Art Basel Miami 2007 - Part One

I have been hearing about Art Basel for years and somehow always managed to miss it by not scheduling my trips down South properly to early December when the fair usually takes place. I have always loved contemporary arts - a "frustrated artist" myself - and the thought of attending such an internationally renowned art event would have been a dream come true. Well, as a new Florida resident I had no excuses not to attend the event this year and that's what I did this past Sunday. The main event takes place at the Miami Beach Convention Center in South Beach, a gigantic concrete box that houses the fair itself, plus there are smaller parallel art exhibitions around the city of Miami as well. There you will find over 160 of the world's leading art galleries for modern and contemporary art showing the "crème de la crème" from 2000 plus artists' works. That includes painting, photography, sculpture, installation, film, performance, video and digital art. Sounds exhausting, huh? Well, it is! There is so much to see and absorb that a single visit makes it almost impossible to really make the most of such a huge event. It is an overdose of sensorial information and after a couple of hours walking around, in and out of the stands, I was drained - physically and mentally. I had my little digital camera on me and I must confess that I was embarrassed to use it at first. I always looked down on those "silly tourists" that take pictures inside museums but this was not a museum and after the first few shy shots I was snapping pictures of everything. As I have way too many images to post I will break it up in three different "articles" so I can show you some of my favorite works from Art Basel.