ARCA Hosts Art Basel Miami Beach Exhibition and Event Co-Hosted by David Grutman
Arca, a leading supplier of natural stone, hosted an event and an exhibition during Art Basel Miami Beach at their Superflex Studio & Esrawe Studio-designed Wynwood Showroom and Gallery on Tuesday, November 30th, 2021.Co-Hosted by David Grutman with guests including Pharrell Williams, Adam Levine and his wife Behati Prinsloo, Joe Jonas, artist JR, and Isabel Grutman.
Participating artists include Hauser & Wirth’s Stefan Brüggemann; Masa Gallery artists including Ewe Studio, Brian Thoreen, Mario García Torres, and Adeline de Monseignat; and OMR arists Gabriel Rico and Jorge Méndez Blake. A special menu was created by Chef Gabriela Cámara of Mexico City’s Contramar and Casa Dragones provided the specialty tequila cocktails.
No stranger to working with architects, artists, and designers, Arca has commissioned new works by established and emerging Mexican artists using their marble to present during Design Miami and Art Basel. “Natural stone is a material where there is a lot of variation; we are a company whose DNA is focused on helping artists, designers, and architects achieve their visions,” says Founder and CEO Gerardo Jose Cortina Wiechers. Arca’s current collaborators span an array of designers, architects, and developers, including Ashley Stark, Cara Woodhouse, James Perse, and Meyer Davis. Artist Stefan Brüggemann will unveil his Eroded Paintings series for the first time in front of the Superflex and Esrawe Studio-designed Arca showroom in Wynwood.
Eroded Paintings draws on the natural phenomena of sedimentation and erosion to explore environmental and semiotic pollution. The paintings are a series of marble slabs, each engraved with Brüggemann’s poem, ‘Eroded Language,’ which have been spray-painted with the day’s headlines on the subject of climate change, in a process of sedimentation and layering that both obscures and reveals the meaning of our present climate. Marble, formed through a process of sedimentation, is subject to the almost invisible process of erosion. “The stone appears to be static but we know that to be false. It is always in motion, undergoing a very gradual process of transformation that is not so much destructive as it is a process of becoming.
This vitality lurking in that which is often thought to be the epitome of inertia and stone alerts us to the agency of that larger mass of stone and earth underfoot. The geological pace of change that we have been used to is giving way to an accelerated reality a sour planet begins to change before our very eyes, ”states Brüggemann. OMR is a leading contemporary art gallery in Mexico City, founded by Patricia Ortiz Monasterio and Jaime Riestra. The gallery will present new works by artists Gabriel Rico and Jorge Méndez Blake. Gabriel Rico lives and works in Guadalajara and his work is characterized by the interrelation of seemingly disparate objects.
A self-proclaimed “ontologist with a heuristic methodology,” the artist pairs found, collected, and manufactured objects to create sculptures that invite viewers to reflect on the relationship between humans and our natural environment. Rico frequently uses neon, taxidermy, ceramics, branches and personal pieces from his past to create an equation or formulation. Jorge Méndez Blake draws connections between literature and the visual arts through assemblage, drawing, and environmental interventions. “I think I tend toward the quotation, rather than toward the creation of new writing,” he says. “I prefer to be quoting others constantly.” He manipulates classic literature by drawing it into the gallery space, assembling pages and quotations into installations.
MASA is a nomadic gallery blurring the line between art and design. Founded in Mexico City by curator and creative director Age Salajõe, designers Héctor Esrawe, and Brian Thoreen, along with collectors Roberto Diaz Sesma and Isaac Bissu, Masa will present new works by Ewe Studio, Brian Thoreen, Adeline de Monseignat, and Mario García Torres. About Arca Wynwood: Encased in a work of art by Superflex, Arca Wynwood presents a design center with a gallery-like experience designed by Esrawe Studio. Crossing through the colorful exterior art piece, one enters a collection of natural and technological materials and cultural activations. “Unlike its colorful façade, the interior is designed as a neutral space to shift the focus onto the material collections.
Arca Wynwood is presented as a museum-grade experience where the materials are showcased as unique works of nature, creating an opportunity for visitors to have an interactive, sensory experience with Arca’s products” says Hector Esrawe. Arca Founder & CEO Gerardo Jose Cortina Wiechers elaborates, “We wanted to provide a space for designers, architects, artists and builders to learn, be inspired, and create. Arca Wynwood offers a new way for customers to select materials by first exploring their nature, origin, and potential.”