Untitled is hardly the only art fair that takes place in Miami Beach this week, but it is certainly, well, the beachiest. The fair is set on a tent located on the sand itself, and from its aisles, you can peer out to observe bathers lounging around.
That may explain the freewheeling spirit of Untitled. Don’t come expecting much in the way of conceptual art—you’ll have to wait for the opening of Art Basel Miami Beach tomorrow for that one. What is here, mainly, is a whole lot of painting, both figurative and abstract, and a lot of good people watching.
The chill vibes seem to conflict with the grand scale of Untitled, which has this year brought 171 galleries to town. This was somehow just one of two high-profile events that opened to VIPs on Tuesday—the other was NADA Miami—and that meant that the curators, artists, collectors, and advisers who attended were forced to make some tough decisions on how to manage both.
To help make those decisions easier for those visiting throughout the week, here’s a brief guide to five can’t-miss offerings at Untitled.
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Guy Harloff at Chiostro
Image Credit: Alex Greenberger/ARTnews Untitled may have a reputation for showing off the work of hot young artists, but a dead, obscure poet-philosopher named Guy Harloff steals the show this time around. In his bizarre, dazzling paintings, eyes, cogs, tools, and more assemble in dense arrays that seem imbued with spiritual meaning. One from 1960 features bulging peepers, menacing knives, and slithering snakes. The word “WOMAN” is visible amid all the chaos, along with scrawled text reading “There is nothing obscene in this picture whatsoever”—a statement that feels ironic, given that an engorged phallus festooned with pupils can be spotted nearby. Harloff’s taboo-testing subject matter has intrigued tastemakers in the past, including curator Harald Szeemann, who featured the French-born artist’s work in his 1972 edition of Documenta. With a fascination with Surrealist imagery having firmly taken hold as of late, Harloff is poised to gain some new fans.
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Amina Agueznay at Loft Art Gallery
Image Credit: Alex Greenberger/ARTnews Amid a sea of forgettable fiber art, Amina Agueznay wool pieces stand out because they are sparer. The daughter of Malika Agueznay, a modernist who was a part of the Casablanca School movement of the 1960s, this artist weaves and crochets pieces that allude to Moroccan traditions, though she does not explicitly represent them. Enfouissement (2024), a hanging 11-foot-long piece of cotton with undyed wool sewn into it, alludes to the adghar, a protective garment worn by brides on their wedding day. The title, which translates from the French to “Act of Burying,” refers to violence and silence; the saggy, puckered wool elements hint at wounds that have begun to mend.
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Ibrahim El-Salahi at Vigo Gallery
Image Credit: Alex Greenberger/ARTnews Now in his 90s, Ibrahim El-Salahi is on a roll, having featured in not one but two Venice Biennales since 2020 alone. The Sudanese modernist continues his hot streak with this booth, featuring larger examples from his “Pain Relief” series of prints, for which the artist silkscreens drawings of human-animal hybrids onto pieces of linen. Made as a way of taking his mind off chronic back pain resulting from his sciatica, these works spotlight creatures in states of transformation. In one work, El-Salahi shows an anguished figure with an African mask. The figure’s legs morph into other people’s faces, and a bird is shown perched on the figure’s head, as though it were oblivious to his torment.
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Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo at El Kilometro
Image Credit: Alex Greenberger/ARTnews Time is a precious commodity at art fairs, and that makes it tough to set aside even just a few minutes for video art. Can I convince you to do so for two knockout pieces by Sofía Gallisá Muriente and Natalia Lassalle-Morillo? Allow me to try.
In these paired works, both titled Pelicula pasada por agua (Underwater Film, 2024), these artists show moving film strips with images of beachcombers, trains, and landscapes just barely visible. All this celluloid has been damaged because the artists developed their footage using water from the Puerto Rican town of Jayuya. That town was both the site of an uprising against the US government in 1950 and suffered especially pronounced destruction during Hurricane Maria in 2017. The films shown here, with their stuttering, partially deteriorated images, reflect the sense of loss that has become endemic to Jayuya’s recent history. But the fact that their films exist at all, preserved here on video, suggests that the images contained within will not entirely disappear forever, putting these works in line with a larger tradition of Puerto Rican resilience in the face of colonialism and climatological disaster.
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Anne Samat at Marc Straus
Image Credit: Alex Greenberger/ARTnews Doorstoppers, trinkets, and upcycled strips of denim become unlikely ornamentation in Anne Samat’s over-the-top pieces, which make prominent use of pua kumbu, a ceremonial cloth native to Borneo, not far from Malaysia, the country where this artist was born. As used by the Indigenous Iban people, pua cloths are traditionally used in rituals, where offerings might be placed upon them. Samat, who learned pua weaving styles from the Iban people, here uses those cloths in sculptures that also include necklaces, tassels, and chintzy objects bought at discount stores. They are both gaudy and gorgeous, and they suggest forms of sacredness found in unexpected everyday objects.
