Image by Bob Mizer

Johnny Boy is super excited for this years exhibition’s during Art Basel in Miami Beach, and have listed below my MUST SEE list.  I decided not to include any of the exhibitions going on at Miami’s museums because they are all FAB and worth seeing, you can click on the links to go to see the exhibitions on view:  BASS, PAMM, MOCA, ICA, or the WOLFSONIAN.  Now on to my picks:

• The Great Expectations (image above) exhibition is at the home of gallerist Nina Johnson-Milewski and artist Daniel Milewski, and will run from December 3rd – 7th.  N & D have invited Invisible Exports, Samson Projects, and The Box to “curate” their beautiful 1928 bungalow home in Miami with groups of artists and individual works, in addition to new works by Katie Stout, Jim Drain, Magic Flying Carpets, Christy Gast, Nicole Cherubini, Gina Beavers, Rochelle Feinstein, Nicolas Lobo, David Brooks, Steph Gonzalez-Turner, Kathryn Garcia, and Virginia Overton.  There will be an open house on Friday, December 5th from 11am – 3pm at 986 NE 84th Street, Miami, FL 33138.  All other times, please email info@gallerydiet.com to schedule a showing, or you can just show up and scare them 🙂  Just Kidding, don’t do that, they have BIG DOGS!

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• The De la Cruz Collection is one of my favorite places in Miami, and still remains free and open to the public.  This year, they are presenting Beneath The Surface, a selection of works from a generation of artists who are redefining post-war art movements, opening Tuesday, December 2nd. The works selected for this year’s exhibition are subjective representations of our new American landscape. Through the use of process and appropriation the figure is once again re-introduced with an understanding of social media and technological newness, thereby blurring the boundaries between Abstraction and Figuration.  The exhibition has too many great artists to list (see above), but a special shout out goes to one of my fav’s, Félix González-Torres.  On the 3rd floor of the De la Cruz Collection, González-Torres created sheets of paper with text on it, which you are welcome to take home as a keepsake.  Make sure to snag one if they’re still there.

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Photo: Kris Knight, The Flying Money, Oil on canvas, 2014

• Spinello Projects is having a pop-up exhibition in the Design District (95 NE 40th Street), featuring a solo exhibition titled Smell the Magic by Toronto-based artist Kris Knight from December 1st – December 15th.  Knight exerts a firm command over painting, drawing, and drafting methodologies in his paintings, and capably carries his subjects from the past into the present. He addresses the future by proposing new models of masculinity and gender identity: boys can be dreamers, they can be cast under gentle lights and colors, they can wear makeup and be considered both male and beautiful simultaneously. The exhibition is generously supported by Gucci, whom creative director Frida Giannini used as reference for the Fall-Winter 2014 collection.  The opening reception is from 8pm – 10pm on Monday, December 1st.

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• Primary Projects, a multidisciplinary project space in Downtown Miami, in association with FAMILY, is putting on the International Friendship Exhibition, a group show of 19 artists, including: Jim Drain, Gavin Perry, Karen Starosta-Gilinski, Cole Sternberg, Cody Hudson, and Michael Vasquez. Titled in reference to Kim Jong- il’s gift pavilion of the same name, the exhibition pays homage to the nature of contradiction, a concept ironically exemplified in the aforementioned kitsch- and-propaganda-filled pavilion in North Korea.  The show “is an examination of a complicated idea,” said Books Bischof, Primary Projects founder and curator, “it’s at its core a display of actual familial community, local artists and non-Miamians alike, learning from each other.”  The opening reception is on Wednesday, December 3 from 5pm – 9pm.

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Image courtesy of Daniel Arsham

• Already open but DEF not one to miss is Welcome to the Future, a major site-specific installation by Daniel Arsham at Locust Projects. For the installation, Arsham transformed the gallery into an excavation site, digging trench in the gallery’s floor that holds thousands of calcified artifacts—a muted cacophony of 20th century media devices. Mounds of boom boxes, electric guitars, SLR cameras, Blackberries, game controllers, VHS tapes, Walkmans, film projectors, and portable televisions, rendered in crystal, volcanic ash, and other minerals fill the pit, collapsing linear narratives of past, present, and future.  Arsham is creating many different pieces during Basel this year, but this installation is a beauty that both art lovers and haters will be speaking about.  The show is open until January 2015, with special Art Basel hours from December 1st – 6th between 9am – 5pm.