What Are Galleries Showing at Art Basel Miami Beach 2023?

Directors and founders at Mendes Wood DM, Galeria Nara Roesler, Kerlin Gallery, and Galerie Eva Presenhuber shared highlights of their booths at this year's fair.

Audrey Rose Smith, Associate Director at Mendes Wood DM, São Paulo

A major highlight of our booth will be the monumental sculpture Striking Cobra (2020) by Lynda Benglis. Across her decades-long foray into sculpture, Benglis has explored intricacies of the motif of the knot and this work is a prime example.

Cast in Everdur bronze, it's a spiralling, ascending, and cascading form, with each variation twisted to a new threshold of the material, perpetually caught between the formal tension of the medium and seeming potential for unravelling.

Another highlight will be Antonio Obá's Exortação – Ya-te-veo: Bem-te-vi (2023). As with all of Obá's paintings, this work follows a narrative that is part historical, part autobiographical, and part fantasy.

The composition of Exortação – Ya-te-veo: Bem-te-vi centres around the narrative of the legendary Yateveo tree, a carnivorous plant said to grow in several parts of Central and South America. In translation, Yateveo derives from the Latin 'Ya-te-veo' which can be translated as 'now, I see you,' making reference to the rider galloping through a dangerous thicket of Yateveo trees, his fate uncertain.

Daniel Roesler, Partner & Senior Director at Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo

For Art Basel Miami Beach we are emphasising the connections and contrasts between our established artists–such as Daniel Buren, Vik Muniz, Tomie Ohtake, and Abraham Palatnik–and artists from younger generations like Jonathas de Andrade and Lucia Koch.

One of the highlights of our presentation this year is a new work by Vik Muniz, The Lake, after Tarsila do Amaral (2023), where there artist recreates Tarsila do Amaral's O Lago (1928). Muniz's tribute to do Amaral brings together two leading figures of Brazilian art, each from a distinct period in history.

Another highlight of our booth is Lucia Koch, New System: Cross (Rouge) (2022), which consists of a translucent and coloured textile sculpture. Poetic and joyful, the work is part of a 6-module installation with different combinations of straight and curved tracks. One of the main qualities of Koch's textile sculptures is its highly translucent material, with a subtle gradation from top to bottom from orange to ochre.

Darragh Hogan, Director at Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

Our booth includes a painting by the hugely important Irish artist Sean Scully. In Untitled (Wall) (2023), Scully's signature bands of colour are painted on a copper panel. Loose and liquid swathes of blue are layered over red, giving a real sense of depth and eliciting a powerful emotional response.

Another highlight is a new tapestry by Isabel Nolan, a contemporary retelling of the Wolf of Gubbio, a tale depicted by Renaissance artists like Sassetta (a reference point here). Said to have been tamed by Saint Francis in the 13th Century, the mysterious animal sits alone in this portrayal, paw outstretched before a vivid and polychromatic take on an Umbrian landscape. It's an enchanting reflection on the relationship between humans and animals, and our strange ways of making sense of the world.

Brian Maguire's work is an urgent and arresting large-scale painting by an artist at his creative zenith. Maguire has committed himself to fighting injustice for over 40 years, often working in local newsrooms, prisons, and war zones to amplify the voices of the disenfranchised.

Soup Kitchen USA (2023) depicts a soup kitchen in Portland, Oregon, where the work was first shown, highlighting the pertinent issue of food poverty, and reminding us that art doesn't exist in a vacuum.

Eva Presenhuber, Founder of Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich

This year we are bringing a cross section of artists representative of our gallery roster, which entails both established and emerging artists. For example, Ugo Rondinone or Doug Aitken have been an integral part of my program for about three decades. While Doug is currently showing a solo exhibition at Schauwerk near Stuttgart, Ugo has just opened a spectacular presentation at the Fosun Foundation in Shanghai.

We are bringing a fabulous large-scale gilded bronze sculpture of the sun at 6am (2019) by Ugo Rondinone. It measures over two metres in diameter and may remind visitors of his monumental five-metre sculpture the sun (2017), first shown at Château de Versailles near Paris in 2017.

But we are equally excited about giving space to younger and newer artists in the gallery programme, such as Louisa Gagliardi, Sofia Mitsola, or Matthew Angelo Harrison. Sofia just opened her first solo show with us in Zurich a few weeks ago, and next spring we will have a solo show with Louisa in Seoul and with Matthew Angelo in Zurich.

One highlight is a special selection of unique works on paper and editions by Tschabalala Self. We are particularly excited to show the large-format Lonely Girls #1 from her new series 'Home Alone'. —[O]