With sunlight streaming through its tent and the sound of waves crashing along South Beach, Untitled Art, Miami Beach is a much-beloved event in a packed Miami Art Week schedule. On December 3rd at 10 a.m., a VIP crowd poured into the fair’s signature shoreline tent, greeted by champagne, coffee carts, and a beachside lounge that cut through any stuffiness between booths.
Indeed, the sunlit aisles also provided an ideal backdrop for art browsing. This year’s edition of the fair—its 13th—is Untitled’s largest yet, featuring 176 galleries (compared to 163 last year). This year, the participating galleries were curated under the theme “East Meets West,” guided by Kathy Huang, an independent curator, and Jungmin Cho, founder of Seoul art space White Noise. As part of Untitled Art’s aim to better represent the breadth of the contemporary art market, the fair invited a more diverse array of galleries from Asia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. Several galleries focused on exploring individual artists’ struggles with identity or assembled diverse rosters that reflect a broad geographic and cultural scope.
[...] Untitled Art’s commitment to curator-driven presentation is clear across the board, but is particularly prominent in its special projects section of installations. Notable works, scattered across the three aisles, include Judy Pfaff’s El Patio (1988)—a massive colorful artwork affixed to the East wall near the VIP lounge—and Brooklyn gallery Transmitter’s “contain and mend” exhibition, a group show of textile work from artists from Asia and of the Asian diaspora.