The must-see outdoor shows and artworks in Miami this week

From Marco Brambilla’s Duchamp-inspired projection for Maison Margiela to an interactive work by Olaf Breuning

GABRIELLA ANGELETI

2nd December 2020 01:01 GMT

While Art Basel in Miami Beach and most other annual satellite art fairs and events have been cancelled or transferred online this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, institutions and artists across the city have outdoor exhibitions and projects that provide a safe and socially distanced art viewing experience this week. If you still happen to find yourself in South Florida for Miami Art Week, below are some of the must-see outdoor shows and artworks:

As part of its public art initiative Art Outside, The Bass is hosting the outdoor exhibition Work From Home (until 18 April 2021) across the boardwalk pathway between the museum and Lincoln Road. The exhibition features works by around ten Miami-based artists that explore themes of domestic life and the meaning of “home”, ranging from portraits of family and neighbours by Mark Fleuridor to the art collective We Are Nice’n Easy LLC’s dystopian advertisement U Want IT (2020), which critiques the anxieties around intimate relationships and latent desires. More works are installed in Collins Park and on the streets surrounding the museum, including permanent and temporary commissions by artists like Ugo Rondinone, Jim Drain and Lawrence Weiner.

Inspired by Ernest Hemingway’s 1952 novel The Old Man and the Sea, the site-specific installation Dreaming with Lions (until 6 December) by the Miami-based Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea looks like a monolithic library rotunda built on the beach. But instead of books, the shelves are lined with colour-coordinated beach towels that spell out inspirational phrases from the book evoking the hardships of this year, such as: “Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is.” Alan Faena, the founder of Faena Art, which commissioned the piece, says it “exemplifies our fighting spirit and that of the city of Miami”. Arrechea hopes the work will “remind the viewer of humankind’s resilience and strength of spirit in these troubling times”.

The New York-based Swiss artist Olaf Breuning, best-known for his surreal, often playful works, will unveil the permanent interactive sculpture The Cat (2020). Inspired by the Paul Klee painting Head of a Man Going Senile (1922), the concrete work is installed outside of the Christine E. Lynn Rehabilitation Center for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at UHealth at 1611 NW 12th Ave, and contains elements designed to assist the healing of patients undergoing fine and gross motor skills therapy. It has been commissioned by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs through its Art in Public Places programme, with support from the Jackson Health System. The medical facility, which set aside 1.5% of construction costs for public art, will also house works by Jen Stark, Cheryl Pope and Karl Haendel in the coming months.

As part of the AIM Biennial (until 31 December), which features site-specific works by local artists throughout South Florida, the Miami-based artist Yanira Collado has installed various interventions on sites formerly designated for the elderly. The work reflects on how soaring real estate prices have forced some retirement communities to relocate. Untitled (Dwellings) (2019) is on view at 12055 Street NE 2nd Avenue, at the former home of community elders who tended a local plant nursery. “Most of South Florida is changing [but] without roots or history we are the mercy of an unstable tomorrow,” the artist says of the piece.

The French fashion house Maison Margiela will project a work by the London-based artist Marco Brambilla—the mind behind recent high-profile projects like Marina Abramovic’s opera, Seven Deaths of Maria Callas, and the haunting video installation The Four Temperaments featuring Cate Blanchett—on the façade of flagship store in the Miami Design District at 142 NE 41st Street, which is due to open next spring. Nude Descending a Staircase No. 3 reflects on Marcel Duchamp’s famous painting Nude Descending a Staircase No. 2—a Futuristic depiction of a body in motion and an apt subject for the avant-garde fashion house. The work features a piano score and various figures descending down invisible stairs, and will be on view from 3-5 December.