from water to ice

© kjm

A brief Art Basel Miami recap from a much colder location in northern Wisconsin. The photo above is of Mike Brenner's scrappy Hotcakes Gallery setup at the Aqua Hotel, room no. 122.

There are ridiculous amounts of art to be seen at these fairs, and the density can be a bit overwhelming. You get an over-served, post-Thanksgiving dinner feeling, with no Lazy-Boy recliner to come to your rescue. In the 5th hour of looking, another (too large) Thomas Struth picture is like another (too large) spoonful of mashed potatoes that you don't need.

That said, I should never complain about seeing lots of artwork. I took in most of the main fair, and also see the satellite fairs Aqua, Pulse, Red Dot, Bridge, Geisai, APAD, and Photo Miami. And I did get to see some real life photographers as well (wow, someone actually makes this stuff!), including Sonja Thomsen, Amy Stein, and Jeffery Salter. And a treat was meeting up with John Loomis and his fiance for lunch.

A few things that stayed with me were David Almeida's plant photos at Geisai, Mariana Cook's sweet Close to Home series at Lee Marks and some solarized silver prints by a photographer named Anthony Pearson.