RADIANT NEW | Explore Booth E6
Lévy Gorvy returns to Art Basel Miami Beach with RADIANT NEW, a curated booth (E6) that pays homage to the radical spirit of the artists who defined New York’s cultural landscape during the late 1970s and early ’80s. In the era of the so-called culture Wars, rising postmodernism and identity politics clashed with political conservatism, rampant consumerism, and the geopolitical tensions of the waning days of the Cold War. Further fueling this tension was an increasingly complicated relationship between the media and American reality (a theme that has once again come to the fore in the United States): as popular culture was flooded with lush images stoking desire and fantasy, the AIDS epidemic ravaged communities and social inequality mounted.
New York City was the crucible where all of these forces came together—and sometimes boiled over. In the midst of the chaos and excess, a handful of prodigiously talented artists created a potent visual language that is as gripping today as it was when it first appeared.
Lévy Gorvy’s RADIANT NEW revisits this pivotal moment, bringing together works by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, and Christopher Wool. The gallery’s installation celebrates the radical spirit that unites the artists’ works and captures the urgency and vitality that imbues them with a powerful, enduring relevance.
An homage to Keith Haring’s legendary Pop Shop (1986–2005) will anchor Booth E6 with sculptures, paintings, and drawings, made by Haring and members of his circle. These will be installed against the backdrop of a reproduction of the iconic store’s wall murals. Haring’s art became integral to the visual language of activism that developed in the 1980s in response to the AIDS crisis. An iconic symbol of that crisis and a testament to Haring’s remarkable legacy, Silence = Death (1988) will be a focal point in a booth that includes other seminal works by Haring. Painted in the same year the artist was diagnosed with HIV, this work is an adaptation of the pink triangle featured in a 1987 poster produced by the Silence=Death collective. Overlaid with figures enacting the maxim “See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil”—an allusion to the Reagan administration’s refusal to acknowledge the AIDS crisis—the canvas takes the inverted form of the pink triangle that served as a symbol for the organization ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power.
PRESENTING WORKS BY
Terry Adkins | Jean-Michel Basquiat | Dan Colen | Keith Haring | Jeff Koons | Yayoi Kusama | Roy Lichtenstein | Beatriz Milhazes | Adrian Piper | Sigmar Polke | Ken Price | Richard Prince | Carol Rama | Ed Ruscha | Pat Stier | Andy Warhol | Tom Wesselmann | Christopher Wool
Explore RADIANT NEW by clicking on the artwork details…
