Art Basel Miami Beach | Booth C24 | 2 - 4 December 2021

Hales at Art Basel Miami Beach 2021

Booth C24, Miami Beach Convention Center, FL, USA

Private Days (by invitation only)
Tuesday, 30 November, 11am–8pm, First Choice VIP cardholders
Tuesday, 30 November, 4pm–8pm, Preview VIP cardholders
Wednesday, 1 December, 11am–8pm, First Choice and Preview VIP cardholders

Vernissage (by invitation only)
Wednesday, 1 December, 4pm–8pm

Public Days
Thursday, 2 December, 11am–7pm
Friday, 3 December, 11am–7pm
Saturday, 4 December, 11am–6pm

On the occasion of Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 edition, Hales is pleased to present a selection of works by Sunil Gupta, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Virginia Jaramillo, Kay WalkingStick, Anthony Cudahy and Maja Ruznic. The presentation features historic and contemporary works by artists on our roster who reflect the vision and programming of the gallery.

Sunil Gupta (b.1953 New Delhi, India) has, over a career spanning five decades, maintained a visionary approach to photography, producing a rich body of work that has pioneered a unique social and political commentary. Lovers Ten Years On (1984-86) is series of unique vintage prints of queer couples, which holds deep sociological resonance, pinpointing a specific moment in British public consciousness relating to queer liberation. Gupta made the Lovers: Ten Years On series in the UK, in response to a shift in public perception and acceptance of gay liberation. The opening of Art Basel Miami Beach 2021 coincides with World AIDS Day, particularly poignant to Lovers: Ten Years On, as tragically many of the subjects depicted lost their lives to the AIDS epidemic. A selection of the evocative series were acquired by Tate and in 2020, and a book dedicated to the works was published. Gupta was the subject of a major touring retrospective, From Here to Eternity, at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK in 2020, which will tour to the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada.

Rotimi Fani-Kayode (1955 Lagos, Nigeria — 1989 London, UK) is a highly influential figure in the history of art who, despite a tragically brief career, produced a complex body of photographic work that explored themes of race, sexuality, spirituality, and the self. Fani-Kayode visualized Black queer self-expression through a fusing of African and European cultures. He interrogated histories, transcending his own marginalization to create powerful new realities. Pioneering at the time of creation, his oeuvre remains distinct and poignant. In the final years of his life, Fani-Kayode meticulously crafted portraits in colour. The chromatic works show a refinement of technique and mark a coalescing of ideas and sensibilities. Fani-Kayode had developed an exceptional aesthetic approach that embraced a constructed mise-en-scène dense with references to Yoruba cosmology. This year Hales New York presented a solo exhibition of the works made in the final years of his life. Fani-Kayode was included in blockbuster exhibition Masculinities which toured to Gropius Bau, Berlin, Germany; Les Rencontres de la Photographie Arles, Paris, France; and tours to FOMU Antwerp, Belgium.

Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974 Oklahoma City, OK, USA) has through painting, sculpture, and video, created a mythological world, one in which an ongoing epic battle rages between good and evil. Hancock has developed intricate stories around the birth, death, life, and afterlife of a set of characters he has conceived over decades, with each new work contributing to the epic saga. The grand narrative explores life’s complexities, current events and existential conundrums. Step and Screw: West End Scrap (Face Off) (2021) sees Hancock’s protagonist and one of his alter egos, Torpedo Boy come up against one of Philip Guston’s Klansmen characters. In this work the artist doesn’t want to disappear behind fantasy but instead confront racial injustice, drawing from his upbringing in North Texas and the political history of racism in the American South. This work is part of a larger series that enters into a deep discussion of culture, race, and power. In 2019, Hancock had many solo exhibitions at MASS MoCA, MA; Menil Collection, TX; and Locust Projects, FL. He is currently featured in the Texas Biennial.

Virginia Jaramillo (b.1939 El Paso, TX, USA) has forged a unique voice, exploring painting through extensive experimentation with material, process and form. Jaramillo’s work preserves a process of thinking about being and a questioning of what upholds meaning in life. Hales are presenting an outstanding early work from Jaramillo’s celebrated Curvilinear series. This work from 1970 is exemplary of the series, a field of flat, vivid red is disrupted by precise lines in contrasting shades that curve and intersect. The mathematical precision of these lines as well as the flatness of the surface demonstrate Jaramillo’s close affinities with significant movements within abstraction at the time. The Curvelinear paintings have been featured in many important group exhibitions including the seminal 1971 Deluxe Show in Houston, TX as well as touring shows We Wanted A Revolution: Black Radical Women and Tate’s Soul of a Nation. The series formed Jaramillo’s first institutional solo exhibition at the Menil Collection, TX (2020). This year she is included in the blockbuster group exhibition Women in Abstraction at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, France which tours to Guggenheim, Bilbao.

Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935 Syracuse, NY) has Anglo and Cherokee heritage, and she draws on her experience as well as painterly traditions to create works that connect the immediacy of the physical world with the spiritual. In key historic paintings from the mid-1970s to early 1980s WalkingStick had shifted to abstraction, coinciding with her burgeoning interest into Native American histories and her own heritage. In this critical period of work, WalkingStick is highly attuned to the expressive qualities of colour, especially those that reflect feelings of loss and tragedy. In these works of rich colours and bold forms there is a sense of ancestral presence and a deep connection to place. A piece from the same body of work is currently exhibited in the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington D.C. In 2021 WalkingStick was featured in the group exhibition, In American Waters at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA which tours to Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, AR later this year, as well as Powerful Women at the Eiteljorg Museum, IN, USA.

Anthony Cudahy (b.1989 Florida, USA) is a painter whose tender scenes reveal the nuanced complexities of life. Hales will present a new figurative work by the artist. Cudahy paints and recontextualizes the past to address the present, speaking to the continuum of queer experience across generations. In masterful compositions he creates a world for unspoken stories, intimate moments and romantic gesture. Cudahy intuitively combines art historical motifs with personal imagery to create a complex compositional puzzle. His work is a testament to relationships and human connection, physically and mentally. The warmth and quietness of the scenes are undercut by a sense of tension, reflecting personal and collective anxiety. There is a presence of narrative possibility playing out within and beyond Cudahy’s painted and drawn surfaces. This year he has been included in FLAG Art Foundation’s group exhibition, as well as a solo show, Coral Room at Hales New York. In 2021, his work, Anti-bausor tree (protected sleepers, wolf’s-bane and spider around) (2020) was acquired by the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami.

Maja Ruznic (b. 1983 Bosnia & Hercegovina) draws on personal and collective memories to create paintings that deeply connect with human psyche. Ruznic fled Bosnia & Hercegovina when the war started in 1992, living in refugee camps in Austria until migrating to California in 1995. She weaves themes of trauma and suffering with mythology and healing, softening the darker subject matter in her work. This softening is then applied to the process of painting – scumbling, blurring and allowing shapes to bleed into one another – symbolically destabilizing borders. Ruznic creates a strong sense of the power of memory – its strong hold over her but its elusion to being fully captured. In a new work, Ruznic continues to play with ambiguity — her paintings lie on the threshold of form, which she compares to a thought or a feeling that precedes language. In 2021, Ruznic had her debut institutional show In the Silver of the Sun at The Harwood Museum of Art, Rosewell, NM, USA. Later this year her work is included in the group exhibition, Hi Woman! at the Museo di Palazzo Prato, Italy.