Art Basel Miami Beach 2009: Will Business Follow the Party?

This year's most important art exhibition, the 53rd Venice Biennale, was also quite visible at ABMB:

A number of art dealers offered works by the artist duo Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. At the Biennale, they did the spectacular Scandinavian pavilion 'The Collector'. I liked their scary installation 'Last Performance' of 2009 at the booth of Galeri Nicolai Wallner, Denmark. The edition of 2 + 1 AP was offered for US $ 83,000.

Art dealer Claus Robenhagen told me about this work: 'It deals with the transitory qualities of life and death. A clown's nose, a make-up brush and pot, a whithered noose, and a chair that has been knocked over suggest a tired joker has finally put down his mask and hung himself.'

It is obvious that the overheated hype on contemporary art from China is over. However, the best Chinese artists will retain their position umong the leading artists of the world. Ai Weiwei is certainly one of them. I love his current show at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Germany.

Urs Meile with spaces in Lucerne, Switzerland, and Beijing, China, offered a cube by Ai Weiwei in Chinese porclain for US $ 300,000. When I was at the booth, there was allready a hold on it.

Carolina Nitsch Contemporary Art from New York offers his edition 'Kui Hua Zi (Sun Flower Seeds)' of 2009 for US $ 7,500 each. The sunflower seeds are all fake: They are made of porclain and then put in a regular Ikea container. I am fascinated how he plays with the antipodes 'natural' and 'artificial'.

As on Frieze Art Fair in London, Grayson Perry presented an edition of his 'Walthamstow Tapestry' at 'The Paragon Press'. It shows the stages of a man's life form birth to death. Brand item logos and every day life scenes confront these images. If you like, you can read this piece as a critique on consumerism. I like it.

Here in Miamai, I counted 17 (!) satellite fairs. These are even for a place like ABMB to many and it was also not possible for me to see all of them.

On Scope Art Fair I found an interesting installation by the young Swiss artist duo Comenius Roethlisberger and Admir Jahic: At an auction they bought a rubber eraser formerly owned by young Lady Diana.

They made drawings from media photos depicting Princess Diana and her husband Prince Charles. Ironically, the rubber had originally 'For big mistakes' written on it.

Then they rerased these drawings and exhibited the empty sheets of paper with the rest of the rubber. Cool piece!