SEVEN, the pioneering collective project organized by the galleries BravinLee programs, Hales Gallery, Pierogi Gallery, Postmasters, P.P.O.W., Ronald Feldman Fine Arts and Winkleman Gallery will return to Miami for the second year, at a new location, from November 29 through December 4, 2011. With a focus on a collaborative, exhibition-like presentation commingling galleries and artists, SEVEN looks beyond the art fair model to create a new platform for viewing and acquiring works of art.
Inspired by the prevailing need for a more intimate, personal way to engage visitors during the Miami fair week, the members of SEVEN come together to create an environment where artworks may be experienced in a curated context and interested parties can have a substantial, quality interaction with the dealers. The emphasis on cooperation rather than competition relates to the founding days of these established, long-running galleries, which despite over 120 years of combined experience, remain true to the non-conformist, adventurous nature of their beginnings in the New York and London art worlds.
SEVEN’s new location, a 15,000 square foot warehouse at 2637 North Miami Ave at NE 27th Street in the Wynwood district, situates the project in the heart of other major art fairs as well as walking distance to the Rubell Collection.
New this year are an outdoor installation space and a partnership with Creative Capital, which will present a large, interactive floor projection by Brian Knep, Healing Pool. Creative Capital, which provides integrated financial and advisory support to artists pursuing adventurous projects, is an ideal match for SEVEN and its founding philosophy.
Entry to SEVEN is free, and the opening reception will be on Tuesday, November 29, 1-8pm. The fair will be open from 11am to 7pm, November 30 through December 4. Updates and other information can be found at www.seven-miami.com and www.twitter.com/sevenmiami.
Below is a preview of highlighted artists to be at this year’s SEVEN:
BravinLee programs is excited to present new work by British artist Boo Ritson. Ritson paints people. Literally. She coats them with household paint and transforms her subjects into a variety of characters that she then presents as photographs. The gallery will also bring show a large new rope painting by Argentine Fabian Marcaccio who recently received the prestigious Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture. Marcaccio, who became well known in the 1990's, uses digital and industrial techniques resulting in large-scale environmental paintings, short animations, and "Paintants" that combine digitally manipulated imagery and sculptural form.
Hales Gallery will feature the work of Frank Bowling O.B.E. RA, the veteran Guyanese artist who began making abstract paintings in the early 1970s at a time when the prevailing trend was strictly formal works. His large-scale acrylic gel works differ in that they have always been linked to very particular geographical locations or strong emotional relationships, particularly with the British, American and Guyanese landscape. Hales will also feature works by Adam Dant, whose large-scale brush and ink drawings alongside cartographic and serial publications re-imagine the life of cities.
Pierogi Gallery will feature the work of Jonathan Schipper and Kim Jones. Jonathan Schipper will develop a new kinetic installation dealing with entropy, Slow Room. In this work, over the course of five days, a room full of furniture is pulled through a small hole in corner of the room in a slow-motion sequence of inevitable events. Kim Jones is known for his infamous performance persona, Mud Man, and his detailed war drawings. Pierogi will show a group of his war drawings and several sensitive wall sculptures.
Postmasters will present paintings by David Diao, who has a renewed attention from the next generation of curators and collectors, as well as new young galleries in Europe. Diao, who was born in China in 1943, re-configures images and motifs from modern art, architecture and design into luscious paintings of charts, patterns and personal history as an artist suspended between the East and West. They will also feature paintings and drawings by William Powhida, an artist bent on exposing the power dynamics in the artworld microcosm and the world at large. William Powhida: an idealistic master observer or an insufferable crank? Powhida's works polarize and lets us know there are things we just can't agree upon.
P•P•O•W will present a site-specific installation by Bill Smith who creates interactive sculptures that rely on his training in both art and science. His work synthesizes his acute observations of nature and an intensive approach to mechanical engineering, resulting in installations that exists somewhere between a highly sophisticated sculptural practice and the elegant mechanics of science. In addition there will be a monumental painting of a tenement by Martin Wong, whose estate P•P•O•W represents. Beginning in the early 1980’s, Wong started painting scenes from the East Village where he lived. Wong rendered the combination of painting and architecture, which evolved into a spiritual concept. Wong’s work will be featured in the permanent collection of MoMA in a re-installation opening on November 17th.
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts presents a selection of the gallery's represented artists including new works by artist Rico Gatson and David Opdyke. Gatson continues to focus his keen eye on the visual language and historical symbolism of American race relations, identity and blackness. Gatson recently exhibited a 15 year survey of work as the featured artist of Exit Art’s SOLO program. Opdyke’s at once cunning and dramatic small sculptural vignettes are rich with formal detail. In juxtaposition to his sculptures, Opdyke’s new drawings are abstracts crafted from reconfigurations of scanned ephemera layered and manipulated to scramble legibility. Both artists project a sense of playfulness in the face of complexity. SEVEN partner Creative Capital will feature an viewer-interactive digital projection entitled Healing #1 (2003-04) by gallery artist and Harvard Medical School artist-in-residence, Brian Knep.
Winkleman Gallery will present new work by Jennifer Dalton, whose September exhibition examining the lopsided number of men vs. women guests invited on supposedly liberal TV and radio talk shows has generated a stir among the media watchers across the country. Also, the brand new video by legendary experimental filmmaker Leslie Thornton expands upon her celebrated Binocular series to explore the intersection of man's influence on nature as it affects other animals. "Sheep Machine" is a mesmerizing 12-minute video using Thornton's kaleidoscopic technique, shot in the highest peaks of the Alps, where a lazy ski lift makes an ominous, sci-fi looking backdrop for a herd of grazing sheep.
VIEW MAP- 2637 N Miami Ave, Miami FL
For press inquiries, please contact Michelle Finocchi at michelle@michellefinocchi.com or 973-452-3283.
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“There really are plenty of negatives about the fair format,” says Amrhein, and many of these – the strip lighting, the bad air, the endless “streets” lined with identical three-sided booths – will be familiar to frequent”
“Seven thoughtful, not-too-flashy New York galleries (Postmasters, Winkleman, Pierogi and others) combined efforts to fill a cavernous industrial space in Wynwood with a coop-style mini-fair called Seven.”
The New York Times, Art Basel Miami Beach Cliff Notes By Horacio Silva and Kevin McGarry, December 7, 2010
“A group of seven art dealers are shunning the usual December in Miami art fair circuit to organize an aptly named joint show called Seven, located a 24,000 square-foot space in the Wynwood Art District.”
“In the process of trekking from one designated fair to another during
Art Basel Miami Beach weekend, one encounters a litany of individuals, vendors, and spaces trying to grab your attention from amongst the morass. In the Wynwood District situated along the walking path, (for those who hadn’t the patience to wait for the shuttle from Scope to Pulse), was one such space that was the gem of all of Art Basel.”
“Hate art fairs? Seven is the Miami Art Fair antidote, as it’s hardly a fair at all. Housed in a converted warehouse, Seven New York based galleries (Pierogi Gallery, Hales Gallery, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, BravinLee programs, Postmasters, P•P•O•W, and Winkleman) join forces to create one sprawling exhibition.
Art Agenda, Art Basel, NADA, PULSE and SEVEN,
Paddy Johnson, December 6, 2010
“Not only was this mini-fair filled with some of the coolest art of the week - particularly their video art - that bitter taste of classism was notably absent.”
Miami New Times, Seven Miami: The Highlight of Art Basel, By
Amanda McCorquodale, December 6, 2010
