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Art Basel: Day 0

Miami’s Fountainhead Studios hosted a walkthrough before Art Basel’s convention center madness.
Carla Fache’s Studio. All photos by the author

This Monday, November 30th, marked the beginning of Miami's week long art-attack. 'Til the sixth of December international artists flock between Wynwood and Miami Beach, sieving through galleries and pop-up concepts—the whack, the damn decent, and the incredible.

The Fountainhead Studios, nestled in the Little River District, opened its doors to the public for a pre-Basel gathering Monday night. Resident artists display works in their intimate creative spaces, revealing the processes behind final products over homemade pies, whiskey, and beer.

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Among these artists is Carla Fache, an intuitive painter who captures light and movement through tireless layering and scientific color play. Fache's approach to abstraction is almost new-wave—she's definitely listened to Dark Side of the Moon once or twice—yet the cold formlessness that comes with the territory is replaced by a crisp warmth throughout her work. One of her untitled pieces actually sent me back to preschool, when logic wasn't quite formed and I doted on the freckled boy who pretended he had little T-rex arms. Things were more innocent then, and in a yellowy-pink mist Fache captures the intangible; that blurry, naive attraction solidified by the sharp weight of a teary blue square.

Untitled by Carla Fache

Down the hall from Fache's studio hangs the work of Marco Beria, a Venezuelan visual artist who shares Fache's propensity for color in a more regulated form.

Marco Beria's Studio

Beria admits he tossed his 'bocaditos' together at the last minute and taunts me with the the false promise of pot brownies that may or may not enhance the visual impact of his melting color palettes. Regardless, his disciplined rainbows speak for themselves. Beria explains his experience as a Sesame Street set designer gives him an understanding of color and its psychological implications. Beria's shapes are organic, mimicking heart beats or weather patterns either monochromatic or vibrant, executed with calculated precision and delightful restraint.

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But the works of fellow artist, Juan Raul Hoyos, exhibit neither of those qualities. Instead, Hoyos' intriguingly shoddy structures explore the ready-made nature of contemporary urban architecture.

Installation by Juan Raul Hoyos

In his studio, silkscreens printed with skyscraper windows stretch around life-sized, rectangular prisms on wheels. His studio houses stacks of canvas frames, bags of foreign dirt, and he divulges he has a 15-year-old son who's learning to play drums. We speak like salty old men unimpressed with Miami's condo boom, nostalgic for the days when art was still involved in industrial construction.

Juan Raul Hoyos in his Studio

Throughout his work, Hoyos explores the redundancies of today's buildings, conceived with their own mortality in mind. With city space (literally) running out, Hoyos believes future structures cannot remain static; to grow as a society we must reconsider space and embrace its impermanence.

Touring The Fountainhead Studios feels like stepping into a stranger's living room: I walk in, don't touch anything, and try to analyze a life based on what they want me to see beside what they hope I don't notice. The rest of Basel may not be as calm, but this soft opening prepares us for an inevitable sensory overload. Select studios will remain open to the public throughout the week.

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