Portland's favorite chicken accessorizer Laura Lima's pagent on South Beach.

First off there were way too many fairs this year. If the fair isn't more established like ABMB, Nada, Aqua, Pulse, Art Miami and Scope it might be time to reconsider putting on an art fair. Depending how one counted it "21" fairs is simply an awful lot for any human collector to hit. Fairs like Pulse and Nada really know how to attact collectors and that is key for sattelite fairs to ABMB. Some like the Aquas seem to get by on quality, whereas other fairs like Scope seemed to be too big by half.

Here is a rundown of Art Positions, Aqua Hotel and Aqua Wynwood. NADA (which I consider it to have been the clear winner this year for sattelite fairs) and Scope will have another post. (I missed Pulse so take that into consideration... as well as the fact that Ive been very critical of NADA in the past)

Art Posistions consisted of containers placed directly on the beach and is part of the main Art Basel Miami Beach fair. About half of them were tolerable. Here are the standouts:


Daniel Hug gallery NYNY



Ara Peterson at John Connoly Presents (the other side of the container was mirrored... as I mentioned before mirrors were everywhere)



Jennifer Nocon at Tracy Williams Ltd.



One of my favorite artists Cao Fei (I showed her Cosplayers video in 2005) had the virtual RMB City on display in the real world. Of course she has a blog too.


At Aqua Hotel (their 3rd year):


At Eleanor Harwood Jill Sylvia's work was a popular seller



Fette of Fette's Gallery (LA) and blog had some stunning large scale drawings by Bas Louter. (btw Fette is kinda in love with Portland after visiting recently)



Matthew Picton at Howard House, continued to have a solid market for his latest work like Jerusalem (r)



Triple Base had some nice paintings by Bryson Gill whose drawings Portlanders saw last month.



Portland's Quality Pictures booth



Seattle's Platform booth with Scott Fife



Western Projects (Culver City) booth at Aqua looked great and had a lot of energy.


Aqua Wynwood was a wonderful venue with a lot of strong work though towards the back many of the booths seemed ananymous (ie too much like their neighbors):


Cris Bruch's sculpture (FG) and Sean Healy's tigers (BG)at Portland's Elizabeth Leach Gallery



Allston Skirt had a really great looking booth



Ogita Gallery Tokyo



One of my favorite gallerists Carolyn Coleman working the floor at Sixspace



Seattle dealer Scott Lawrimore dancing up a storm in his box



Lawrimore Projects "loading dock" booth at Aqua Wynwood