The 14 Best Things We Spied at Design Miami This Year

Mexico City–based AGO Projects presented a wild booth at Design Miami, with no one aesthetic message. There was fun in its freewheeling spirit and a freedom to embrace the thin line between art and design. A hanging light that Rhys Gaetano (a former member of the conceptual art collective Bruce High Quality Foundation) created in collaboration with Ray Smith hung from one corner and in another were three raku vases by Ray Smith that reached the hip. Fernando Laposse’s sisal stools snatched a few wigs with their form, which closely mimicked a head full of hair. The artist hand-applied sisal to the rounded base of each piece, eerily mimicking the top of a skull, begging each visitor to touch and inquire. —Camille Okhio

Grottoes, those mystical caverns that straddle the line between folly and function, are typically reserved for religious icons and divine beings. But in the Miami Design District this year, mere mortals also got a taste. In conjunction with Nina Johnson Gallery, Miami-based artist and furniture designer Emmett Moore constructed a Grotto Lounge for the public to enjoy in the city’s design district. The structures that make up the grotto are constructed from expanded polystyrene (high-density spray foam) and intentionally mimic coral boulders—lumpy, porous, and somewhat soft. To further enmesh reality with fiction, Moore embedded individual walls and benches with “contemporary fossils”—sunglasses, cell phones, lighters, and keys—reminding the visitor to be present in the mundane everyday, regardless of the whimsy that surrounds them. —C.O.

Brecht Wright Gander’s work continues to seduce, despite verging on the grotesque—or maybe precisely for that reason. His table lamps resemble alien critters dredged up from the bottom of a mine shaft but are in fact an orgiastic melding of copper, brass, acrylic, pigment, fiberglass, resin, and LED lights. Viewing them at Room57 Gallery’s booth in concert with sculptural wood works from Vincent Pocsik and ceramic vessels by Roxanne Jackson, I got the feeling that these pieces couldn’t have been made before the Anthropocene—and, obviously, not after. —Sean Santiago

It would be easy to dismiss collectible design today as “just blobs,” as one friend of mine (jokingly) did last week. But who’s to say “just blobs” is bad? Objective Gallery’s Curio booth made a compelling case for the Blob Era. Stocked with the enigmatic work of J. McDonald and flanked by Eny Lee Parker’s neolithic column lights, the booth played with scale and volume in unexpected ways, eluding neat categorizations in favor of stimulating conversation. —S.S.

Pelle’s Infinite Lure presentation comprised a handful of works set in a mirrored space with a philosophical bent. The idea was to reinforce that each piece on view was working in tandem with the others, creating a collage of materials and functionalities rather than one domineering design narrative. Take, for instance, the six-frond Nana chandelier (center): Hand-cast in cotton paper, then hand-painted, it hung in polite conversation with the louvered all-aluminum Be Patient floor lamp (left). The lights are polar opposites and at the same time deeply intertwined, drawing the parallel between trees and automotive styling we didn’t know we needed. —S.S.

The charismatic Tom Dixon returned to Design Miami for the first time in 10 years, bringing with him ingenuity and glamour in equal measures. Ever a metals man, Dixon showed pieces from his new made-to-measure MASS collection, including a table and a four-poster brass bed dressed in Kvadrat fabric and the soft, ballooning HYDRO chair, made from recyclable aluminum. But it was the designer’s CODE Stack Light Sculpture (installed in Milan during last fall’s Salone del Mobile) that showed he really has his lasers set to stun—or should I say shimmer? —S.S.

Twenty First Gallery presented Flora Contemporaria, Marcin Rusak’s homage to Josef Frank’s Flora cabinets of the 1930s and ’50s. Rusak, a descendant of flower farmers, presented four limited-edition cabinets that explore a variety of materials and complex processes, among them the painstaking refinement of a solid composite made of discarded cut flowers and resin. The suspended flora are complemented by cabinet bodies in stainless and powder-coated steel as well as oak. The fourth cabinet consists of a load-bearing steel wire framework that’s shaped by hand and draped with salvaged leaves, coated in resin and then metal. Taken as a whole, the pieces create a full color gradient and look practically primed to come to life as a girl group. Taken individually, each wunderkammer invites the viewer into a world of unrealized potential and macabre beauty. Who could ask for anything more? —S.S.

Chicago-based Volume Gallery offered an exercise in subtlety at this year’s Design Miami. On view were works by Ross Hansen, Jonathan Muecke (pronounced “Mickey”), Sam Stewart, and Tanya Aguiñiga. All of the artists varied greatly in aesthetic and material content, but the connecting thread was an inventive approach to process, be it Muecke’s featherlight carbon fiber works or Hanson’s marble-emulating epoxy pieces. There were delightful plays with fabric too, such as Aguiñiga’s textile work or a dramatic pleated-muslin lamp designed by Stewart, along with New York–based tailor Victoria Yee Howe (by far, the most Instagrammed item of the week). But the most delightful piece, also by Aguiñiga, was a pair of glass slippers (modeled on traditional Mexican huarache shoes) more akin to your uncle’s beach sandals than a heel fit for a princess. —C.O.

On the first day of Design Miami previews, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami opened “Boogey Men,” a monumental show of new works by New York–based artist Hugh Hayden. The artist has been working in increasingly imposing scales, creating anthropomorphous works that challenge notions of safety, normalcy, and the differing relationships to race that Americans hold. His background as an architect is put to good use, creating technically demanding sculptures that incorporate fine woodworking, metalsmithing, and upholstery. In the center of the gallery is the show’s pièce de résistance, Boogey Man, a car draped in what looks like a bed sheet (but is really hammered steel) that at once suggests a child’s costume and a Ku Klux Klan robe. Under it a police car potentially hides—the most menacing vehicle to a large swathe of this country's residents—but a nearby child’s car seat lusciously upholstered in a zebra skin and a Burberry trench covered in tree bark offer a less menacing presence. Collectively the pieces on view can be read as frightening, playful, or even chic, and unquestionably bring together the skills of an artist who has at moments played architect, designer, and at the earliest stage, dreamer. —C.O.

The nomadic Mexico City–based gallery MASA presented its first international show, “Substract,” at the Wynwood showroom of natural-stone supplier Grupo Arca. The works on view explored a range of artistic modes, from automation to artisan handcraft, including marble cocktail tables from Brian Thoreen, a pair of altar benches by EWE Studio, and a series of sculptures with a collegiate twist (they were inspired by towers of beer cans) from Mario García Torres. The conceit paid dividends—opening night was attended by hundreds of natural stone aficionados including Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine, and Joe Jonas (and, of course, moi). —S.S.

Tucked into a corner of Little Haiti is the gallery of Miami’s foremost art purveyor Nina Johnson. Now on view are three concurrent shows, one of which is a collection of materially challenging works by Joseph Holtzman. For years Holtzman was known solely for work on his niche interiors magazine NEST, which, though it went defunct in 2004, remains a cult favorite. In recent years he has shifted entirely to fine art, though still with intentionally decorative undertones, notably sculptural works incorporating found decorative elements like a wallpaper printing roller, 1930s embroidery, and milk glass tableware. Holtzman’s show served as a bridge between the world of interiors, furniture design, and art—the glue that held the whole week together. —C.O.