Miami Design District’s Magnitudinous Presence at Miami Art Week 2023
Sculptural commissions, pop-up installations, a 1,048-person photographic mural and more from this milestone year
Every year the Miami Design District undertakes exponentially more during Miami Art Week to affirm its reputation as a destination for inspiration. Though commerce is carefully integrated throughout the district’s 18 square blocks, luxury shopping is only part of its allure; a continuously refreshed portfolio of art and design of extraordinary merit acts as an attraction for audiences, too. With commissions from Bohinc Studio and Dr Samuel Ross, as well as a large-scale mural by JR, a physical debut from digital artist Andrés Reisinger, a new Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch collaborative exhibition, Gaetano Pesce‘s latest whimsical wonderland, an Abita Jefferson retrospective posthumously funded by Virgil Abloh and so much more, 2023 was a milestone year for the Miami Design District—and one not to miss.
This is all thanks to intellectual architecting by entrepreneur Craig Robins, co-founder and co-owner of the Miami Design District (as well as the co-founder of DesignMiami/) and the founder and CEO of Dacra Development (the firm committed to advancing the neighborhood). Robins is not only an avid art and design collector, having amassed more than 1,300 pieces, but he’s eager to display these works and encourage discourse around them. He also bridges his personal collection to the commissions in the district. It all begins at Dacra’s Design District HQ, which houses the Craig Robins Collection and features seasonal exhibits that highlight works within. The latest of these showcases, entitled A Train of Thoughts, opened to the public during Miami Art Week (and remains open via appointment). From Marcel Duchamp’s “Three Standard Stoppages” to a series of monstrous slug sculptures by Jana Euler and a bench by Ross, the curation probes two important elements of Robins’ collecting style: figuration and conceptualism.
Outside of Dacra, and scattered throughout the entire Miami Design District, Bohinc Studio’s “Utopia” is composed of four installations of bulbous sculptural forms in organic shapes and softly vibrant, compelling colors—coupled with hundreds of egg-shaped bird feeders dangling from trees. Bohinc Studio’s acclaimed founder, Lara Bohinc, won this year’s 2023 Design Commission based on a nuanced proposal. Each piece in the installation is milled from cork and finished by hand. The material as well as the fungi-like forms themselves act as a reminder of the necessity and power of nature in dialogue with architecture and the built environment. “Utopia” will run midway through 2024.
There’s a beguiling tactility to Bohinc’s pieces that makes people want to reach out and touch them. “That’s important,” she tells COOL HUNTING. “I want people to touch them. The shapes are meant to be touched. I want people to have a childlike fascination with them—to squeeze them, to feel them. I like that kind of reaction. It’s one thing to do objects for a home, which are very private, but I really enjoy that this is public and that everyone can share them.” Bohinc has noticed, however, that “the material has changed since we put it out. The moisture and the sun has almost made it grow. The texture has even changed.” She hopes that when people touch them, they do so gently and within kindness.
Nearby during Miami Art Week, visitors to the Design District were able to bask in the billowing beauty of “Take Over Miami,” digital artist and designer Reisinger’s first-ever physical translation of his radiant rose pink viral works. A grand, theatrical piece, “Take Over Miami” toes the line of art and design—a functional (albeit surreal) drape upon a facade, and a fluid work of imagination. To cross the streets of the Miami Design District and catch a glimpse, even knowing that it had been installed, caused a sense of surprise and delight.
A permanent addition to the Miami Design District, a trio of sculptural, site-specific benches from artist and designer Ross aims to service pedestrians and contribute to the neighborhood’s architectural dialogue. Each anamorphic shape was drawn by hand, then translated into a 3D format before being machined from CNC steel and powder coated. “I have followed his work for many years, and personally collect his pieces,” Robins says of Ross. “I truly admire his ability to meld raw creativity with profound cultural insight to design pieces that inspire its viewers to question.” It’s been a milestone artistic and collaborative year for Ross, the founder of renowned design studio SR_A; and it is a great gift to the community that these three geometric works are accessible to anyone who needs them.
A participatory mural of staggering scope, scale and effort, “The Chronicles of Miami” includes the portraits of 1,048 Miami locals and visitors alike, captured through ten neighborhoods in November 2022 and meticulously layered together. The latest work from the beloved artist JR, the photorealistic artwork exists in two parts—with the first section presented in the Design District’s Jungle Plaza (while the second section runs across Superblue in Allapattah). Intricate and emotional, both pieces act as a study on the social fabric of Miami—and both will remain in place through January 2024.
Perhaps the most transportive experience within the Miami Design District during Miami Art Week, Pesce’s Again in Miami With Multidisciplinary Works pop-up exhibition wove together 28 works—both new and old—from the storied designer’s career. Some pieces on display were originally imagined in the ’70s, but the technology didn’t exist for their ideal fabrication. From a table crafted with folded orange resin to colorful, oversized chairs of rubber and enchanting lamps modeled after fruit, Pesce’s wonder was on full display.
A decade ago, it was likely to hear exhausted Miami Art Week attendees mutter “I don’t know if I will make it over to the Design District.” With Art Basel located in Miami Beach, the Design District was a body of water (and sometimes bumper-to-bumper traffic) away. Now, however, the Design District is at the forefront of art programming and its highlights truly require commitment. For us, that included the Gagosian and Deitch “Forms” exhibition (which, as with previous years, held some of the most thought-provoking artwork in Miami), as well as the Atiba skate photography retrospective. It wasn’t all art and design (and shopping boutiques and ZZ’s Club) that moved us this year—it was also the Design District’s announcement of a commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2025, a mission shared with LVMH and the luxury conglomerate’s 15 brands with flagships in the neighborhood. Additional maisons are slated to join, as the Miami Design District sets another standard for future developments around the world (like when all 18 square blocks became LEED Gold certified back in 2021).