Artists Interpret the Body

Being “Miami-ready” not only means preparing for a heavily-packed fair schedule and unending pours of Prosecco; not unlike any beachside affair, Miami Art Week raises the “alarming” debate of the beach body that many fairgoers strive to achieve before arriving to South Beach. Accompanying the beachgoers enjoying the generous sun inside the UNTITLED tent this year are various depictions of the body, ranging from the idealized to the grotesque or even absent but captivating. While contemporary artists continue to interpret the body’s mysterious ways of conveying a range of issues, from political to personal or social to erotic, many booths display works that tackle such issues through various media and experimentation of form.

Big Mama, Cristina BanBan, 2019, Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 150 cm (Galerie Kornfeld)

Elizabeth Working out poses for her Diana sculptures, Jenna Gribbon, 2019 (Fredericks & Freiser)

Spanish artist Cristina Banban’s paintings at Berlin gallery Galerie Kornfeld’s booth boost intimacy and energy in the form of voluptuous bodies that are unapologetically daring, sensual, and nude. Banban challenges art history’s idealization of the human figure, particularly of female, by placing our gaze towards overweight figures in intimate and self-caring positions. Mexican gallery CURRO brought to the fair American multimedia artist Adam Parket Smith’s Beautiful Ones, a pink-hued sculpture of an upside down heart-shaped ballon that resembles buttocks donning a G-string underwear. The artist’s approach is tongue-in-cheek and light-hearted with a dose of reference, from the obvious Jeff Koons homage to a salute to art history’s traditional nudes. Bodies are further abstracted — and almost absent — in New York artist Oren Pinhassi’s pastel-hued plaster sculptures that seem haunted by ghostly bodies. The eye catches hints of breasts, legs, and anus, but in the artist’s interpretation of physicality renders the references open-ended and imaginative for the onlooker. Figurative painting’s favorite subject, Female nude is celebrated and subverted in Jenna Gribbon’s Elizabeth Working Out Poses For Her Diana Sculpture, a female nude concentrated on hitting her target with an arrow, as manifested in her empowered posture. On view at New York gallery Fredericks & Freiser’s booth, the figure’s rosy nipples and sharpfacial expression build a contrast that enhances the artist’s subversion of the historic female nude figure. Male nudes occupy Benrubi Gallery’s booth with a host of images New York-based photographer Tom Bianchi took in Fire Island between late 1970s and early ’80s, a brief era that preceded the devastation of the AIDS crisis. Bianchi’s images are awash in gentle shots of male bond and sensual pleasure, captured through his intimate and stylized lens, veiling the works’ socio-political commentary on gender politics with images of bathers under New York sun.

- Osman Can Yerebakan

Polaroid, Tom Bianchi, 1975-83 (Benrubi Gallery)

Yesterday, Osman Can Yerebakan recorded an episode of the UNTITLED, ART Podcast on site with Galerie Magazine's Art and Culture Editor, Lucy Rees. Listen here.