Latin American perspectives, Afro-Caribbean spirituality, and experimental painting mark this year’s Galleries sector

Find out what galleries are bringing to Art Basel Miami Beach 2018

‘In this year's edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, we are going to highlight what is at the core of the gallery program: strong female artists and groundbreaking historical positions, as well as key figures of contemporary Latin American art’, says Berlin gallerist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1525/Galerie-Barbara-Thumm" target="_blank">Barbara Thumm</a>. Returning to Art Basel Miami Beach after a 3-year hiatus, Barbara Thumm is one of 268 exhibitors presenting their artists in the newly-renovated Miami Beach Convention Center from December 6, 2018.&nbsp;Among others, the gallery will show both new and historical works by Peruvian conceptual artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/10200/Teresa-Burga" target="_blank">Teresa Burga</a>, Cuban painter&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/9968/Diango-Hern%C3%A1ndez" target="_blank">Diango Hernández</a>’s sinewy abstractions, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13563/Anna-Oppermann" target="_blank">Anna Oppermann</a>’s cumulative compositions.&nbsp;A reflection on current discourses on gender and identity,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/2957/David-Castillo-Gallery" target="_blank">David Castillo</a>’s booth will showcase ‘our work of the last 13 years in the identification, development,&nbsp;and presentation of ground-breaking artists of color, queer artists, and women artists’, Castillo explains. Included in the selection of the Miami Beach-based gallery are works by the multifaceted&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/22551/Xaviera-Simmons" target="_blank">Xaviera Simmons</a>, kaleidoscopic assemblages by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/events/detail/7753/Artist-Studio-Visits-Pepe-Mar?openTime=4140" target="_blank">Pepe Mar</a>, and an enigmatic constellation of figures by the late Cuban artist&nbsp;<a href="https://davidcastillogallery.com/artist/belkis-ayon-manso/" target="_blank">Belkis&nbsp;Ayón</a>, whose practice focused on the Caribbean island's Afro-Cuban spirituality and rituals.

New York City's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1856/Essex-Street" target="_blank">Essex Street</a> will dedicate its booth to positions that skillfully test the conceptual limits of their respective medium. The Lower East Side gallery’s presentation will feature rising stars&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13667/Park-McArthur" target="_blank">Park McArthur</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/13714/Cameron-Rowland" target="_blank">Cameron Rowland</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.essexstreet.biz/artist/leung" target="_blank">Ghislaine Leung</a>, three young artists who have managed to infuse an austere visual language with gripping physicality. Their work will be presented alongside paintings by the elusive – and perhaps semi-fictional – 1960s pop artist&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/25940/Vern-Blosum" target="_blank">Vern Blosum</a>, the whole booth underlining the widely different approaches artists have taken to address labor and authorship, from semantic distortions to readymades.Mexico City fixture&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1225/Proyectos-Monclova" target="_blank">Proyectos Monclova</a> will combine works by Mexican artists such as&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/8343/Eduardo-Terrazas" target="_blank">Eduardo Terrazas</a>, the collective&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7853/Tercerunquinto" target="_blank">Tercerunquinto</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/19588/Martin-Soto-Climent" target="_blank">Martin Soto Climent</a>, with pieces by young Germans like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7407/Michael-Sailstorfer" target="_blank">Michael Sailstorfer</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://proyectosmonclova.com/en/artista/julius-heinemann/" target="_blank">Julius Heinemann</a>. This bicontinental pairing is informed by an affinity for structural intricacies shared by most of the artists; it will focus ‘on the relationship between material manipulation, architecture, and painting’, sums up Proyectos Monclova’s Polina Stroganova.

For Madrid and Guadalajara’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/gallery/1302/Traves%C3%ADa-Cuatro" target="_blank">Travesía Cuatro</a>, the focus will be on modularity and interaction. Their presentation ‒ which includes&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7331/Jose-D%C3%A1vila" target="_blank">Jose Dávila</a>’s sculptural balancing acts and<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/7336/Jorge-M%C3%A9ndez-Blake" target="_blank"> Jorge Méndez Blake</a>’s hyperrealistic drawings ‒ ‘will consist of a curated selection of works that showcase the gallery’s diverse aesthetic and conceptual proposals and share a ludic and tridimensional nature’, say the gallery’s founders, Silvia Ortiz and Inés López-Quesada. The works relate to each other through a subtle treatment of emptiness: in these pieces, void acts as both a solidifier and enabler of conceptual possibilities.Also participating to Art Basel Miami Beach’s Galleries sector for the first time is New York’s Canada, who will be showing six female artists from its roster. ‘We have chosen&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/24348/Joanna-Malinowska" target="_blank">Joanna Malinowska</a>’s quasi-ethnographic forays into the self,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/28366/Elizabeth-McIntosh" target="_blank">Elizabeth McIntosh</a> and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.canadanewyork.com/artists/katherine-bradford/" target="_blank">Katherine Bradford</a>'s oblique manifestations of imagery and painterly space, and the modernist noodlings of<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/20848/Katherine-Bernhardt" target="_blank"> Katherine Bernhardt</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.canadanewyork.com/artists/anke-weyer/" target="_blank">Anke Weyer</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/catalog/artist/23190/Jess-Fuller" target="_blank">Jess Fuller</a>,’ says Wallace Whitney, one of the gallery’s founding partners. It is an exciting lineup of audacious practices, all of which borrow from other artistic disciplines to achieve strikingly singular results, freed from canonical constraints.For the full list of participants to the 2018 edition of Art Basel in Miami Beach,<a href="https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach/exhibitors" target="_blank"> click here</a>&nbsp;.

Top image:&nbsp;Katherine Bradford, All of Us (detail), 2018. Courtesy of Canada, New York City.

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