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More Than You Can See: Storm of Art Engulfs Miami, The New York Times, December 9, 2006

More Than You Can See: Storm of Art Engulfs Miami
By Roberta Smith

MIAMI BEACH, Dec 8 – It’s Baselmania week in Miami: the week the art world gets high on art fairs, its current drug of choice. This year there are said to be 13 additional fairs grouped around the mother ship, Art Basel Miami Beach, now in it’s fifth year…

Art Basel Miami Beach alone now offers more than any one person can see: in addition to nearly 180 exhibitors in the Miami Beach Convention Center, there are panels, lectures, a video lounge, a sound-art lounge, artist projects and Art Positions, the minifair held in containers on the beach. So in a way you’re back at square one, looking at the art. Seeing what I could – some of Basel Miami Beach and Positions, much of the New Art Dealers Alliance fair known as NADA, assorted museum exhibitions, some private collection shows – I had a fabulous time…

All sorts of new stuff fills the NADA fair, which occupies a sprawling white stucco building in the Wynwood section of Miami. At the London dealer Dicksmith’s booth, for example, the Japanese-born video artist Meiro Koizumi has a short video titled “Amazing Grace,” in which his face serves as whipping post, lead character and stage set all at once. For something more restrained, try Emily Wardill’s equally engaging, if more abstract, films at Jonathan Viner, another London dealer.

Kazok Hall, from Vienna, has a beautiful oversized rag rug, with fringe as long as hair extensions. It was made by Fabrics Interseason, a fashion collaborative that converts unsold clothes to rugs at the end of each season. Yet at Leo Koenig, a big, gaudy new painting by Peter Saul, now in his 70’s, is in full cry...