Miami Art Week is a week to be celebrated.
While Art Basel Miami Beach gets a lot of attention, there are a host of electric art shows that define the art scene of the Magic City and Miami Art Week itself — including UNTITLED Art. As one of the leading contemporary art fairs that takes place annually on the shimmering sands of Miami Beach, the show offers an inclusive platform for discovering new artists.
Hosting 176 exhibitors as part of its largest presentation yet, the show was shaped with a curatorial focus of “East Meets West.”
Alex Anderson, whose work was presented at Superposition Gallery’s first solo booth presentation, was one of the artists you could meet at the show. We asked him some questions to get a deeper understanding of his process and thoughts on Miami Art Week.
Continue reading to hear the artist’s personal perspectives:
Photo courtesy of Alex Anderson & Superposition Gallery
The Knockturnal: What is your favorite part about Miami Art Week?
Alex Anderson: My favorite part about Miami Art Week is getting to see the breadth of the industry. And seeing En Vogue at the Derrick Adams party.
The Knockturnal: What is your favorite part about showing at UNTITLED?
Alex Anderson: The perfect light.
The Knockturnal: Where are you from and how does that affect your work?
Alex Anderson: I grew up in Seattle, Washington and spent most of my childhood outside indulging my fascination with nature, especially plants, and staring at the mountains, water, and sky. The natural beauty surrounding me felt magical and it was these early moments that made me wonder about the forces that brought these things into existence, leading to an endless spiral of questions. What could make such a visually splendid world happen, and how am I even able to experience it? Why am I here? If I am staring at this plant, is it also perceiving me? And then what, if it is? Big questions for a child, I suppose, but I was that weird kid who liked to be alone and I wanted to know. My work approaches answers to these questions through symbolic narratives using motifs from these initial interests that have continued into the present.
The Knockturnal: Who are your biggest artistic influences?
Alex Anderson: Hildegard Von Bingen, a benedictine nun from 1050 who would paint and write music and scriptures based on her psychic engagement with the divine. Quentin Tarantino for the aesthetics, drama, and playfulness. Adrian Saxe for mastery of the medium. James Turrell for sublime beauty. Brancusi for merging form and narrative in sculpture.
The Knockturnal: Where do you find inspiration?
Alex Anderson: My work is about what it means to be alive today, which to me, means that it is about paying attention to life. I find inspiration through meditation, looking at my garden, and studying theories on the endless ways everything is connected. Sometimes there are also things I see or experience during the day that will become a source of inspiration or lead to a larger idea I want to explore in a piece.
The Knockturnal: What motivates you to create?
Alex Anderson: An all-consuming need to answer undefinable questions without answers. Making art gets us as close as we can get.
The Knockturnal: Why is celebrating art so critical?
Alex Anderson: Celebrating art is not critical, but art itself is. Regardless of how people may see the value of how art functions in our world, the truth will always remain that art shows us what people were doing, thinking about, wearing, and feeling at any point in human history better than history books themselves could relate the same story. Art is a reflection of the priorities of the ruling class, so it is also a reflection of who has been in power and their values. Celebrate art or don’t, but the value of art history is undeniable. Remember how we all had to study the painting “Manifest Destiny” in history class? The image captures the depths of American imperial psychosis and the imagined idea of a heavenly mandate to commit the atrocities that lead to our country’s vast resources. Or you could read a long paper that just describes these things, but even the specificity of language would not quite get us to the linguistically inaccessible ideas represented in that work – and all successful works of art.
The Knockturnal: How do your pieces tell a story?
Alex Anderson: I like to think of it as the reverse of someone doing forensics at a crime scene where instead of looking for evidence, I’m consciously connecting coded clues to get the viewer within reach of what I want to say.
