An Art Basel Notebook
The biggest piece is by Robert Chambers, who has welded two 1930s John Deere Model A Unstyled tractors face to face. He found one in Illinois and one in Idaho; both still function on just about any fuelimaginable, he said. The idea is both bridge and impass, a reference to the Depression era and a symbol of hope from the workhorse machines. ''They still work perfectly,'' he said.
-- JANE WOOLDRIDGE
AN EXHIBIT PAPERS ART BASEL FOR CHARITYA who's who of South Florida's design community -- and Ivana Trump -- attended Paperlove, Luminaire's annual art exhibit-slash-fundraiser for UM's Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The show, held Thursday night in the shop's Design District showroom, was filled with more than 50 works commissioned by Luminaire owners Nargis and Nasir Kassamali. The sole criterion: that the work be constructed from, well, paper.
Artists ranged from Pritzker Prize-winning architect Zaha Hadid to Miami-based artists Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquart to Mexico-based sculptor Mira Jokic, who met the Kassamalis in Oaxaca. For Just a Moment, Jokic sculpted a tissue-like paper against a flash of gray paint atop a heavier cardboard. Working with paper, she said, wasn't so different from her usual art.
''Sculpting is like drawing from a thousand angles,'' she said. ``Paper is your first love as an artist.''
Some of the show's definitions of paper were quite inventive: Local architect Chad Oppenheim and his wife, Ilona, traced paper back to its roots, quite literally: Their auction entry, Soon to be Paper, consisted of a tree stump. Carved against its rings: ''I really can't give you anything. The only thing left is my dying roots,'' from Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree.
Spotted at the show, and the dinner at the Moore Building that followed: Trump, Mondrian Hotel designer Marcel Wanders and dozens of local architects and Design District insiders.
This was the Kassamalis' second cancer benefit: 2006's Puppylove raised $450,000 to fund research at Sylvester.
-- SARA FREDERICK
A HOPPING PARTY AT MIAMI ART MUSEUMThere's art aplenty inside the Miami Art Museum: the Objects of Value exhibition exploring how society assigns worth; the maze-like Chantal Akerman video installation and Yinke Shonibare's joyous A Flying Machine for Every Man, Woman and Child, featuring bright Victorian- inspired sculptures of bicyle-powered flying machines invoking the potential of flight, the promise of immigration and the magic of Miami. Thursday night, thousands at MAM's Art Basel party were also treated to art outside on the plaza in the form of an 84-foot-long Macy's parade balloon by artist Jeff Koons, titled Silver Rabbit Balloon. Unfortunately, the rabbit was making a one-night stand; it's more delicate than it looks, and winds can cause more havoc than a mob of crazed Art Basel goers.
-- JANE WOOLDRIDGE
MARILYN MANSON, PAINTER, ROCKS WITH THE ART CROWDMarilyn Manson's shock tactics worked again. With art, this time.
Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, showed up at the media preview of Trismegistus at 101 Exhibit in Miami's Design District Thursday night. Most, if not all, the works in the collection were of grisly figures and ghostly, often bloody apparitions. But who would expect anything else?
The Goth rocker-turned-painter is taller than he appears in photos and was dressed in head-to-toe black -- from his signature floppy witch's hat to his Herman Munster boots.
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