The Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary Art Show Returns
Right around the time of the spring equinox, West Palm Beach’s most important art show for serious collectors and art neophytes alike descends onto the Convention Center. The Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary, presented by Art Miami, will run from March 23rd through March 26th. It will kick off with a VIP party honoring Francis Fisher and benefiting the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden. Featuring 85 top galleries from the US and abroad, all forms of art will be on display, including pieces from Barcelona to Buenos Aires, and paintings from Nantucket to Capri.
Not only is it the art event of the year, but it’s also a great social tableau where interior designers, investors, socialites, architects, museum directors, collectors, curators, tourists and more convene for an unforgettable run of buying and browsing. Below, Altima gets a sneak peak from three top exhibiting galleries and checks out a few of their select works. It should be just enough to make you start making space on those walls!
OPERA GALLERY
Famed artist Fernando Botero who hails from Medellin, Colombia, will be exhibiting his oil painting, Only a Family (2016). Known for his exaggerated figures and humor, Botero has his own museum in his birth country and is also a prominent fixture in museums and galleries around the world. (His depicted family is clearly not on Ozempic).
Korean artist Cho Sung –Hee’s Happy Blossom A (2019) is a striking collage of Korean rice paper with oil on canvas. The artist uses a collage method where circles are hand-cut from traditional “hanji” paper, painted with oil pigments and layered. They evoke a feeling of springtime. From Seoul to New York, her work is exhibited at many private and public institutions.
DAVID BENRIMON
The highly stylized artist, Alex Katz, returns with Straw Hat 3(2022/ edition 100). His signature style of paired-down portraiture and flat representation was a reaction to 1950s Abstract Expressionism. His art takes cues from quotidian visual culture like advertising and cinema. The Guggenheim is currently exhibiting Alex Katz: Gathering, an expansive retrospective on the artist across his eighty-year career.
Mel Bochner, who literally turned word salad into high-art, will be exhibiting a “Blah, Blah, Blah (Inverse)” limited edition silkscreen print. In the painting, language becomes part of the art itself. Bochner once told ARTnews that “words themselves became my found objects.” Many Palm Beachers have found his work irresistible.
SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY
This Soho-based gallery is run by a Calcutta-born, Oxford educated art historian and award winning filmmaker. Among his emerging artists, look out for Indian artist Neha Vedpathak, who uses a pushpin to pluck the fibers of handmade Japanese paper in Those Places (2017), which looks like a cosmic entity bursting through the wall.
Chinese artist Zheng Lu whose sculptures are cleverly composed of thousands of Chinese characters laser-cut into metal, and then hand-welded together, will exhibit his piece 桃花水 (2020), which looks like a resplendent piece of petrified birch or a frozen water splash in mid-air. Zheng’s works are installed in public spaces throughout China.
