For a dealer, getting into Art Basel Miami Beach means getting the chance to introduce your program to the most powerful figures in the American and Latin American markets. This year, the outpost of Switzerland’s finest fair franchise, which runs from Dec. 6–10, is welcoming a brand new crop of international outfits. All of the galleries listed below have roots outside the well-trafficked art capitals of New York and Los Angeles. And while many got their start at smaller fairs in the city, 2023 marks their ascension to the big leagues: the Miami Beach Convention Center. Without further ado, meet the freshman class of ABMB 2023.
Gypsum Gallery
Location: Cairo
Founded: 2013
Founder: Aleya Hamza
Section: Nova
Vibe: Cerebral Middle Eastern avant-garde
Gypsum Gallery, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, will make its ABMB debut with a suite of six large paintings by the Egyptian, Basel-based artist Basim Magdy, with whom the gallery has worked since its founding. Although the artist is best known for his photography, the studio paintings represent a return to his roots—and his notorious dark humor remains intact. The gallery was born during “a difficult political and cultural moment in Egypt when funding for arts and culture had been drastically slashed,” founder Aleya Hamza explains. “I was very interested in bypassing these obstacles and being able to autonomously produce and exhibit relevant contemporary art.”
Silverlens
Location: Manila, New York
Founded: 2004
Founders: Isa Lorenzo, Rachel Rillo
Section: Nova
Vibe: Political, ambitious Southeast Asian art
This Filipino gallery, which has raised its profile extensively in the past year, participated in a steady stream of major fair franchises before arriving at the Convention Center. In Miami, it will mount a solo presentation of Norberto Roldan, a Filipino artist “who has for decades been at the forefront of cultural artistic practice in Southeast Asia,” according to gallery co-founder Isa Lorenzo. A lynchpin in the local art community, Roldan is the founder of VIVA Excon (the longest running biennial in Southeast Asia), Black Artists in Asia, and Green Papaya Art Projects. Artistically, he’s best known for assemblage altars that, in his words, “reckon with colonial occupations, and reveal a particularly intimate parallel between the post-colonial conditions of the Philippines and Latin America.”
Dürst Britt & Mayhew
Location: The Hague
Founded: 2015
Founder: Alexander Mayhew and Jaring Dürst Britt
Section: Nova
Vibe: Art history geeks who read more than you
The Dutch gallery founded by a curator and an art critic is hoping to make waves with its solo presentation of Mexico City-based artist Alejandra Venegas. The artist will create a site-specific mural on the wall of the booth to function as a backdrop for her landscape-inspired carvings. “The artists we represent combine a strong affinity for the materials they deploy with an unerring sense of the world surrounding them, and the art history that preceded them,” says the gallery’s founder and director Alexander Mayhew. With their Miami debut, the gallery seeks to “elicit contemplation and spark joy; a tonic for these very dark times.”
Galatea
Location: São Paulo
Founded: 2022
Founders: Antonia Bergamin, Conrado Mesquita, Tomás Toledo
Section: Positions
Vibe: Brazilian sophisticates turning to next-gen
Galatea was formed by a powerhouse trio with a desire to shake up the Brazilian art scene. Antonia Bergamin is a veteran dealer who previously co-led the gallery Gomide&Co; Conrado Mesquita is a collector with deep roots in the Brazilian art scene; and Tomás Toledo is the former chief curator of MASP, Brazil’s largest museum. The gallery’s multi-generational program “aims to reflect the diversity of Brazilian art and culture,” says director Fernanda Morse. The gallery will make its ABMB debut with a solo presentation by Allan Weber, whose work fuses everyday materials with Brazil’s Constructivist traditions. He created one of his most prominent series of photographs while working for an app delivery company during the pandemic. Weber also runs a project space in his native 5 Bocas neighborhood, a favela in Rio de Janeiro.
Llano
Location: Mexico City
Founded: 2020
Founders: Mauricio Cadena, Sergio Molina
Section: Positions
Vibe: Research-based installations (a.k.a. Biennial Art)
Because Llano is a “platform focused on artists whose production is the result of long-term research,” its first presentation at ABMB isn’t a group of paintings. Instead, it will showcase the Cama de Gato (Cat's Cradle) project by Bahia-based Mano Penalva, a prominent figure in São Paulo’s art scene. The series comprises assemblages made out of “wooden beads and textiles that cover the seats of the cars driven by professional drivers in Brazil,” founder Mauricio Cadena explains. The gallery has had an action-packed 2023, Cadena notes, with lots of “international visibility as we participated for the first time in art fairs in Madrid, London, our hometown of Mexico City, and finally, Miami.”
Dawid Radziszewski Gallery
Location: Warsaw
Founded: 2013
Founder: Dawid Radziszewski
Section: Positions
Vibe: Eastern European restraint
“This is the most important American fair,” says Dawid Radziszewski. “We do a lot of fairs, but mainly in Europe, so we are not as familiar with the American market as with the European one.” For this new audience, the gallery is bringing the youngest artist in its stable: Krzysztof Grzybacz. The Krakow-based painter, born in 1993, creates Surrealist tableaux that portray the human body and the human condition in humorous and haunting modes. “In general, when we start working with someone we invest all our strength in them," Radziszewski says. "I wanted to run a gallery that has international contacts and reach and at the same time is professional locally.”
Bradley Ertaskiran
Location: Montreal
Founded: 2020
Founders: Megan Bradley and Antoine Ertaskiran
Section: Positions
Vibe: Trendy up-and-comer
Bradley Ertaskiran is showing the much-buzzed about Azza El Siddique. The Khartoum-born, New Haven-based artist is taking over the booth with a large-scale sculptural installation called Final Fantasy that features steel armatures around a text-based video. “We chose this artist for her skill in crafting ambitious installations, marked by both expansive scope and material intricacy,” say gallery founders Megan Bradley and Antoine Ertaskiran. Siddique’s practice is steeply rooted in her Sudanese heritage, drawing on themes of ancient Egyptian and Nubian architecture and funerary traditions.
Elizabeth Leach Gallery
Location: Portland
Founded: 1981
Founder: Elizabeth Leach
Section: Survey
Vibe: Overlooked Pacific Northwest stalwarts
The gallery is presenting historic work by Ed Bereal, an 86-year-old artist known for his confrontational assemblages who describes himself as a political cartoonist. Still creating dynamic new work today, Bereal has been receiving overdue recognition; next year, he will be included in publications from both the Whitney Museum and the Smithsonian. Bereal has become a West Coast hometown hero of sorts, a towering renegade who also taught art at Western Washington University. His work is emblematic of the “gallery's mission is to create a dynamic dialogue between the local community and the global art world,” says Daniel Peabody, the gallery’s director.
