Back in the first week of December, all eyes were on Miami Beach for Miami Art Week and Art Basel 2021. This essential fixture on the art world calendar sees leading galleries from five continents gather in the city to show work from masters of modern and contemporary art, as well as the next generation of emerging artists.
Each year, our Creative Director, Lindsay, and our Art Buyer, Helen, jet off to Miami to meet new artists, and to catch up with those who currently work with Enter Gallery. In today’s blog, we’re providing some highlights from the week, a run-down of what our artists were up to in Florida, and teasing a couple of artists that we’ll be doing exciting things with in 2022.
Catching up with our artists
While it’s a little too soon to reveal any juicy details, watch this space for appearances from the following artists at Enter Gallery in 2022…
Yinka Ilori
It’s been a hell of a year for British-Nigerian artist, Yinka Ilori – with high profile collaborations with Lick paint, The Brit Awards, and Lego under his belt. Whether it’s installations on Tottenham Court Road or basketball courts in Canary Wharf, Ilori has been busy making the world a more colourful place at a rather dark time.
For Miami Art Week, Ilori designed his own skatepark, and Lindsay and Helen caught up with him at his installation at Superblue Miami – for which he permanently transformed their Blue Rider café with a mural and design concept inspired by Nigerian parables and the West African fabrics that surrounded him as a child.
View our selection of Ilori’s work.
Mateo
It was back at Miami Art Week 2019 when Lindsay and Helen were first blown away by the portraiture of Montreal-based artist, Mateo. His ‘monologues of the soul’, which celebrate the strength and complexity of women, are painted onto ornamental rugs, with the features of the subject seamlessly fused into the carpet’s design. With Enter Gallery, Mateo went on to release his first limited edition prints, all of which sold out in a matter of hours. Here he is in Miami displaying one of his latest works.
View our selection of Mateo’s work.
Miss Bugs
Elusive street art duo, Miss Bugs, were over in Miami showcasing their talents as masters of intricate details and encapsulating objects in resin. These cabinets will be arriving in the gallery early next year.
View our selection of Miss Bugs’ work.
During their week in Miami, Lindsay and Helen met a number of artists who made an impression. A couple of examples of talented folk that Enter Gallery are excited to work with in 2022 include Irish artist, Leah Hewson and Colombian street artists, Erre and Toxicómano (seen in the below photos in descending order).
Firm favourites…
It’s always a pleasure to see the work of our favourite artists. With that in mind, here are some of Lindsay and Helen’s highlights from their week in Miami…
Takashi Murakami
Following his major retrospective exhibition at Tai Kwun Contemporary in Hong Kong, in which he plastered every surface of the gallery with his cheerful and trippy mix of fashion, graphic art, cosplay and graffiti, Takashi Murakami was in Miami showing some of his signature Superflat artworks.
View our selection of Murakami’s work.
Ian Davenport
Renowned YBA, Ian Davenport, was also exhibiting this multi-coloured puzzle painting, which was launched earlier this year at Frieze London. Davenport’s polychromatic paintings are created by pouring thousands of vertical lines of glossy acrylic paint onto a tilted surface, producing vertical lines that cascade down into rich puddles of colour.
View our selection of Davenport’s work.
David Shrigley
Following his recent conceptual piece, the Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange, in which he displayed 12,160 tennis balls and invited guests to exchange them for their personal worn out tennis balls, David Shrigley was another artist to hit Miami Beach.
The artist was in town for a high profile collaboration with champagne brand, House of Ruinart. For the interactive event, entitled Unconventional Bubbles, Shrigley produced a selection of 36 drawings, gouache paintings, three neon illustrations, two ceramic works and a door installation. In this photo, we see a selection of his original pieces which were also on show.
View our selection of Shrigley’s work.
Gavin Mitchell
Pictured here exhibiting his selection of playing cards is Gavin Mitchell – a contemporary artist inspired by the idea of disorder and deconstruction, pulling apart the ordinary to put it back together in extraordinary ways.
View our selection of Mitchell’s work.
David Spiller
Lindsay and Helen prioritised checking out these pieces from the Estate of David Spiller – an artist known for his depictions of cartoon characters, and his use of doodles and scribbled phrases to convey messages of hope, mostly about the magic of love.
Enter Gallery are huge fans of David Spiller, and we miss having his work on our walls. If anyone out there is interested in selling us any work by this incredible artist, do drop us a line.
Gary Hume
The ladies were also lucky enough to catch the work of YBA and Turner Prize nominee, Gary Hume, an artist best-known for depicting everyday subjects using high gloss industrial paints.
View our selection of Hume’s artworks here.
The Connor Brothers
Fresh from celebrating their 10th anniversary in London in October, The Connor Brothers were in Miami showing a range of artworks.
View our Connor Brothers’ selection here.
Keith Haring
It was a real treat to see so many pieces from Keith Haring – an American artist whose animated imagery emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s, and became its own brand of social activism, promoting safe sex and AIDS awareness.
View our selection of Haring’s here.
Jean-Michel Basquiat
And finally, we have to mention this piece from Basquiat – the lauded graffiti artist turned painter attributed with elevating graffiti artists into the New York gallery scene of the 1980s.
View our selection of Basquiat’s here.
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