Art Basel 2006

For some reason or another I have never been in town for Art Basel South Beach. Sad to say, I still didn't make it to the actual fair at the Miami Beach Convention Center, but I did catch a couple of other interesting things. Last night I went out to Art Positions, which was basically a bunch of shipping containers hosting different galleries, nothing really impressed me to be honest. I then went to the Design District for the Art loves design street party. We did a lot of drinking. In our search for something actually interesting to look at we found Peter Seidler: The Protectors and Animal Powers, which were basically these enormous resin and fiber glass sculptures of animals and "protectors" in some battle gear. Really cool stuff.

Thursday there were also a bunch of openings including the Paper Magazine/Jeffrey Deitch 99Cent store (even though most things were actually pretty expensive, there was probably one item under a dollar). I was in the neighborhood for an exhibit at my aunt's high school, and arrived at the store right in time to be first in line. Basically, they were selling a bunch of limited edition collaborative art stuff from 99 cents to $99,999, like a Kiki Smith "lamb bank", Alex Katz beach towels (available at target.com), Matther Barney figurines, and a bunch of other warholesque pop culture items. I walked away with a Jeff Koons/Supreme Skateboard Deck, which I got just in time, it sold out while I was in line too pay. I like the way Kim Hastreiter put it on her collection of limited edition objects, "I consider it my 401K plan." She works for the Deitch Projects and was in charge of this weekend's production. Anyway, I bought the top one seen here, one of three of the "Monkey Train" series.

Its a little funny, I'm not going to lie, but that's the fun of Pop art...