For Art Basel Miami Beach 2017, Kavi Gupta will present an ambitious booth of original work by our distinguished international artists. With an emphasis on focused curated spaces within the booth, highlights will include an original installation space and paintings by Firelei Báez, an arrangement of sculptural works by Manish Nai, and an installation space with works by Irena Haiduk. The booth will also debut work by Gerald Williams, Jeffrey Gibson, Jessica Stockholder, Beverly Fishman, Tony Tasset and Angel Otero and will have exemplary recent works by Glenn Kaino, Nick Cave, Michael Joo, José Lerma, Scott Reeder, Clare Rojas, Claire Sherman and Patrick Chamberlain and a selection of important historical work, including Roger Brown and Richard Hunt, will also be shown.
Firelei Báez’s installation will recall the sedimentary architectural history of colonial structures, indigenous and occupying cultures layered on the walls. Bounded by an arched door referencing Sans Souci Palace of Milot, Haiti the space will feature three paintings in conversation addressing the relationships between body, landscape, and history, and how intersections between these are interpreted socially. Báez recently has had solo exhibitions at the Pérez Museum, Miami, FL and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, and was featured at the Pinchuk Art Foundation’s Future Generation’s Art Prize exhibition at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Báez has an upcoming solo exhibition at the Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati, OH and will be included in the 2018 Berlin Biennale.
Manish Nai’s work demonstrates his perennial engagement with minimalism through transformation of the humble regional material of jute fabric, dyed in a rich natural indigo. Two sculptural wall works will engage the circle as a form, one solid and one hollow, placed opposite each other as if to face-off. Between the pair is a work revealing Nai’s “jute mural” technique, a debut for Art Basel Miami Beach in which he wraps a stretcher with layers of contrasting jute, and meticulously plucks individual threads from the warp to create layered abstract imagery. In June 2017, Nai opened a solo exhibition at Fondation Fernet-Branca Saint-Louis, France, and in 2016 won the Prudential Eye Award for his contributions to contemporary art in Asia.
The gallery will be debuting a selection of important works by AfriCOBRA founder Gerald Williams. Williams began his artistic career as a founding member of Chicago Black Power artist collective AfriCOBRA. In the 1970s Williams moved to Africa and traveled the world for more than 20 years, incorporating diverse influences from around the globe. Williams recently had his work featured in Soul of a Nation, which opened at the Tate Modern in London, Summer 2017. The show will travel to Crystal Bridges in February 2018, and then to the Brooklyn Museum later that year.
The gallery is pleased to present works by Irena Haiduk, representative of her complex multifaceted practice that has been the subject of enormous critical acclaim. In 2017 Haiduk was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial in New York, NY and in Documenta 14 in Kassel, Germany. The work installed in-booth will be an extension of on-going projects which existed before, during, and after Documenta 14. Haiduk has previously shown at the Renaissance Society in Chicago, IL, the Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA, the Athens Biennale, and the Istanbul Biennial. Haiduk has numerous upcoming significant exhibitions and publications.