Pulse is Alive and Kicking in Miami
Pulse Art Fair returns this year to its usual location at Miami Beach — its north and south wings separated by ocean breezes and selfie-ready sculptures — with a host of international galleries displaying a wide range of talent. This year’s iteration yields surprising juxtapositions of material, layering, and scale. Art wallpaper and immersive booths stack against repetitive minimalism and minuscule detailing. Pulse truly does hold something for everyone: from sculpture to pop art, sequins to detritus there is a surprise waiting around every corner for visitors. Most importantly, Pulse exhibitors aren’t afraid to take risks. The range of materials on display — sequins to safety pins —shows that the fair remains relevant and fresh.
Bryce Wolkowitz, New York, NY
Pepa Prieto, Pink Puzzle, 2017, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 in. Image courtesy of Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.
Bryce Wolkowitz’s booth is a vibrant wunderkammer: Lush abstract paintings compete for attention with multi-channel videos, with an eclectic color palette of pastels and jewel tones tying it all together. Particularly notable are paintings by Pepa Prieto of organic forms that simultaneously evoke Matisse cut-outs and unfinished Photoshop layers. A light touch of the Memphis Group’s design philosophy is apparent here: Prieto is wonderfully adept at this flat and painterly style, creating paintings that are distinctive and immediately recognizable.
Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
Gina Phillips, Joy and Ferdinand, 2016, fabric, thread, and paint, 51 x 31 1/2 in. Image courtesy of Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans.
Jonathan Ferrara brought the funk to Pulse this year, as only New Orleans can. Free-spirited and technically proficient, Gina Phillips’s thread artworks Jason and Manami and Joy and Ferdinand stand out from the pack. The New Orleans-based artist creates touching portraits using brightly colored fabrics, stitching together her subjects’ stories, capturing the most minute details of her figures’ nuanced expressions and stylish apparel. In her chosen medium, the artist extracts a sense of movement through the material presence of the fabric complemented by bright layers of paint.
Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY
Robert Larson, White Tableau—Strike Gently, 2015, discarded matchbooks on canvas, 48 x 63 3/4 in. Image courtesy of Joshua Liner Gallery.
Joshua Liner Gallery’s lineup features nuanced considerations of texture and color in striking combinations. With smooth sculptural lines and bright, painterly abstraction, Robert Larson’s assemblage work is given space to shine. His White Tableau—Strike Gently appears to be a minimal work based on a the white grid, but closer inspection reveals that the work is made of carefully arranged white matchboxes, found objects that the artist has painstakingly organized into a deceptively spare composition. Various states of decay imbue each matchbox with the weight of its history, and combined they make a uniform whole with a sense of materiality that needs to be seen in person to be appreciated
VICTORI + MO, Brooklyn, NY
Alex Ebstein, Rebuilders 1 & 2, 2017, PVC yoga mats, acrylic, and powder coated aluminum on panel, 40hx 30 in each. Image courtesy of VICTORI + MO.
VICTORI+MO have already carved out a place for themselves on the Bushwick art scene in the 56 Bogart building, and their penchant for spotting avant-garde artists is apparent in their Pulse showing. Of note, Alex Ebstein’s artworks Rebuilders 1&2 reveal an abstract expressionist aesthetic reinvigorated by surprising combinations of colors. As one moves closer, the surface texture may seem strangely familiar: The same yoga mats used to cover the booth’s floor serve as the artwork’s building blocks. Ebstein sourced mats of various colors, creating delightful amorphous forms from this unconventional contemporary material.
Richard Levy Gallery, Albuquerque, NM
Installation view, Richard Levy Gallery booth. On column: Jason DeMarte, Lickerish, 2017, removable wall adhesive pigment print, dimensions variable. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Jason DeMarte, Pokeberry Persuasion, 2016, archival inkjet print, 24 x 36 in. Edition of 10. Image courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery.
Pastiche and sensory overload arguably form the foundations of contemporary culture, and this combination is particularly potent in Richard Levy Gallery’s booth. Artist Jason DeMarte plays with the theme of simulacra with his nature-infused installation, giving brightly saturated flora and fauna a surrealist pop quality. His creations layer and overlap one another: A photograph of natural and exotic elements is superimposed over a similar-looking wallpaper background. The interplay of same and different, flat and layered points to our dependence on screens and browser windows in which images jostle for attention.
Samuel Freeman, Los Angeles, CA
Installation view, Samuel Freeman booth at Pulse Miami 2017. Image courtesy of the gallery.
Devan Shimoyama layers bold, natural motifs with glitter’s seductive, shimmering surface. Samuel Freeman presents an inviting sensorial experience with their exhibit: Holographic raindrop cutouts flank the various mixed media artwork against a bright teal backdrop. Devan Shimoyama layers bold, natural motifs with glitter’s seductive, shimmering surface. Figures intrude on the natural environment in these works, such as A Summoning, in which a dark male figure emerges from the jungle. Animism and spiritual overtones, recalling works by Gaugin, are filtered through Shimoyama’s seductive yet menacing large-scale compositions. The natural world becomes a glittering environment, at once hallucinatory and forbidding, surrounding the visitor with the twin senses of enchantment and danger present in the natural world.
Cover image: Jason DeMarte, Pokeberry Persuasion (detail), 2016, archival inkjet print, 24 x 36 in. Edition of 10. Image courtesy of the Richard Levy gallery.
