Monday, December 11, 2017

Art Basel Miami: Isaac Cordal ... by gimleteye

There are as many opinions about art at Art Basel as there are artists. Fair enough. But my favorite artist is Isaac Cordal who I met for the first time at the Pinta Fair (Latin American art, mainly).

Cordal is the artist whose image of bald decision makers jabbering about something as the waters rise (sea level) became an instant viral sensation on social media:


At Pinta, Cordal's installation was stuck at the back of the building. He was born in Galacia, Spain, now lives in Brussels, and before deciding to come to Art Basel Miami, he and his gallerist were promised that his installation, "Follow the Leaders", would be located at the entrance to the Pinta Fair.

Cordal wouldn't venture why his work -- whose political context is the disintegration of hope in mankind's built environment under the eyes of old white men -- was reset to the back of the Pinta building.

Here's my educated guess: Jorge Perez, the prince of the fair whose lounging confidence graced the cover of the Art Basel Magazine, and his Related Companies were selling condos from a booth not far from the entrance to Pinta. Perez, former Miami zoning official turned billionaire-who-conned-his-way-through-the-financial-crisis, may not have been happy with Cordal's work up front. Or maybe, the Pinta curator.


Can't have too much truth next to so much enterprise. It was difficult to buck the traffic, for me to see much of Art Basel. But in the main fair, I was struck hard by the relative absence of art reflecting our disturbed times. For that, Isaac Cordal gets my enduring R-E-S-P-E-C-T.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

looks to me, there are at least two expressions of art here,
one, from the artist showing the jabber heads doing they're usual thing,
two, the rich snoots types positioning themselves and relegating what they don't like,
three, most public being clueless of they're misinformation, since being informed would demand extending ones horizon.