair.

Art Basel returned once again in Miami Beach this past week for the 11th annual Art Basel Miami Beach Fair. Featuring over 300 galleries representing 36 countries around the world, the show has exhibited marked growth from last year’s event, with well over 2,000 artists flocking to exhibit at what has become the internationally-renowned closing party for the world art market each year.  It is of course always an irony that tens of thousands will fly down for the events and parties, with many of them never visiting the vast aggregation of what it said to be roughly $1.5 billion worth of art in one (large) room, a collection that few museums in the world could compete with.   Below is a selection of some of the works we thought to be notable from the fair.

Helly Nahmad Gallery, Mark Rothko No. 1 (1957) and Alexander Calder, installation view

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Art Basel Miami Beach 2011 photo by ArtObserved

Despite the large number of exhibitors from New York who are in recovery from Hurricane Sandy, almost  every Chelsea gallery scheduled to exhibit will be at this year’s 11th edition of Art Basel Miami Beach week. Events begin as early as today, Monday, December 3rd and run through Sunday, December 9th. Exhibitors and artists are preparing for a flurry of activity, with a multitude of fairs, some old, some new; public installations, exhibitions, collaborations and of course, parties centering around the Delano, The W, Soho Beach House, The Deauville, The Raleigh, The Standard and others. Check out the detailed schedule of events below.

Visionaire Magazine party at Delano Hotel 2011 photo by ArtObserved

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‪‪‬Sean Kelly Gallery moves to new two-story 22,000 square foot space designed by Toshiko Mori at 36th and 10th—as Exit Art vacates the space—more than tripling the gallery’s current square footage as newly signed artists include Alec Soth, Kehinde Wiley, and most recently, Terrence Koh [AO Newslink]

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Alec Soth, 2008_02zl0173 (2008)

Alec Soth threads a narrative of retreat, decay, and reclamation through the photos on display in Broken Manual at Sean Kelly Gallery. The exhibition traces Soth’s life as Lester B. Morrison, a character of Soth’s invention whom he incarnated from 2006–2010 while infiltrating isolated communities living life on the rural American fringe. The photos tell the story of Morrison’s retreat from civilization, depicting his passage from the squatters’ dens of urban decay to life among the “hermits and hippies, monks and survivalists” that become the subject of Soth’s lens. As he presses on, photos of strident, decrepit infrastructure imposed on pastoral landscapes give way to portraits of men who unsettlingly resemble the unforgiving locales they inhabit.

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