New Contemporary Art Fair Wrap Up

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Kiki Valdes
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Detail of new painting

VIP area of opening night of Gen Art Vanguard New Contemporary Art Fair. My friend Lebo was painting live in the bar outside area. Graffiti Research Lab also did some things during the weekend as well.

HumbyZine

Hector, Kiki & Humby at GenArt event with Kiki's artwork in the bachground.

Vanguard Art Basel 2008/ Most of the galleries were from California and one gallery was from North Carolina. There was also work exhibited from all over the world including from Brazil, Spain and France just to name a few. A lot of the work was small and everyone was walking up and taking long focused looks on the work. I never saw anything like it during a fair. Very different and much of the work had to do with a certain level of draftsmanship.

ladies in the pool, pretty amazing

Monica from TM Sisters, Hugo Montoya and Julian Martin of Lemon Yellow

thank you guys for coming out

Kiki Valdes with curator/artist and director of the Vanguard New Contemporary Art Fair Francisco LoCastro

night just starting at the New Contemporary Art Fair

Me (Kiki) hanging with my girls.

The Recap
Whoa, what a week! Droves and droves of international art lovers flooded the streets of Miami Beach this week and the art districts of Miami for no other then one of the biggest art world affairs...Art Basel week. A few issues back I got to

give you a little, just a small tad bit of what you could expect from the fair I am apart of this year - Gen Art Vanguard New Contemporary Art Fair. Now that it has passed I wanted to tell you a little bit about the fair. First off, what an amazing opening party event we had for Vanguard on Friday. The line of people wrapped around corner and from what I've been told some people couldn't even get in from the flood of people that came to see Vanguard. I hear the number was around 2,000 attendees. I had a very prime location at the fair, right at the entrance which was a blessing. I saw so many old friends and met so many great people for this show. I got interviewed by channel 10 News, I will make sure to put the link once I have the video for it. I also did an interview for Londons Saatchi Gallery online which should be up on their site within a few weeks.

Special thanks for Francisco LoCastro and everyone involved with Gen Art. As I have said earlier my work isn't really urban contemporary art (post graffiti

movement) or pop surrealism but I figured it would be something very different for me to try and it worked. I had complete faith in the organizors and they did a fantasic job of representing the art I do. Theres a really big divide in the Miami art scene and I hope what these guys worked hard to do can open things up for everyone and just work together. I am also very proud of my fellow contemporaries in Miami for being apart of the Art Basel fair as well as Scope Miami and Pulse. We are doing great things this year and I'm glad the landscape is changing around here for the better.

I'm not much for words when it comes to writing so I've provided some pictures of Vanguard for those who missed it or who couldn't afford a ticket to come down and enjoy everything happening. This ones for you!

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Artist Tatiana Suarez with Evelyn Park & Michelle Leshem. Tatiana is a good friend she use to live up the hall from me. Also I think Michelle looks fly in this picture. Sassy!