Parisa Kind Presents Emerging German and American Artists at NADA Miami Beach
In partnership with Artsy, NADA Miami Beach is back. Among the highlights of the 2014 edition is Galerie Parisa Kind’s presentation. The gallery, based in Frankfurt, focuses on showing the work of emerging contemporary artists from both Germany and the U.S.
The theme of everyday life, and the complexities within it, run through the work of a few of the show’s most prominently featured artists. Conceptual artist Sayre Gomez, working in mediums as diverse as painting, sculpture, and installations, uses found images and text to comment on the nature of interpersonal communication, while California-born Mike Bouchet, now living and working in Frankfurt, also sources material from the seemingly mundane sphere of daily life. As Bouchet says in his own artist statement, “I am generally interested in the same things most people are interested in: movies, TV shows, architecture, jeans, sex, and food.” His pop culture predilections are well-displayed at NADA—Hulk Jr. (2014), a highly detailed oil on canvas closeup of a fast food cheeseburger, is at once appetizing and repulsive, while the jarring MotherNymphCloud (Tacosaurus)(2014) juxtaposes cartoonish Mexican street food with a realistic portrait of a woman. Here, Bouchet’s approach is subtler than in his talked-about 2004 Carpe Denim—in which the artist produced his own brand of blue jeans in Colombia, then loaded them into an airplane and dropped them over the city in which they were manufactured—but the cultural critique is unmistakable.
On the other side of the spectrum, Martin Neumaier also uses found objects, but his “arrangements” address themes that stand in contrast to the minutiae of the everyday—namely, European colonialism and 19th- and 20th-century imperialism, as is clearly displayed in his “LOST” series of collages: LOST (S), LOST (O), and LOST (L) (all 2014). Jonas Weichsel, too, ventures far from the quotidian with his abstract prints and paintings. Pieces from his “TC4” series, as well as TC X (all 2014), are minimalist Op-Art oil paintings with a Rothko-esque edge. Together, and joining a handful of other artists, these four form a united front—the contemporary face of up-and-coming German and American art.
—Bridget Gleeson
Visit Parisa Kind at NADA Miami Beach, Booth 2.44, Dec. 4–7, 2014.
Follow Parisa Kind and NADA Miami Beach 2014 on Artsy.
