Destination. Culture.

With the generous support of the Human Rights Campaign, I was able to shoot almost three hundred faces in New York City. We put out the call to any and everyone that felt like LGBTQ applied to them in any way, or ever had, and I didn’t ask them to define that. I shot everyone on film, in black and white, for a few minutes, getting a simple portrait of them, slice of life out of their regular day. The portraits you see here are from those sessions.

iO Tillet Wright

All images copyright IO Tillet Wright and used with permission. Please contact the photographer here:  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Art Basel Miami Beach has evolved over the past nine years into the art world's not-to-be-missed extravaganza and can now claim its rightful title of most prestigious art show in the Americas. This is thanks to the presence of hundreds of notable galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa that work diligently to showcase the work of more than 2,000 artists from the previous and current centuries.

This year's Art Basel festivities will take place December 1-4, 2011. The central informational and gathering spot is the Miami Beach Convention Center (MBCC), but a variety of events such as artist receptions, panel discussions, off-site installations, performances and special parties will extend beyond the MBCC into Miami, Coral Gables, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale; all extensions of Art Basel that are within close geographic proximity to the convention center and easy to access thanks to the area's convenient transportation options.

The magnitude of Art Basel, with its many beautiful, user-friendly venues and countless opportunities packed into a short amount of time, relies on an intricate planning process that takes into account everything from exhibition staging and the individual needs of invited galleries and artists to the careful and strategic design of viewing centers for art enthusiasts from around the world. The growing success of Art Basel, indeed, has been realized as a result of its attention to detail and its desire to consistently innovate and create a fresh, lively and memorable experience every year. Everything on the schedule, from public viewings and live performances to video installations and the introduction of works by cutting-edge newcomers to the art world, is conceived of and executed with the utmost care and consideration for the art and artist in question and for the attendee.

Hans-Peter Feldmann Aesthetic studies / 303 Gallery

As in years past, Art Basel's esteemed galleries highlight the widely respected and global nature of the event. This year's featured galleries include New York's 303 Gallery and Acquavella Galleries, the latter of which was founded in 1921; Galeria Juana de Aizpuru, which opened to widespread acclaim in 1973 in Seville, Spain, and in 1983 extended to a satellite gallery in Madrid; Gallery Chemould, founded in Bombay in 1963; the Gagosian Gallery; and the Galleria Continua. Thousands of artists and/or examples of their work will be given special consideration, among them Ernesto Neto, Richard Tuttle, Martin Jacobson, Joan Semmel, Diane Arbus, Tracy Emin, Daniel Libeskind, Damien Hirst and Banks Violette.

To commemorate its tenth year, Art Basel will unveil an exciting new collaboration with the Bass Museum of Art. This addition to the program will transform nearby Collins Park into a visually stunning outdoor sculpture park. The park will essentially be turned into an outdoor museum featuring 20 sculptures placed on a grassy field that descends gently toward the ocean.

New World Center

Overall, this year's calendar includes numerous noteworthy additions to an already inspiring and action-packed schedule. Of particular note is the presentation of "Art Video"at the Frank Gehry-designed New World Center, wherein videos will be projected onto a 7,000-square-foot outdoor projection wall.

For more information on the upcoming Art Basel celebration, please visit www.artbaselmiamibeach.com.

Laurence Gartel was commissioned by Tesla Motors to pimp their ride at Art Basel in Miami Beach. “No major artist ever received a commission to produce art for an Electric Car. I’ve trumped them all by doing so. Electric Art for an Electric Car. Makes sense.” A creative process and exuberant moment of digital art display-using a commercial vehicle wrapping process on printed vinyl. “It is so detailed and something that could never have been painted or conceived by traditional media.”

Gartel is the most celebrated face of an art movement that began in the late 60’s and early 70’s with art star Nam June Paik as the protagonist. Tribes of analog video geeks… the VideoFreex in the Catskills, and Jack Moore’s VideoHeads in Amsterdam… were pushing analog video to the breaking point. Legions of new recruits were attracted to the bright lights and swirly shapes of video feedback emanating from the Experimental Television Center in upstate New York.

Gartel was present but while others focused on making art move in unpredictable ways, he saw a different angle. Aiming his still camera at the screen he captured an electronic instant; a wild, colorful, distorted and compelling instant. By making colorful collages from over-saturated frame-buffered synthesized electronic imagery, then reproducing it in traditional formats, he turned the video art concept around.

Gartel’s pixel graffiti caught the attention of Andy Warhol, whom he tutored in the use of the Amiga computer. Warhol used it to simulate his earlier silk-screen style and became the celebrity face of Amiga’s marketing strategy. Perhaps working next to the art world’s best self-promoter taught Gartel a few things too. Commercial commissions soon followed for Coca-Cola and Absolut vodka, both of which had also commissioned Warhol.

“Artists today use Digital Art for the ‘cool factor’, for the fad. Every school today has a digital lab and they are all offering courses in Digital Art, New Media, New Genres, Computer Art. They don’t know what to call it, whatever the latest catch phrase, but this is not how innovation happens. It takes place by not following trends. Thinking outside the box. Now that the box is digital, I would be thinking something else. We must turn our attention back to beauty. Whether it be digital or not, the aesthetic has to be there. The real case in point is my 1999 masterpiece, Coney Island Baby. I’ve tried to top this image and its impossible. How was it created? I couldn’t tell you. One puzzle piece at a time. In its physical form, it is tremendously powerful.”

Even though the artists and technology were pretty sophisticated, early computer art was still naive. “Any artist understands that their first attempts are always going to be their strongest” Gartel explains, “I think the real discussion is about how hard it was to make a picture. The early attempts took so much effort. Lets just say nobody went to Best Buy to pick up an 8 gig card for $29.95. There was no such thing as memory chips. The computer systems that were necessary for the creation of art imagery had to fill a room. All the systems I ever knew just so happen to be upstate New York. Media Study/Buffalo was the first system I used. Then it was the Experimental Television Center in upstate New York. I often see people like David Jones as a Nikola Tesla. David is an innovator and great thinker of technology. Each year for over 25 years I would go to ETC and wonder what did David create now? The hardware was just as creative as anything else, except I had no idea about that then. I was just a ‘user.’ Someone obviously had to design the tools. In any case, I love early electronic art and it should never go unrecognized. It was the precursor for every person who walks into an Apple Store.”

www.gartelautomotion.com

Just Missed the Past

Michel Delgado is a self-taught Senegalese artist now living in Key West.

Delgado paints emotionally and expressively, conjuring other-worldly narratives of memory and spirituality. His direct vision reveals an understanding of the pain and solitude of immobility and silence, as well as joy, learning and love. Like other Outsider artists, Delgado’s approach can best be described as honest, refreshingly straightforward and visionary, ever powerful.

Observe Your Choices

After leaving Dakar, Delgado spent time in Paris surrounded by the world's great art. Perhaps such a worldly artist cannot be called naive but, like many brut artists, Delgado seems influenced by everything and nothing equally. Depending on the observer's frame of reference, his paintings may conjure prescient references to a number of artists. A mash-up of Picasso + De Kooning. Or perhaps Pollack + Dubuffet.  An earlier series found him wandering the streets of Key West photographing chewing gum stains on the sidewalk. He drew inspiration from the graphic gum shapes, silk-screened them onto water-color paper and inked one of a kind compositions, adding surrealism to the repertoire.

Michel Delgado’s paintings have received many honors and awards since he first began exhibiting professionally fifteen years ago. In 2004, the Artist’s work was featured in a museum exhibition at the Miami Art Museum curated by MAM Curator, Lori Mertes. Delgado was awarded the prestigious 2004 South Florida Cultural Consortium Fellowship for Visual and Media Artists, where he was selected from a field of more than 350 applicants by a national panel comprised of experts from American arts institutions from the Art Institute of Chicago, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Brooklyn Museum of Art New York City, Third World Newsreel New York City, and UCLA Hammer Museum Los Angeles.

Website: MichelDelgado.com

KEY WEST HISTORICAL TOUR INCLUDED