fsantiago@MiamiHerald.com
MARICE COHN BAND / MIAMI HERALD STAFF
Artist Alex Guofeng Cao, center, of New York, and two of his huge photographs made up of tiny photographic images, a must see, at Art Miami, 31st Street and NE First Ave., Wednesday, December 3, 2009. The Marilyn Monroe photograph is made up of tiny JFK images and JFK is made up of tiny Marilyn Monroe images.
You don't have to be a connoisseur or recite art history to revel in the annual art invasion otherwise known as Art Basel Miami Beach and its surrounding 19 satellite art fairs.
Simply put, we live in an artful and art-full paradise.
It may sound corny, but at its best, art inspires, provokes, educates, surprises, shocks and delights. So put on some comfortable walking shoes and revel in the images.
Here's a Miami Herald staff selection of don't-miss works to help you navigate the mayhem of too many shows, too little time:
• Topping this year's must-see list is the new de la Cruz Collection Contemporary Art Space at 23 NE 41st St. in the Design District. When you walk through the door, you're greeted by installations that pop with imagination: Paulina Olowska's CarMobile; textile creations by Cosima Von Bonin that include a giant multicolored octopus; seminal works by the late Félix González-Torres and Ana Mendieta, and this gem -- Good Times by New York-based Jim Hodges, an edition of the New York Times open like a book and washed in gold.
• At ChinaSquare Gallery in Art Miami, pixelated images by Alex Guofeng Cao appear to be huge photographs. But look closely and you'll see that the ``pixels'' are really tiny photographic images. The portrait of President Barack Obama is made up of photos of President Abraham Lincoln; Marilyn Monroe is composed of tiny images of JFK; JFK of tiny images of Monroe. Sold opening night: An image of Carla Bruni, made up of tiny images of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
• If the traffic jams in Wynwood and Miami Beach overwhelm you, head to North Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art and see the show The Reach of Realism, which is showing the wildly colorful and humorous vinyl mural Collage Family by Olaf Breuning -- mother, father and daughter created by the Swiss-born, New York-based artist from images he appropriated from the Internet. You can only guess where he found the the couple's genitalia.
• At Art Basel in the Miami Beach Convention Center's Booth D-5, Italy's Galleria Continua is featuring a piece by Belgian artist Berlinde de Bruycere that may stop you: a hunk of wax that looks like a hunk of human torso. Or maybe it looks like raw lechón ready for Christmas Eve roasting. Certainly, Dexter or the folks at CSI: Miami would get excited, except for the $180,000 price tag.
• At Design Miami, American band OK-Go rocks out 6:30 p.m. Friday on Gibson guitars tricked out with Fendi fabulousness: fur, nailheads, leather and suede. And, in an ode to performance art, each guitar shoots laser lights onto a screen to create psychedelic images. The show's inside Design Miami big-top at Northeast 39th Street and First Court in the Design District.
At Pulse Miami, the Austin-based artist collective Okay Mountain, opened the Corner Store at Booth I-200 -- and sales were brisk. The 11 artists created a mind-boggling variety of handmade products to sell inside the store: wall signs, scratch-and-win lottery tickets at two for $10; fishing lures for $59.99 a package; sticks of beef jerky; and a soda fountain. Nothing priced higher than $8,000, said artist Sterling Allen. The only freebie: an advertising flier touting sales. The installation's point: to skewer, however gently, the art fair's overriding obsession with sales. Pulse Miami is at the Ice Palace, 59 NW 14th St.
• At the Rubell Family Collection, 95 NW 29th St. in Wynwood: a massive Budweiser beer can installation by artist Cady Noland, part of the Rubell's new exhibition, Beg Borrow and Steal. Starting with the title of the work -- This Piece Has No Title Yet -- Noland uses whimsy and iconic objects to address American social issues. The exhibit of flags, scarves and more than 1,000 unopened beer cans lining the walls is designed to look unfinished by the random placement of objects.
Miami Herald staff writers Audra D.S. Burch, Daniel Chang, Lydia Martin and Jane Wooldridge contributed to this report.
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