50 Must-See Artworks at NADA, PULSE, UNTITLED., and Art Miami

Navigating your way through Miami’s abundance of quality art fairs—not to mention the labyrinthine layouts of the fair tents themselves—is no easy feat. That’s why, after braving the traffic and sifting through four satellite fairs you shouldn’t miss before heading out of town, we bring you the best of NADA, UNTITLED., PULSE, and Art Miami, with 50 of Miami art week’s must-see works.  

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NADA

4441 Collins Ave., Miami Beach

After a much-talked-about move from its charmingly quirky Deauville Beach Resort digs, NADA’s inaugural edition at the more glamorous and centrally located Fontainebleau saw strong presentations, and sales to match. The veteran satellite fair, known for surfacing the best of the world’s emerging art and for its cool, casual ethos, has expanded steadily over its 13-year history. This year galleries hail from 32 cities in 15 countries, while 21 new participants have joined the fair’s ever-growing fold. As its second day rounded to a close, numerous galleries had switched out works—some completely rehanging their booths—pointing to gangbuster sales, a welcome shift from the more leisurely pace of sales reported at other fairs this week.

For proof, look no further than the booth of Moran Bondaroff, where Jacolby Satterwhite’s gender-ambiguous figure, decked in a camo bodysuit with looping videos embedded into a bra and bulging package, disappeared after selling on the first day to make room for available works. But the fresh crop was just as robust, representing a diverse range of mediums, subjects and, somewhat surprisingly given NADA’s focus on emerging art, artists’ ages. Painter Brian Belott’s works also hung at Moran Bondaroff, as well as two other booths: CANADA and 247365. The artist, who covers calculators with pebbles and buries remote controls and hair gel in paintings encrusted with sand and cotton balls, was kicked out of Cooper Union in the ’90s—and has since served as a lodestar for younger artists.

In other booths, paintings and sculptures by bright young things mingled with work by underrecognized older artists. Our eyes were drawn to small, tropically hued collages by 93-year-old Austria-born, Guatemala-based Elisabeth Wild that blend architecture with the aesthetics of rituals. Paintings by octogenarian Rose Wylie and sixtysomething Dona Nelson at Thomas Erben Gallery are also not to be missed. Nor are 69-year-old Nancy Shaver’s painted-box assemblages at Derek Eller, which look like they might house little treasures, or better yet, more of Shaver’s whimsical, object-driven abstractions. Of course, younger talent abounded too, with standout works by Willa Nasatir, Elizabeth Jaeger, and Jaanus Samma. The fair’s highlights also included ambitious, large pieces by mid-career NADA mainstays, like Agathe Snow and Michael Williams.

Left to right:

Agathe Snow, Since the Beginning of Time…Love is a Battlefield, 2015

at The Journal Gallery

Willa Nasatir, Crime #7 (Gun), 2015

at Chapter NY

Sara Cwynar, Pencils, 2015

at Cooper Cole

Dona Nelson, Coins in a Fountain, 2015

at Thomas Erben, Booth 4.20

Elisabeth Wild, Untitled, 2015

at Proyectos Ultravioleta

Brian Belott, Puff collage, 2015

AT 247365, BOOTH 4.10

Jaanus Samma, Sweater from series “The Hair Sucks Sweater Shop,” 2015

AT TEMNIKOVA & KASELA

Alex Chaves, James and Shawn, 2015

at Night Gallery

Nancy Shaver, Red, Yellow, Blue boxes in a box, 2015

at Derek Eller Gallery, Booth 2.06 

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2015

at C L E A R I N G

Jacolby Satterwhite, Orifice I, 2010-12

AT MORAN BONDAROFF, BOOTH 5.19

Hilary Harnischfeger, Wolf, 2013

AT RACHEL UFFNER, BOOTH 4.04

Rodrigo Matheus, Candelabro, 2015

AT IBID.

Elizabeth Jaeger, Title TBD, 2015

at Jack Hanley, Booth 5.07

Michael Williams, ​Big Sister, 2014

at CANADA

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UNTITLED.

Ocean Drive & 12th St., Miami Beach

This week, if you strolled into UNTITLED. around 4pm, you were greeted by a troupe of six performers clad in black bodysuits, caps, and scarves that shrouded their faces as they stretched, shook out, and took their positions, like runners about to launch into a race. A horn sounded, and the dancers began moving through the fair on a mile-long journey that mapped the sprawling tent with a mix of angular, fluid, and sometimes aggressive movements. It was an arresting intervention that parted seas of fairgoers and set the tone for this boundary-pushing fair, helmed by Omar López-Chahoud.

In its fourth year, UNTITLED. is carving a prominent spot for itself among the satellite fairs proliferating across Miami. Within an easily accessible—not to mention stunningly luminous—beachside home, a strong cast of curatorially driven presentations assemble for fair week. These run the gamut, but usually resolve as cohesive group showings where traditional mediums mingle with a rigorous selection of video, new media, and performance work.

Enter the dark side-booth of New York’s bitforms, and witness two of the fair’s strongest new media works, by Daniel Canogar and Rafael Lozano-Hemmer. The latter’s work, 1984x1984 (2014), shows a large-scale screen of quickly shifting, flipping squares filled with numbers. As you approach, your silhouette appears in the screen, filled with 1s, 8s, 9s, and 4s. Referencing Orwell’s dystopian masterwork, Lozano-Hemmer comments on contemporary surveillance. Other works, too, take a critical look at contemporary culture. At the booth of Kravets/Wehby Gallery, young painter Nina Chanel Abney visualizes the “Black Lives Matter” rallying cry with her bold, blocky Untitled (XXXXXX) (2015).

The figurative paintings on view across the fair, the strongest by Hope Gangloff and Austin Lee, range from the former’s intimate, large-scale portraits of her friends (yes, that is Charlie from “Girls”) to the latter’s net-inspired, fragmented bodies. A fair favorite was Taymour Grahne’s booth, filled with Hassan Hajjaj’s pattern-edged portraits of flamboyantly dressed musicians and creatives, most hailing from his native Morocco.

Amid all this big, bold work, don’t miss UNTITLED.’s smaller wares. São Paulo-based Nino Cais’s collages and photographs particularly stood out. An obsessive collector of dollar-store items, small decorative doodads, and books of all kinds, Cais layers selections from his trove in uncanny, often performative combinations. After perusing the fair, take a break in the Maurizio Cattelan- and Pierpaolo Ferrari-conceived lounge, a delightfully surrealist environment covered in carpets, wall hangings, oversized objects, and mirrors.

Trish Tillman, Dawn Upon, 2015

at Asya Geisberg Gallery

Hassan Hajjaj, Blaize, 2015

at Taymour Grahne

Nino Cais, Untitled, from the Women and rocks Series, 2014

at Central Galeria de Arte

Imi Knoebel, Gretchenfrage 10, 2013

at Galerie Christian Lethert

Tamar Ettun, Boob with a Nail, 2015

at Fridman Gallery

Matt Kleberg, The Get Down, 2015

at Katharine Mulherin Gallery

Mary Reid Kelley, Three Picasso Heads, 2015

at Fredericks & Freiser

Daniel Crews-Chubb, Rituals, 2015

at Vigo Gallery

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, 1984x1984, 2014

at bitforms Gallery

Jonathan Callan, Bequest, 2014

at Josée Bienvenu Gallery

Hope Gangloff, Couch Surfer, 2015

at Susan Inglett Gallery

Devin Troy Strother, New nigga abstractions in an Ikea frame, part 16, “49 niggas and 7 bananas in an Ikea frame”, 2015

at Richard Heller Gallery

Austin Lee, Thumbs Up, 2015

at Postmasters

Nina Chanel Abney, Untitled (XXXXXX), 2015

at Kravets/Wehby Gallery

Madeline Hollander, MILE, 2015

UNTITLED., performances

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PULSE

4601 Collins Ave., Miami Beach

After opening its newly expanded, two-tent space to early-bird crowds on Tuesday, PULSE reported steady sales all week, with collectors jumping at the strong selection of plucky figurative painting on view. As of Friday, Thierry Goldberg had almost completely sold out their solo booth of Brooklyn-based Grace Weaver’s canvases, featuring sinuous figures lounging and exercising with juice and iPods in hand. Jacques Flechemuller’s small, hilarious paintings of all sorts of couples—a monkey and a man, a university lad and his shirtless, androgynous lover—are must-sees at L.A.’s The Good Luck Gallery. While sculptural offerings were less plentiful, standouts included Helen O’Leary’s spindly wooden constructions and Kathy Butterly’s small, suggestive clay vessels. Sandy Skoglund’s 1970s staged photos offer a playful, reality-bending coda—technicolor pastiches of dizzyingly patterned textiles are topped with marbled foods, and a bright yellow-and-pepto-bismol-pink room is covered floor-to-ceiling in coat hangers.

Kathy Butterly, tangsome, 2015

at Tibor de Nagy, Booth N-309

Sandy Skoglund, Hangers, 1979

at RYAN LEE, Booth S-200

Martín Gutierrez, Line Up 6, 2014

at RYAN LEE, Booth S-200

Grace Weaver, The Armchair, 2014

at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, Booth S-107

Mariu Palacios, Serie “heroína en construcción”, 2015

at Cecilia Gonzalez Arte Contemporaneo, Booth S-114

Helen O’Leary, Quarantine 2 (after Eavan Bloand), 2015

at Lesley Heller Workspace, Booth N-114

Frances Trombly, Canvas with Pink Silk, 2015

at Emerson Dorsch, Booth S-100 

Sabrina Gschwandtner, Arts and Crafts II, 2014

at Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Booth N-300

Jacques Flechemuller, Je Vous Aime Beaucoup #2, 2015

at The Good Luck Gallery, Booth S-216

Christian Maychack, Compound Flat #41, 2014

at Gregory Lind Gallery, Booth N-112

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Art Miami

3101 NE 1st Ave., Wynwood

Across the bay at Art Miami, secondary-market works took center stage. Claes Oldenburg’s Fagend Study (1975)—a unique sculpture of a crumpled, partially smoked cigarette butt—was originally sold by Leo Castelli in ’76 and, in the mid-’90s, made a cameo in the cult rom-com Clueless. At Scott White Contemporary Art, a wall of Warhol polaroids gave glimpses into the lives of creative geniuses Gianni Versace, Diana Ross, and, our favorite of the bunch, a curmudgeonly but ever-charming Man Ray. It wasn’t easy selecting favorites at James Barron Art’s booth, but Beverly Pepper’s towering Corten totems from the early ’80s (she was one of the first women to make art with the rust-hued cast iron made famous by Serra) won out, with Ken Price’s Untitled (1993), resembling a modernist geode, coming in at a close second.

Peter Halley, Untitled (one cell), 2015

at Galerie Forsblom

Alex Katz, Ada in Hat (from Alex & Ada portfolio), 1990

at Nikola Rukaj Gallery

Diane Arbus, Brenda Diana Duff Frazier, 1938 Debutante of the Year, At Home, 1966

at Lisa Sette Gallery

Beverly Pepper, Guardian Messenger, 1983

at James Barron Art

Gordon Parks, Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton, Mobile, Alabama, 1956

at Nicholas Metivier Gallery

Lucy Mackenzie, Striped Cup and Paper Bag, 2012

at Nancy Hoffman Gallery

Andy Warhol, “Man Ray” 05.08416, 1973

at Scott White Contemporary Art