Salon Miami

When Samuel Keller came up with the counterintuitive idea of opening an Art Basel branch in Miami, many people raised their hands to their heads; at first glance, contemporary art and the city of sun seemed to match worse than chocolate and pan tumaca.\n\nHowever, Art Basel has managed to turn Miami into the nerve center of the art market in the new continent, at least for one week a year.\n\nIn this way, the already archetypal photograph of the beach, the palm tree, and the piña colada, which in our time represent a sort of crusty allegory of paradise, has suddenly been invaded by artifacts of all kinds—installations, paintings, sculptures, actions...\n\nLast year we were in Miami, showing the work of our artists a few meters from the sea, but due to the fucking pandemic this year we have to stay in Madrid with a future outlook more opaque than lead.\n\nSuddenly the image of the beach and the piña colada is contrasted against a granite wall, and the palm tree now appears to us laden with apocalyptic splendor.\n\nThis palm tree/promise encrypts in its sharp leaves an illusion not exempt from antagonisms; it is precisely this illusion that we explore in Salón Miami, in the oval office of Espacio Valverde.\n\nPartly frustrated fair, partly analysis of a promise, partly clandestine paradise, Salón Miami is a parallel exhibition in our new Valverdian space.\n\nIn the first room you will find a booth with the artists whose works this year and on these same dates should be in Miami: Elena Alonso, Hugo Bruce, Jorge Diezma, Robert Ferrer, and Luis Vassallo.\n\nIn the central room we have two invited Irenes—Irene de Andrés (who presents part of her project Especie Naúfragas) and Irene Grau (who proposes a manufactured journey in canvas lettering)—who, along with small winks manufactured by us, treat in greater depth the cluster of themes in question.\n\nWe invite you, in short, to an imaginary journey to Miami in the center of Madrid; we will receive you with tropical sympathy and a desire to share ideas.\n\nAffectionate regards.\n\nJacobo Fitz-James Stuart