Art Basel Miami Beach 2023: 7 Spectacular Sculptures

Frieze’s acquisition of The Armory Show and Expo Chicago in July makes Art Basel Miami Beach its only major rival in America.

Scouring this year’s line-up, and having walked the halls of convention centres from L.A. and Hong Kong, to Basel and Seoul this year, it’s evident that Art Basel Miami Beach is still a top priority for galleries as they try to sell their most coveted works before the year ends.

For the fair’s 21st edition, which runs from 8–10 December 2023, it’s the strength of sculpture that caught Ocula advisory’s attention.

Joan Miró‘s Femme et oiseau (1971) at Helly Nahmad Gallery

Although widely recognised for his abstract paintings, Joan Miró also crafted wonderful Surrealist sculptures.

Conceived in 1971, Femme et oiseau is a large bronze work originally cast at the Clementi foundry in Meudon, France. Its stack of natural and man-made objects encapsulates Miró’s playful and inventive style.

The work ascends from a log-like base and a wingèd vase to a dumbbell topped with a roughly cut, abstract form. Ordinary objects become fantastical and unfamiliar.

The title, which translates to ‘woman and bird’, along with certain outlines and shapes present in the piece, alludes to the Spanish artist’s two favourite motifs.

Kohei Nawa‘s Ether #76 (2021) at SCAI The Bathhouse

Imagine a water droplet falling in slow motion: played, paused, rewinded. The Japanese artist Kohei Nara has done just this for his ongoing ‘Ether’ series, making 3D models of falling drops and stacking them.

The series plays on the state of weightlessness, the balancing act of opposing forces between nature and artificiality.

The works range in size from large outdoor aluminium sculptures, to 30cm-tall mixed media works. SCAI Bathhouse’s inclusion in Miami sits somewhere in the middle, measuring nearly a metre-and-a-half tall.

Barry Flanagan‘s Juggler (1994) at Galerie Max Hetzler

One of two Flanagan sculptures showing with Hetzler, Juggler (1994) exemplifies the Irish-Welsh sculptor’s career-long devotion to the hare.

The love affair spawned from his discovery of the book The Leaping Hare (1972) by George Ewart Evans and David Thompson, which explores the animal’s mystical connections to fertility, liberty, and triumph.

Here, the hare’s long spindly form poses atop a stand which bears the inscription: ‘Oh Joseph! he cried’, derived from a drawing of a juggler by the Irish artist Jack Butler Yeats, which Flanagan owned.

‘I find that the hare is a rich and expressive form that can carry the conventions of the cartoon and the attributes of the human into the animal world. So I use the hare as a surrogate or as a vehicle to entertain in a way,’ Flanagan said in conversation with curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Thomas Schütte‘s Frauenkopf, halb Nr. e.a. (2022) at Frith Street Gallery

‘I still think the job of the artist is to tell continuous stories with colour, light, lines, form and volume,’ Thomas Schütte told The Guardian in 2007. ‘It is about developing and making work that is independent and convincing.’

Schütte’s blue Murano glass bust accomplishes this goal with serene dignity.

While realised in 2022, this particular mould was cast back in 2006. Transparent in finish, the sculpture is almost luminous.

Over in Tillburg, Netherlands, Schütte’s has a solo exhibition titled Westkunstmodelle 1:1 (16 September 2023–28 January 2024) at Du Pont Museum. In late 2024, a major Schütte exhibition is scheduled to take place at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Lynda Benglis‘s Centaurus (1987) at Ortuzar Project

This 20th-century Lynda Benglis sculpture—one of three wall sculptures featuring the newcomers booth—is emblematic of the American artist’s devotion to the mutability of materials.

‘I could have easily been a dancer. When I was very young I read about the famous ballerinas. I love the idea of movement,’ Benglis told Ocula in 2015.

‘Everything flows’ is a mantra that the artist has poured into every aspect of her practice. While this idea is more apparent in her oozing polyurethane foam and coiling cast-bronze sculptures, her series of mesh screens are fluid too.

Centaurus (1987)‘s pleated, twisted, and knotted form, sprayed with aerosolised aluminium, unifies the decorative with the abstract—a fusion emblematic of her training in Abstract Expressionist painting.

Yoshitomo Nara‘s Cat-Eyed Girl (2020) at Blum

Part of a series of head sculptures titled ‘Ceramic Works’, Nara’s Cat-Eyed Girl (2020) portrays a child-like figure gazing into space with an inscrutable expression. The vertical slit-shaped pupils are reminiscent of a cat’s eyes.

Hinting at a variety of emotional and psychological expressions, Nara’s sculptures go from resolute and reflective to happy and playful, from quiet and weary to mischievous and smug.

Nara’s artwork consistently fetches high prices at auctions. His painting No Means No (2006) sold for U.S. $8.3 million at Philips’ Hong Kong Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art in October.

This sale set a record as the highest-valued work by Nara that sold across all auction houses during the autumn sales in Hong Kong.

Doyle Lane‘s Weed Pot (ca. 1960–1978) at David Kordansky Gallery

African American ceramicist Doyle Lane (1923–2002) brought to life dynamic colours, textures, and shapes in his series ‘Weed Pots’, which he created during the 1960s and 1970s.

This particular pot exemplifies Lane’s expertise in glazing and his meticulous attention to form. The rounded vessel swells at its centre, achieving a balance that imparts a satisfying sense of fullness.

The glazing on the pot is smooth and glossy, accentuating the horizontal rings encircling its curved shape—reminiscent of the rings of Saturn.

Lane’s debut solo exhibition in New York, titled Weed Pots (23 June–4 August 2023) at David Kordansky Gallery, received outstanding reviews, including a ‘critic’s pick’ by Roberta Smith in the New York Times in July 2023.

Main image: Thomas Schütte, Frauenkopf, halb Nr. e.a. (2022). Murano glass. 54 x 31 x 24 cm; steel base: 120.5 x 45.5 x 45.5 cm. Courtesy the artist and Frith Street Gallery, London.