The California Artists to Catch at Art Basel Miami Beach

As the annual fair kicks off, here are the West Coast works lighting up the city

Words by JANELLE ZARA

Art Basel Miami — Mark Innerst. *Seaside*, 2024. Oil on board.

In the not-so-distant past, California was considered an outsider in an art world still centered in New York and Europe. In many ways that was a good thing, according to Los Angeles gallerist Christopher Heijnen of Parrasch Heijnen. “That’s why artists had so much agency to make what they were making,” he said. “I think artists who are moving there are still finding some sort of version of that today.”

Over the past decade or so, with the arrival of Frieze L.A. and blue chip galleries such as Pace, David Zwirner, and a second Hauser & Wirth in West Hollywood, California’s status has changed dramatically. Heijnen, a specialist in historic work from the West Coast, is one of countless dealers now exhibiting California artists at Art Basel Miami Beach (Dec. 6–8), arguably the center of the art world the week of its annual run.

The California presence extends beyond the art fair and into the city itself, where artists from L.A., San Francisco, and beyond are headlining museum shows (Calida Rawles at the Pérez Art Museum Miami or Lucy Bull at ICA Miami, for example) and spanning the sides of buildings with their work (Mario Ayala at the Moore, Shinique Smith at PortMiami). After a quick spin around town, these are the best California artists on view in Miami right now.

Timo Fahler, *serpent in the grass*, 2024

WHAT TO SEE

Above the Venetian Causeway bridge between Miami and Miami Beach, enormous screens are illuminated with Patrick Martinez’s signature neons based on historic political texts.

Shinique Smith, whose work is featured at gallerist Monique Meloche’s booth at the fair, recently unveiled Constellation, a 10-story work of public art at PortMiami.

At the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Calida Rawles presents a new suite of portraits featuring the residents of Miami’s historic Overtown neighborhood. Celebrated for their tender depictions of Black subjects floating on water, her work projects potent sentiments of joy, contemplation, and release.

At ICA Miami, painter Lucy Bull presents her very first U.S. museum show, The Garden of Forking Paths. Looking back at the past five years of her practice, the exhibition reflects on the recent evolution of her dynamic abstract style.

Mario Ayala, best known for merging various cultural symbols and graphics in his airbrush paintings, unveiled an enormous mural outside of Miami’s Moore building featuring the late and beloved Spanish-language TV personality Walter Mercado.

At the fair, L.A. gallery Roberts Projects’ booth included Tower of Destiny, a monumental sculpture of found objects by Betye Saar standing more than 6 feet tall. San Francisco gallerist Jessica Silverman’s booth included a special collection of historic L.A. artist Judy Chicago’s portraits of trees hailing from the ’90s.

L.A. gallerist Michael Kohn also brought a strong suit of historic West Coast artists—the likes of Lita Albuquerque, Bruce Conner, Joe Goode, and Wallace Berman. One standout piece is a Corner Lamp DB 44, c. 1980, a rare sculpture by Light and Space artist Larry Bell.

In the fair’s section devoted to emerging artists, gallerist Sebastian Gladstone mounted a solo presentation by Timo Fahler titled snake in the grass. The suite of new sculpture and wall-mounted works merges imagery of the Mesoamerican serpent with Los Angeles visual culture, two symbols of the artist’s identity.

Parrasch Heijnen’s joint Art Basel booth with its New York counterpart Franklin Parrasch was thoughtfully curated as a dialogue between late and living artists. A major highlight was the work of La Monte Westmoreland, whose collages of found objects combined with found images also feature at the Rubell Museum’s show of recent acquisitions.