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Another outstanding theme is the parody of advertising, carried out and based on the dismantling of articulations between the pressing power of consumption and the visual narrative of the lie. The construction of icons that consciously violate the pleasurable aesthetics of the advertisement is multiple and generally very aggressive. Teresa Serrano exhibited four screens with smeared models of "bb: Beauty mud" or "Barro de Belleza". In her work, as in that of Alexandre Apóstol, the resource of photography as a conceptual strategy to prepare a visual discourse is obvious. The work based on this theme comes from photographs of tattoo made with red-hot iron on beautiful faces, a practice associated with the rights and signs of possession exercised by owners over the bodies of their slaves - to a video where the semen of several men masturbating themselves in unison explodes in the face of the observer-buyer of a new cream, while the connecting word "Lovereal" (lo-ve-real) is associated with a well-known beauty firm.
This last work, shown on the inaugural night of Art Basel by the Casas Reigner gallery, forms part of the work selected y the Spanish group "El Perro." Works were also selected on the ruptures of use – for example, works with machines built to hurt, similar to the practices put forward in turn in the central exhibition by Sylvie Fleury: placing the leg of the chair over the eye, pencils in the ears; together with the dismantling of associated consumer objects impregnated with significances foreign to their use.
Visiting curators emphasized the constant presence of conceptual ideas around which the dynamics of representations created to show the tensions in the game of attraction and repulsion are organized. Much material was presented without doubt to create an impact based on rejection. "How to establish a dividing line between art and the provocation which does not attain to the point of art?" "Sometimes," responds Cheryl Hartup, associate curator of the Miami Art Museum, "I think there is no limit. If the work transmits something which affects me mentally or bodily, if it makes me react to the point that I have to go back and see it again. That is what I call art".
Another recurring theme: the conceptual fragmentation of the body as a metamorphosis of dissolution that permeates everything. Systems of correlation between objects where it is not the link but the discontinuity and the vacuum which characterize the works. Liliana Porter creates minimalist series which are not free from certain euphuisms which, despite everything, transpire a hidden anguish. Norman Liebman shows disfigured faces, deformed figures, tortured minds: lips, eyes and sexual organs are sewn, and hearts transfixed. Danny Ramírez also works with the image of incomplete bodies representing other artists from the sample in a powerful series of analogies of repression: screws in the head, goals with hanging figures, fetuses transfixed by bloody hooks.
There are also works with a strong content of social criticism. In the hall of the Mexican Institute of Culture, Enrique Jezik combined panels carrying religious texts with controversal images: police aiming at a man in chains, armored cars, police dogs, the Statue of Liberty, visual pictures making up a political discussion by association of images which are superimposed as in television language.
One of the most interesting aspects is the manipulation of the textual discussions inserted in the iconography. Freely associated words are resorted to, and the dismantling of theoretic scaffolding is exercised, even though at the same time it is the conceptual approximation of art which allows this type of development. Also present is the construction of a picture in poetic dialogue with the title "Iím not lying, it no longer hurts", or "The only difference between life and art is death": strong words from the work of Priscilla Monge. The iconoclastic gesture, a true Mona Lisa with a moustache, not only affects the image, but also the textual icon.
On another aspect, Art Basel signifies bringing Fernand Leger, Jean Dufubbet, Roberto Matta, Fernando Botero, Roy Lichtenstein, Alberto Giacometti, Max Ernesty, Paul Klee, Alexandre Calder, Antonie Tàpies, Joan Miró and a long list of the great names in universal art to Miami; but it is in the risks of budding art, in full creative ferment, in the terrain of group video facilities, and of the challenges of the as yet unconsecrated creators where Art Basel is seen as more capable of broadening contemporary thought.
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