Miami Art Week 2015: SCOPE Miami Beach Recap

Kazuhiro Tsuji

Hi-Fructose readers need no introduction to the plethora of artists and galleries that were featured in this year’s installment of SCOPE Miami Beach. Known as the biggest worldwide professional show of modern art, 2015 marked the fair’s 15th anniversary. Despite heavy rains and winds that led to water seeping into the fair’s signature white tent, attendance was higher than ever- roughly 49,000 attended compared to last year’s 45,000 attendees.

Sergio Garcia

A visit to the fair was not complete until you took a selfie with Matthew Lapenta’s “Emoji Series” that brought your text messages to life- or Kazuhiro Tsuji’s (HF Vol. 35) latest hyper-realistic bust of the artist Frida Kahlo, featured here, at Copro Gallery’s booth. Not far away, Thinkspace Gallery’s large booth featured a diverse collection of new works from their roster that were on rotation, including solo offerings by artists Kevin Peterson and Alex Yanes. Over at Mirus Gallery’s booth was another 2-person show by artists Felipe Pantone and Adam Friedman, whose futuristic paintings expanded into a 400 sq foot sculptural installation of prism-like cubes and grids.

Adam Friedman

Hailing from the opposite coast in New York, Joseph Gross Gallery rang in its third year at SCOPE Miami Beach with a group show featuring works from Victor Solomon’s “Literally Balling” series of luxurious basketball boards and nets, recently covered here, light box works and color-field painting by Peter Gronquist, and a portrait series by Pop surrealist painter Ron English (HF Vol. 2 and 16) of Star Wars characters like Darth Vader and his Storm Troopers with toothy grins. Also on display was one of Christopher Schulz’s wonderfully weird weaponized-shark sculptures.

Olek

Another gallery from the east coast was the newly opened Rumney Guggenheim, which brought in pieces from Olek, Swoon, Olivia Steele, and AIKO, among others. The artists were also featured in a Pop-up gallery exhibition with Art Bastion gallery, covered here, which is now running through February 6th, 2016. AIKO’s stenciled paintings of young girls, which have been a fixture in Miami’s Wynwood Walls since 2009, were especially vibrant in the light of Olivia Steele’s works that connect thought-provoking messages on industrial traffic signs. Take a look at some more of our photo highlights from SCOPE Miami Beach below.

Victor Solomon