Coming straight off the heels of November’s sobering election results, no one knew what to expect of this year’s Miami Art Basel— would the vibe be just as unsettled, anxious? The answer, we now know, is a resounding no. True to form, the international art world poured into the always exuberant city with as much enthusiasm and spirit as ever, filling the galleries, studios, streets and beaches with their usual joie de vivre.
This inclusive, curious and creative vibe inherent in Miami Art Basel perfectly captures the Precious 7 mission and is exactly the reason why we chose the beloved art fair as the location of our first Art and Fashion Collective Pop Up and to celebrate the inaugural print issue of the Precious 7 magazine.
We transformed D-Koncept, a local French concept boutique in Wynwood, into an immersive art gallery experience, complete with a curated selection of seven innovative artists’ work, each with a unique point of view and medium. In recent years, Wynwood has become the creative incubator for the artistic community in Miami and we knew the cultural hub would be our temporary Miami home.
The Precious 7 Exhibitors
NARCISS by Alise Trautmane
Trautmane is the kind of double threat we can get behind, utilizing her design talents in both the art and fashion worlds simultaneously. As a self-made accomplished artist and talented designer, Trautmane is a poster child for the Precious 7 aesthetic. She’s studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, the Istituto Europeo di Design and currently at Parsons New School for Design in New York.
In addition to creating exclusive clutches for our Precious 7 print party, Trautmane also brought along a series of strong abstract work as well as some of her latest fashion designs.
Ilaria Bochicchio
After attending the European Design Institute in Rome from 2007 to 2010 and then the MiMaster in Milan, Bochicchio went on to work at the magazines Hestetika and Aware. She’s now the art director for the VERSUS project, whose object is to “relate the emerging Italian contemporary art with the international one.”
The Milano based performing artist is also an accomplished graphic designer, illustrator and painter and provided the Precious 7 pop up with her uber feminist Barbie-inspired paintings and a special performance on the pop up’s opening night.
Michele Tombolini
The Venice born artist, who now calls Berlin home, is something of a modern day Andy Warhol, appropriating cultural images and plastering them against a color blocked background, all with a sly referential nod to something way more subversive than meets the eye. In addition to his partnership with Precious 7, Tombolini also collaborates with Contini Art Factory – Venice, Le Dame – London and Green Art Asia – Hong Kong.
BLUER
A plexiglass artist with a penchant for the natural world, Lorenzo Viscidi studies the Earth’s most beautiful inhabitants by capturing them inside his plexiglass frames. By memorializing butterflies, daises, and oranges within his clear confines, Viscidi elegantly makes the ephemeral eternal. The Italian artist brought three of his easy-to-love 3D works to the Precious 7 pop up with The Interior Design store.
Fred Love
Miami based fashion photographer Fred Love is, in fact, all about the love, baby. His sexy, riotous black and white photographs at the pop up were a fan favorite, and for god reason. The firebrand photographs, depicting a nude model wearing only a unicorn mask, splashing around in an outdoor pool, are as immediately iconic as they are eye catching.
Maria Galli
Born and raised in sultry Buenos Aires and established in spicy Miami, photographer Maria Galli imbues an inherent sensualness to all her photographs, even if they’re landscape portraits or urban snapshots. Her command of context, emotion and composition make for effortlessly captivating photographs that completely capture everything we love about Miami.
Anthony Gomez-Zemogart
Basquiat, Keith Hering and Picasso come together in Gomez-Zemogart’s energetic paintings. The Florida-based painter says that he listens to music to get inspired and is so passionate about painting because “I can be creative and express my feelings and life itself, in a way that I cannot express with words.”
In addition to the pop-up shop being open every day for visitors to browse and buy the collections, we hosted a rotating roster of performances and parties in the space that culminated on December 3rd with our VIP launch party for the print mag. The whole thing feels like a wild dream and one we can’t wait to tell you about!
Of course, we also used our time during those four long days and hot nights to visit as many galleries, booths, parties, exhibitions, performances and events that we could. The whole weekend feels like a wild dream and one we can’t wait to tell you about.
DAY 1 - Thursday, December 1
Rapper Pusha T, artist Ben Jones and model/activist Adowa Aboah came together with adidas Originals for their first ever #TLKS event on Thursday. The “open source talk series,” moderated by Surface magazine’s EIC Spencer Bailey, hosted the creatives on a panel to discuss everything from the resurgence of 90s culture to the nexus of originality.
The shoe brand also hosted a dance performance, choreographed by Blanca Li, acclaimed Spanish choreographer, dancer and filmmaker. Precious 7’s EIC Anna Maria Sandergren was one of twenty journalists to attend the private press-only performance at a Lincoln Road garage before the dance troupe hit the Miami streets for their public performance. The 50 dancers were dressed head-to-toe in new Adidas gear, merging style, fitness and dance in a super modern, effortless way that left a lasting impression on our EIC.
Adidas also gave away 1,000 pairs of limited edition EQT ADV 91-16 sneakers to coincide with their events. Sandergren scored a pair of the Art Basel kicks and is already obsessed with the sleek, all-white upper and reflective stripe detail. It’s this intersection of style and art that Precious 7 finds its own foundation, so the Adidas events feel particularly personal.
We opened the Precious 7 Art and Fashion Collective Pop Up with an inspired performance by Ilaria Bochicchio; the Milan based artist used a live model to combine design, style, beauty, painting, movement and sculpture in a singularly evocative performance. Bochicchio covered her model (sitting in the middle of the store on a fringed swing) with dramatic make-up, cheerful flowers and swaths of neon paint while pop up visitors looked on. Bochicchio’s performance becomes part of the artwork itself, her focused, deliberate intensity elevating the whimsical piece to something even more special.
DAY 2 - Friday, December 2
Only two blocks from the Precious 7 pop up sat the otherworldly fashion exhibition, A Queen Within: Adorned Archetypes, at the ArtSeen Gallery— a must see for the fashion and art obsessed, so of course we had to visit. Curated by international fashion collective Musea, the exhibition explored how fashion and design has influenced and changed the meaning of femininity and womanhood through fashion design, photography, film and artwork.
Pieces from legendary designers like Alexander McQueen and fashion houses like Comme des Garçons took center stage in the Wynwood warehouse space, each design a star in its own self-contained world. Other artists on view included Vetements, Iris van Herpen, Vivienne Westwood, Fantich & Young, Bea Szenfeld, 69, Arvida Byström & Maja Malou Lyse, Benji Taylor, Roger Weiss, Geoffrey Lillemon x Bernhard Willhelm and Maja Gunn, among others.
DAY 3 - Saturday, December 3
To celebrate the Precious 7 print magazine launch, we hosted a party on December 3rd, where a mix of collectors, socialites, photographers, hospitality moguls, real estate developers,
museum directors, fashion editors, designers, models, influencers and local bon vivants came out to fete the inaugural issue. Our bombshell cover star, Denise Bidot showed up to the party, radiant, with her proud mother and adoring daughter in tow.
204 pages long, Retrospective is a lovingly curated, highly personal tome that highlights our 3 years of creating and collaborating with the brightest, most progressive people in the creative industry. It is in the spirit of creative collaboration that we tapped NARCISS designer and artist Alise Trautmane to create an exclusive clutch to commemorate the inaugural print issue. Each NARCISS x Precious 7 one-of-a-kind clutch is hand sewn from leather pieces from Trautmane’s past collections and comes with a detachable fox tail, balancing eco-chic with luxe details.
Our amazing partner, Francesco Trusini, owner of the Milan-based The Interior Design store, brought artwork from Italian artists Michele Tombolini, Ilaria Bochicchio and Bluer to our pop up shop.
We collaborated with Glass Rox, an innovative bar and beverage concept company who curates specific bar programs for their clients. Their goal is “to give guests a engaging and unique experience via one of a kind offerings, functionality of bartenders environment, and technique oriented training program for all FOH staff.” We scored creative director John Longo for the party, where he mixed up speciality cocktails using Dulce Vida organic tequila (when in Rome…). Dulce Vida has been named “the most awarded” tequila on the market, and with the super smooth taste, their promise to sustainability and a completely organic product, it’s easy to see why.
Sponsors
Perrier Jouer Champagne.
No celebration is complete without a bit of bubbly and we were thrilled to offer Perrier Jouer to our party guests.
Happy Water Maple Water
Coconut water’s moment is o-v-e-r— now, it’s all about ultra hydrating maple water and Happy Tree is our new obsession. Cold pressed, organic, raw and sustainably sourced, it’s the leading maple water brand on the market.
Since 1938, Rosenthal and Rosenthal “has helped clients build their businesses and realize their dreams,” which is exactly what the generous New York based company did for Precious 7 as our main sponsor who has supported us from the very start. There’s no way we’d have realized our own dreams so fully without their unwavering support.
Made In Italy Gourmet. Our favorite restaurant in the 786 is hands down Made In Italy Gourmet. We’ve already waxed poetic about our love for the authentic spot here, and knew we had to get them to provide noshes and nibbles for the Precious 7 party.
Our gift bags from the event included a super nice bikini, beach cover up, beach bag from Raisins Swimwear and free Pilates class from Pilathon.
DAY 4 - Sunday, December 4
Context Art Miami and Art Miami are the reigning king and queen of Miami Art Basel, with the former representing the most important emerging and mid-career artists and the latter showcasing the heavy hitters in the international modern and contemporary art markets.
This year, we were especially taken with Context Art Miami’s Booth 129— the Affinity For Asia Art Gallery. The focus on contemporary Asian artists who are currently working in urban centers like Hong Kong, Taipei and Indonesia paints with a broad, multicultural brush that simultaneously highlights the similarities and differences between their prolific artists.
In Chi Chien’s Passing Through the Garden series, the artist explores his continuous self-referential theme: what is painting? In Production Point, Chien combines fabric, paint and cut outs into a single cohesive canvas, blurring the lines between traditional painting and collage. A single plane adds a layer of technological discord to the otherwise natural landscape.
Similarly, M. IRFAN focuses on technology’s role in history with his “large scale representations of technological achievements of modernity,” and his most recent attention “to the artistic accomplishments of antiquity.” The result is life size portraits of Greco Roman statues, painted realistically in acrylic and overlaid with poppy polka dots in a subversive playfulness.
Ha Manh Thang’s interest in modernity and technology comes through in a much more abstracted way than his compatriots, working in the style of past abstract expressionists. In The Lake, Ha divides his colorful canvas into thirds, so that each represents the heavens, modern construction and the lake, from top to bottom. On close inspection of the painting, the viewer uncovers buildings, pagodas and temples etched into semi-dry paint, pointing to “their fragility and disappearance in a context of a rapidly changing society.”