Ink Art Fair at the Suites of Dorchester

By Jordan Melnick | December 3rd, 2010 | 1 Comment

There is an ongoing TV marketing campaign to remind people of the importance of paper, a response I assume to paper’s waxing obsolescence in the digital age. It is an embittered and sarcastic campaign, and I don’t expect it to turn back the tide. The fifth-annual Ink Miami Art Fair, on the other hand, makes a powerful case for the humble piece of paper. The fair features 11 fine-print dealers from around the country, each of which has a suite at the Dorchester Hotel in Miami Beach to showcase its collections of contemporary prints. This arrangement, in which every suite has an intimate and unique ambience, is a welcome foil to Art Basel’s cavern-cum-cubicles setup at the Convention Center, which is only two blocks away. (Going to one after the other sounds like a good idea.)

Here are some photos and internet images (my camera died) from Ink.

Daniel Kelly’s beautiful “Strawberries,” part of Michael Verne’s collection of contemporary American artists living in Japan. (Verne Collection Inc., Cleveland)

Neil MacCormick’s “A.B.Demolition House on Debrebeuf” is a drawing, not a photograph. MacCormick puts a log of the number of hours it takes him per work on the back of each piece. I think this one took more than 200. (Jim Kempner Fine Art, NYC)

Erotic artist Hideo Takeda was commissioned to make prints of individual colors for children. They were later censored. (Verne Collection Inc., Cleveland)

James Siena’s “Forty-Six Combs” (Neptune Fine Art, NYC)

Wayne Thiebaud’s “Breakfast” (Marlborough Graphics, NYC)

In his “Color Grids”, Sol Lewitt combines a few colors (red, yellow, blue, and black) and a few kinds of lines (straight, not-straight, and broken) to create 78 absolutely unique squares. (Marlborough Graphics, NYC)

Ed Ruscha’s “New Wood/Old Wood”, an utterly flawless simulation of wood planks with layered paper, is a stunning example of the material’s versatility. (Mixografia, LA)

A piece from Mark Dion’s Herbarium series, which is inspired by Henry Perrine, “one of the first American naturalists to grasp the vast agricultural potential of Florida,” Dion says. Perrine was killed in a Seminole raid on Indian Key before establishing an experimental botanical station in Florida on a government grant. (Graphicstudio, University of South Florida)

Mel Bochner’s “Blah Blah Blah”, another mind-bending use of paper. (Jim Kempner Fine Art, NYC)

A copper plate used for Thomas Lias’s “Spatial Equilibrium” (Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia)

Steve Ford’s “Untitled” (Dolan/Maxwell, Philadelphia)

Each gallery has a suite off a long courtyard at the Dorchester. Visitors move from one world to another.

The bedroom of the Marlborough Graphics suite.

Marlborough made full use of its suite space.

From John Baldessari’s “ABC Art” series (Mixografia, LA)

Daniel Kelly’s “Rolling Out” (Verne Collection Inc., Cleveland)

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Click HERE for a list of links to the galleries showing at Ink and HERE to see all of our Art Basel week coverage.

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