Art Positions: 23 young galleries showcasing cutting-edge projects, now inside the Miami Beach Convention Center

Formerly located at Collins Park in shipping containers, Art Positions will now comprise of booths situated in the center of the Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition halls. The sector presents 23 young galleries from 9 different countries, showcasing cutting-edge projects by single artists and conceptual group shows.

Art Positions counts participating galleries from the United States, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, Iceland, Japan, Italy, Mexico and the Netherlands. Eight of them are new participants in Art Basel Miami Beach.

The Oceanfront area, formerly the home of the Art Positions containers, will be created by Los Angeles artist Pae White, working together with Creative Time, the legendary New York public art organization, and host a daily program including the Art Basel Conversations, Art Perform, Art Video and Art Film.
Below, you can find all the 2009 Art Positions galleries at a glance; A detailed description of selected projects shown at Art Positions follows.

Miguel Abreu Gallery, New York City | Pieter Schoolwerth
Bischoff Weiss Gallery, London | Nathaniel Rackowe
Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam | Lara Almarcegui, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz, Falke Pisano
Canada Gallery, New York | Joe Bradley
Cherry and Martin, Los Angeles | Amanda Ross-Ho, Noah Sheldon
Pilar Corrias Gallery, London | Ulla von Brandenburg
Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York | Brent Green
James Fuentes, New York | Agathe Snow
I8 Gallery, Reykjavik| Egill Saebjornsson
Klemm’s, Berlin | Gwenneth Boelens, Falk Haberkorn, Alexej Meschtschanow, Adrian Sauer
Maisterravalbuena, Madrid | Karmelo Bermeso
Sara Meltzer Gallery, New York | Sarah Cain
Mizuma Art Gallery, Tokyo | Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba
ProyectosMonclova, Mexico City | Nina Beier, Mario Garcia Torres
Nogueras Blanchard, Barcelona | Ignacio Uriarte
Ratio 3, San Francisco | Ruth Laskey, Mitzi Pederson
Redling Fine Art, Los Angeles | Jason Kraus, Jeff Kopp
Sutton Lane, London | Reena Spaulings, Marcel Broodthaers
T293, Naples | Sonia Almeida
Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York | Barb Choit
Wallspace, New York | Walead Beshty, Shannon Ebner
Eva Winkeler, Frankfurt | Martin Hoener
Galerie Zink, Berlin, Munich, New York | Rinus Van de Velde

Miguel Abreu Gallery (New York) mounts a solo show of Pieter Schoolwerth’s paintings. In his allegorical tableaux, Schoolwerth insists on placing the depicted body at the center of his ingenious scenes, as a first order of resistance to the forces of abstraction. Within a single still picture he attempts to render the fact of the body’s existence in multiple images.

With “My Rising Phoenix,” Ellen de Bruijne Projects (Amsterdam) puts forward three strong positions by female artists Lara Almarcegui, Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz and Falke Pisano. Next to their critical approach towards society’s morbid growth in wealth and consumption, all three artists present in their work an inner strength with a productive focus on “creating constructions.”

Joe Bradley presents his “Shamagoo Paintings” at Canada Gallery (New York). The paintings – employing dirt, raw canvas and loosely drawn symbols – are part of a greater installation specifically created for this presentation.

Cherry and Martin (Los Angeles) installs a two-person show with new works by Amanda Ross-Ho and Noah Sheldon. In their photo-based pieces and sculptures, Ross-Ho and Sheldon actively investigate personal identity and experience within the context of America’s overwhelmingly disjunctive – often broken – mass-produced image and product-driven landscape.

Pilar Corrias Gallery (London) presents a solo exhibition of works by Ulla von Brandenburg, a participant in this year’s Venice Biennale. The installation is separated in two parts by a curtain, one area dedicated to Brandenburg’s watercolors, while the other part of the booth presents the film “Singspiel, ” both looking to the late 19th century and putting current depictions of reality into question.

For Art Positions, James Fuentes (New York) mounts a solo show with sculptures by Agathe Snow, consisting of the completion into her year-long research of the world of Leonardo da Vinci. Da Vinci’s machine concepts are the basis for the series of Snow’s raw sculptures exploring the inventions of the Renaissance times.

In their Art Positions project, i8 Gallery (Reykjavik) present a new installation by Egill Saebjornsson, which comprises of objects on a stage animated by a video projection and sound. In Saebjornsson’s work, everyday objects take on an unexpectedly life-like quality, encouraging the viewer to look afresh at their surroundings.

The group show “Time-Gap-Memory” at Klemm’s (Berlin) engages the notion of time, as in memory and past, compiling works by Gwenneth Boelens, Falk Haberkorn, Alexej Meschtschanow and Adrian Sauer. Crossing different media – drawing, collage, photography and sculpture – the gesture of conscious appropriation, utilization and reinvention is the thread that ties together this presentation.

Sara Meltzer Gallery (New York) shows a solo project by artist Sarah Cain, whose focal interest is to challenge the status of painting and employ abstraction as a mode of representation. She incorporates natural elements and found material, moving fluidly between works on paper, canvas, sculpture and site-specific installation.

Proyectos Monclova (Mexico City) presents a group show featuring Nina Beier and Mario Garcia Torres, which focuses on psychoanalytic theory, history, architecture and politics. The show includes paintings, sculptural-architectural elements and video.

The show at Mizuma Art Gallery (Tokyo) presents a new video installation and photographic works by Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba. For the project “Breathing is Free: 12,756.3,” Nguyen-Hatsushiba documents and refers to the globe’s diameter, a distance that he tries to reach while running in various cities around the world.

In his project “The Michael Winslow Typewriter Experience” at Nogueras Blanchard (Barcelona), Ignacio Uriarte works together with the actor Michael Winslow, who became famous in the 1980s thanks to his role in the comedy film “Police Academy.” For his work, Uriarte has invited Winslow to create a live monument to a typewriter, imitating the sound for a video piece, which in the exhibition is surrounded by Uriate’s typewriter drawings.

Ratio 3 (San Francisco) presents a two-person show with Ruth Laskey and Mitzi Pederson, who share the use of delicate materials and an attention to the subtleties of color, line and shape. Pederson’s sculptures and Laskey’s intricate weavings explore concerns of minimalism with an exciting contemporary edge.

Redling Fine Art (Los Angeles) highlights artists Jason Kraus and Jeff Kopp, each exhibiting work that plays on the materiality of common objects and manipulate them to highlight the subtle perversity and uncanniness of the everyday world.

Sutton Lane (London) mounts a juxtaposition of Reena Spaulings, a title character in a novel who then emerged as a fictional artist and gallery in Manhattan, and Marcel Broodthaers, the great progenitor of a rigorous but humorous practice of institutional critique. Like Spaulings, Broodthaers started as an artist in a contrived and poetic way – in both cases, the identity of the artist is called into question from the beginning, serving as a platform for further exploration.

The installation at the booth of T293 (Naples) is based on a work in progress by Sonia Almeida, in which a single street is mapped by the sequence of colors on its left and its right side, correlating with the idea of the two sides of the brain and the duality of body and mind. Almeida’s paintings express the duplicity of the body and how perception intrinsically connects those two sides.

Rachel Uffner Gallery (New York) constructs an exhibition of ceramic fragments produced during a tea ceremony held by artist Barb Choit in in February 2009 in New York City, which included a subsequent breaking of the cups and saucers. The installation includes the inventory amassed during this event as well as the photographs and documentations, fetishizing the broken, useless objects on the floor.

Wallspace (New York) features a three-person presentation with Fia Backström, Walead Beshty and Shannon Ebner. All three artists, in different ways, seek to exploit, deconstruct and repurpose systems of language, exchange and production, with strong ties to the legacy of conceptual art, performance and contemporary photographic practices.

Under the title “The Contemporary Cave” artist Rinus van de Velde installs a site-specific installation at the booth of Gallery Zink (Munich/Berlin/New York). “The Contemporary Cave” is the studio, archive and home of the fictional sculptor “William Crowder,” who van de Velde invented as his alter ego, presenting his sculptures, drawings and documentations of the life of the artist’s counterpart.

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