I basically did zero research on the festival before heading to Miami, so on day 2, I headed to South Beach and decided to check out the SCOPE Art Fair. What I quickly realized was that there were actually several art fairs happening in Miami simultaneously, and Art Basel at the expo center was just one of them. SCOPE ended up being one of my favorite fairs – it was hosted in a big tent literally on the beach in South Beach, and sponsored by VH1.
SCOPE also had some of the most memorable pieces I saw in Miami Beach. Right when I walked in, I saw “Crash as self-portrait” by Peter Gronquist, which featured a scene from a car crash, with a man flying through a windshield after hitting a deer, his shoes and shattered glass suspended in mid-air.
Two other attention-grabbing pieces included a huge sculpture of Andy Warhol’s head and a woman seemingly floating a foot off the ground, covered in wax. I also liked the man hanging by his teeth off a lit light bulb.
Chicago’s own Hebru Brantley was a featured artist at SCOPE, and it’s always awesome to see his work. I also discovered some other young artists, like Greg Auerbach (who’s quite handsome also) and another featured artist Anthony Lister. One gallery exhibited the work of Amanda Marie, a Denver-based stencil artist who also caught my eye.
There were too many amazing artists to list completely, but I especially enjoyed the wooden sculptures by Reinhard Voss, colorful drawings by Lin Yi Hsuan, the slightly morbid paintings of Tom French, beach photographs of Antoine Rose and the haunting paintings of Blaine Capone. I fell in love with a huge painting by William Attaway, on sale for $25,000.
Agatha Kubalski 