Survey: 14 historical projects in the spotlight at Art Basel in Miami Beach
Now in its third year, Survey will present artworks created by 14 artists prior to the year 2000. Curated booths by leading galleries from North and South America, Europe and Asia will provide insight into the work of Carmelo Arden Quin, Romare Bearden, Graciela Carnevale, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Margaret Kilgallen, Giorgio Morandi, Howardena Pindell, David Reed, George Rickey, Mimmo Rotella, Betye Saar, Barbara T. Smith, Kishio Suga and Jacques Villeglé. The 15th edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach, whose Lead Partner is UBS, will take place at the Miami Beach Convention Center from December 1 to December 4, 2016.

Four of the 14 global galleries exhibiting in Survey will participate in the show for the first time, including Los Angeles’ The Box, which will present works by the artist Barbara T. Smith (b. 1931). Exploring intersections between the artist’s long-standing feminist performance practice and her deeply-rooted interest in ritualistic methodologies, The Box will feature video and sculptures related to her seminal work ‘Field Piece’ (1968/1971). Also marking its debut at Art Basel in Miami Beach will be Galleria d’Arte Maggiore G.A.M. from Bologna, with a selection of museum-quality works by Giorgio Morandi (b. 1890, d. 1964). A painter and printmaker best known for his restrained composition of hard, smooth forms and ambiguous distortions of perspective, Morandi worked in a range of media – painting, drawing, watercolor and etching – all of which will be included in the gallery’s presentation. Another first-time exhibitor will be Vigo Gallery from London, which will present historic works on paper by Sudanese artist Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930). Produced between 1976 and 1977, the pieces mark a key period after the artist’s release from jail – an experience that was highly influential in his career – and will be paired with rare early works from the 1950s and 1960s. El-Salahi’s work incorporates Cubism, Surrealism, Muslim iconography and Arabic calligraphy, and in 2013 he was the first African artist to have a retrospective at Tate Modern. Simões de Assis Galeria de Arte from Curitiba, Brazil, also new to the show, will exhibit a set of 16 critically significant works by the Uruguayan avant-garde artist Carmelo Arden Quin (b. 1913). The works, which were produced in the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s, portray this key historical period within Quin’s career. Quin was instrumental within the Latin American vanguards in the 1940s and co-created the Madi Art Group – a group that inspired other artists such as Ellsworth Kelly.

espaivisor will present ‘El encierro’ (1968) by Graciela Carnevale (b. 1942), one of the most significant works of sociopolitical art in Latin America from the late 1960s. Responding to Argentina’s repressive government at the time, Carnevale’s experimental action locked an unwitting audience in an empty gallery, from which the only way to exit was by breaking through a glass wall. The gallery will present photographic documentation of the historic performance paired with a poster display recreated across the booth’s wall.

Maxwell Davidson Gallery will present rare and early works by George Rickey (b. 1907, d. 2002). Rickey’s kinetic sculptures will trace the development of his evolving creative oeuvre in the 1950s and 1960s.

DC Moore Gallery will feature rare photographic works by Romare Bearden (b. 1911, d. 1988), widely recognized as one of the most innovative visual artists of the 20th century. Centered on Bearden’s ‘Projections’, a series of photostatic enlargements and collages from the 1960s, this exhibition will reflect his interest in Cubism, Dadaism, civil rights, jazz and blues performance, as well as personal memories of the rural South. Jacques Villeglé’s (b. 1926) series ‘Painting within Non Painting’, created between the 1950s and the end of the 1970s, will be on view at Galerie Georges-Philippe & Nathalie Vallois. The works reflect Villeglé’s skepticism around ideas of authorship, traditional aesthetics and pre-determination.

Tokyo Gallery + BTAP will present a solo show of Kishio Suga (b. 1944), one of the central figures of the Mono-ha movement that emerged in Tokyo during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The installation of Suga’s cylindrical and fan-shaped 'PROTRUSION’ series will include two pieces that have never been exhibited. Ratio 3 will feature Margaret Kilgallen’s (b. 1967, d. 2001) candid representation of the female figure, including women surfing, smoking, embracing and brawling. Notably, this will be the first time her works will be available on the primary market since her death. Best known for his décollages, Mimmo Rotella (b. 1918, d. 2006) was also a great experimenter who sought to reject the imposition of traditional artistic ‘languages’. Robilant + Voena’s presentation of Rotella’s work will focus on four distinct and important techniques that he pioneered from the 1950s through the 1980s. At Peter Blum Gallery, early and rarely seen paintings by David Reed (b. 1946) will be paired with a short film that the artist based on a John Wayne Technicolor VistaVision Western. While film has played a pivotal role in influencing Reed’s paintings, much of the public has not known his work as a filmmaker. The gallery’s show will coincide with the opening of a solo exhibition of David Reed’s new paintings at the Perez Art Museum in Miami.