Art Basel Miami Beach

Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to return to Art Basel Miami Beach for 2023.  The gallery's presentation—featuring work by Ghada Amer, Jennifer Bartlett, Gina Beavers, Sanford Biggers, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Svenja Deininger, the Haas Brothers, Allison Janae Hamilton, Jammie Holmes, Dashiell Manley, Sarah Meyohas, Donald Moffett, and Michaela Yearwood-Dan—offers new insights into themes of the natural world, the symbolic and metaphorical possibilities of earthly landscapes, and the urgency of climate crisis and environmental degradation.

Jennifer Bartlett, Pier Paolo Calzolari, Svenja Deininger, Dashiell Manley, and Michaela Yearwood-Dan employ abstracted forms derived from nature throughout their painting practices. In two paintings from the early 2000s, Bartlett—whose work was often grounded in precise mathematical and geometric abstractions—incorporates the spiraling grid pattern of the Fibonacci sequence, a mathematical form that appears with unusual frequency in the natural world. A pioneer of Arte Povera, Calzolari renders abstracted poppy forms floating freely against a faint horizon line, conjuring memories of his childhood in the Marche Valley. For Deininger, abstraction seems to materialize on canvas fully formed, setting into motion deliberate dialogues between shape, color, texture, and surface. Although insistent in its abstraction, Deininger's newest paintings conjure visions of the organic in curving lines and melting colors. With several small, new works from his ongoing Elegy series, Manley sculpts oil paint with a palette knife, creating colorful, highly-textured, abstract canvases reminiscent of landscapes, connected by the subtle, at times almost imperceptible, horizon line. In her lush, brightly hued canvases, Yearwood-Dan embeds botanical motifs and diaristic meditations within brushy abstract forms and heavy drips of paint, reflecting an inviting domesticity. 

Throughout their work, Sanford Biggers, Gina Beavers, Jammie Holmes, and Sarah Meyohas engage the symbolic and metaphorical associations of floral and botanical imagery to examine broader cultural, historic, and technological concerns. In new works from his ongoing Codex series, Biggers paints, collages, twists, and molds found antique quilts with loosely floral patterns, reimagining these vestiges of the past-and their myriad attendant meanings. In her newest sculptural paintings, Beavers uses floral imagery in the lip and nail art she adopts from Instagram, continuing her ongoing examination of digital and visual culture—and its relationship to art history. Throughout painting and sculptural work, Holmes deploys floral imagery symbolically in his intimate, poignant examination of Black communities in the American South. In her newest project, Meyohas has created an AI algorithm capable of producing new, unique rose petals ad infinitum, continuing her exploration of algorithmic beauty and the phenomenon of emergence within both natural and manmade systems.

Allison Janae Hamilton and Donald Moffett deploy the visual language of nature to examine the urgency of the climate crisis. Drawing on her upbringing in the rural American South, Hamilton weaves themes of environmental justice, folklore, mythology, and the contemporary legacies of colonization and enslavement into new sculptural work. Expanding on the minimalist, abstracted visual language he has cultivated throughout his career, Moffett uses the forms of nature to capture the urgency of ongoing environmental crises. 

Ghada Amer and the Haas Brothers are engaged with material explorations incorporating elements of the natural world. Using embroidery and appliqué techniques on canvas, Amer incorporates the female form and rich, florid language into colorful, unexpectedly painterly surfaces. Combining blown glass, marble, and bronze, the Haas Brothers's Microslimers-like many of the artists' creatures-offer a deeply personal reflection on family. With their Endless Paintings, the artist duo deploys an infinite series of landscape images as a reflection on the nostalgia of childhood wonder.

Exemplifying the gallery's ongoing commitment to forming narratives across backgrounds and mediums, this presentation offers a new lens to examine the many ways in which the natural world is present across the gallery's materially, formally, and visually expansive program. 

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