Miami Art Basel: Dream or Nightmare
Believe it or not, but last month we’ve been participating to our first Miami Art Basel. We’ve been thinking about going there a long time ago, but we were always hesitating about the idea.
This time, we had good reasons to go there! First of all, we were officially invited to the « Sentience » Group Show organized by the WYN317 gallery, located in the heart of the Wynwood district. We were also invited to paint a wall at the Basel House, in the RC Cola Factory, a huge open-air spot surrounded by walls where concerts and parties are organized during the festival.
Each year you can see on social medias all the graffiti writers coming from all over the world going to this event to paint a lot of walls all together. But when it is minus 30 degrees in Montreal in December, it becomes obvious that joining your buddies to rock a piece in Miami under the sun is much more exciting! However, every time we were asking them about the Miami Art Basel, the opinions were kind of reserved… It’s a mix of awesome! Amazing! You should come, everyone is there and, now it sucks… everything has changed, it’s not as it used to be anymore. Nevermind, this time we would be able to see it by ourselves!
« Miami Art Basel was exactly like they said, a mix of: I love it! It’s awesome! Wish you were here! And: Damn! I am getting sick of it, I fucking hate it, please help!!! ».
For the nice part, Miami is without a doubt the perfect place to go in December at least for the sun and the beach! Murals and graffiti are covering the Wynwood district.
We were so pleased to see so many of our friends, everyday, at every single corner of every street, painting, walking, or completely drunk!
We also had a blast to rock few walls there, meeting new faces, seeing again old friends, meeting new talented persons again. No, we are not repeating ourselves, it was just like that each single day!
And, we finally saw the Wynwood Walls, a very chic open-air spot with tons of murals, each more beautiful than the next, a little shop and a restaurant to end the visit of the site with the famous Goldman Global Arts gallery. In short, we had never seen before such a huge place of this quality, devoted to graffiti and street art!
But Miami Art Basel is also luxurious rides everywhere in front of huge hotels on Collins Avenue.
"When these assholes aren't driving at full speed in a street full of pedestrians, just to draw attention on their miserable life, they are driving slowly with their gold digger on the side, scanning the horizon in search of a new and richer billionaire."
And these men, very chic, too tanned and definitely old, but filthy rich enough to be accompanied by "2 hot, fashionable and young girls" each. You quickly get they are not with their « grand father » but really hanging-out with their "beloved boyfriend" all looking in opposite directions when they are not stuck on their gold plated iPhone checking their lame Instagram profile.
Moreover, all these hotels organizing Miami Art Basel VIP parties, supposed to be officials, but above all unaffordable! And if you get closer, there are no artists, no galleries coming at the event, even the DJ is completely unknown! Well… just a dumb trap for tourists!
" There are obviously lots of galleries, opportunistic persons and artsy fartsy people whose only talent is their overinflated ego and the way they throw money around, to fulfill their cultural and artistic blank..."
In order to better mislead medias, collectors and artists, by keeping in mind the hope of one day taking part of the official history of a movement and artistic culture they’ve never been part of.
These people just prove an incontestable fact: money drives you crazy. When talent and authenticity are missing, money is always here to counterbalance…
There is also all these VIP nights where you better be on the guest list however you’ll be asked to stay outside waiting with the others for hours to get the chance to come in, finally what for? Showing on your Facebook profile that you went to a VIP night during the Miami Art Basel with worldwide artists? The same artists you can meet everyday at every moment for free outside? What a joke...
After all, we are, despite everything, delighted to see that some of us coming from graffiti or street art backgrounds, gain more and more recognition in the contemporary art scene, that galleries of worldwide reputation starts to increase their value in the art market, and, by the same time, these artists have been able to keep their good values without becoming pretentious, and even if impostors are still around, trying by all means to put their name in the history of this new artistic movement,time will take care of them and put things back at the right place.
To end, yes we do expect to have good reasons to come back to Miami Art Basel next year.
