BROOKLYN AT BASEL: MEET THE ARTISTS REPPING THE BOROUGH IN MIAMI

The commercial art world, especially New York City’s slice of it, has infiltrated South Beach for this year’s annual Art Basel Miami Beach extravaganza. Great art will be on display well into the weekend on both sides of Biscayne Bay. Fashionable first-timers, take note though: This Swiss art fair, which helped kickstart Miami’s art scene back in 2002, is a different kind of party — one where it’s cooler to arrive early than late.

Art Basel Miami Beach opens to the public today and remains on view through Saturday, December 3. As usual, the artwork is more interesting than the wheeling and dealing. Exhibitors appear to be getting back to the basics for Basel’s twentieth year, focusing on tactility and paintings over the hot digital displays of literally yesteryear.

At 238 exhibitors, this year also marks the Miami event’s biggest edition yet. Galleries from Miami, Bogotà, Paris, and more showed up — including dozens of art dealers from New York. Brooklyn artists in particular are here with local and international institutions alike.

We’ll be on the lookout for the borough’s best at South Beach’s adjacent art fairs this week (there is a whole cottage industry of other art fairs that has sprung up around Basel), but where else to start but with the main event?

Artist and game designer Jacolby Satterwhite presented a disco steampunk steed painted against a dark background with Los Angeles-based gallery Morán Morán, which also featured Keltie Ferris, Soil Thornton, and Kon Trubkovich at their booth. Satterwhite’s bionic horse also appears in an accompanying VR experience, submerging viewers into an equally psychedelic world populated by models dancing on gold robots. Whoever buys the piece gets to keep the hardware too.