6 Art Basel Miami Beach Artists To Watch
More than 275 galleries were featured in the art world’s last big buying event of 2023.
While Miami Art Week was well underway, Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 opened to VIP collectors like Leonardo DiCaprio, Serena Williams, and Barry Manilow. Art Basel is the last big buying event this year for collectors around the world, who are turning out in glamorous droves despite the infamous art market slowdown. We checked out exhibits from a gaggle of galleries at Art Basel to spotlight these emerging artists who are worth watching in 2024 and beyond.
Lloyd Foster at Anton Kern
Art Basel Miami Beach consists of seven focused sectors. “Kabinett,” for instance, highlights works from individual artists. Here, New York-based gallery Anton Kern shares the standalone style of D.C.-born Ghanaian artist Lloyd Foster, who visited his family’s homeland for the first time at 24. He’s since started taking staged and candid photos on return trips across Africa and transforming those photos into these sculptural, suspended artworks with painterly accents. Arranged in clusters of a dozen or more, they sway and show their stories and differing sides.
Casja von Zeipel at COMPANY
The fair’s “Galleries” section was its true centerpiece, where world-class art dealers mostly presented booths of their roster artists. True to form, this work by Casja von Zeipel stole the show amongst COMPANY gallery’s booth. The same thing happened when von Zeipel anchored their presentation at The Armory Show in New York this fall, and at The Hole in TriBeCa, where the Swedish sculpture also featured in a group exhibition during 2020. Built one and a third times larger than your average human goddess, von Zeipel’s sirens have crazy curves and grotesque yet witty details that comment on beauty standards, sex appeal, and body modification.
Emma Webster at Perrotin
Perrotin is an art world machine, with galleries from Paris to Seoul. At Art Basel Miami Beach, Perrotin’s booth was big enough to accommodate two exhibitions. Even so, the whole booth sold out within hours of a VIP first-look sale, including Perrotin’s solo show of looming abstract landscapes by Los Angeles-based Emma Webster. Palpable tensions in the rapidly rising painter’s rich scenes arise from dramatic lighting, the influence of climate change, and Webster’s fascinating process using virtual reality renderings as sketches.
Andrew Roberts at Pequod Co.
The fair’s “Positions” sector spotlit emerging galleries and artists. There, Mexico City-based gallery Pequod Co. presented a solo booth by Andrew Roberts, a Tijuana-born conceptual artist who uses aluminum, film, and more to build worlds based on video games, science fiction, and Roberts’ own story. He contributed digital animations and a lifelike severed arm emblazoned with the Amazon smile to last year’s Whitney Biennale. Futuristic embryos in varied hues frame his booth at Art Basel, all made from medical-grade silicone, automotive paint, wood, and more. A three-channel film offers the soundtrack, narrating the otherworldly story behind this series.
Marcela Cantuária at A Gentil Carioca
Back amongst Galleries, Rio de Janeiro-based gallery A Gentil Carioca shared an incredible lineup. Highlights included a sculptural hanging artwork of ceramics and beads by Maria Neupmeceo that evokes mitochondria, as well as an elegant kitchen knife folded into a corner by Renata Lucas. This theatrical painting by Brazilian painter Marcela Cantuária stole the show from their booth’s exterior wall, though, with its delicious, saturated colors. Perfect timing, too—Cantuária just opened her first stateside museum show at the Perez Art Museum Miami.
Jompet Kuswidananto at Nanzuka
Tokyo-based Nanzuka Gallery curated their expansive booth around the notion of a societal bipolar disorder. They had 25 artists in total on view, with a focus on Japanese hallmarks like Hiroshi’s skateboard sculptures and a sexy robot from Hajime Sorayama. Indonesian musician, filmmaker, and installation artist Jompet Kuswidananto stood out with a scintillating, mesmerizing wall-mounted sculpture in the circular shape of a tondo. Certain glass elements of this mixed material collage evoke chandeliers, but sharp bits like shards of glass and knives remind viewers it wouldn’t be safe to hang overhead.