HDI Museum Visit: The Bass, Miami

Another museum in Miami Beach that should not be missed is The Bass. The Bass focuses on international contemporary art by mid-career and established artists. If you can’t immediately find the museum, look for Ugo Rondinone’s Miami Mountain, which follows his iconic mountain series and is recognizable for their brightly colored, fluorescent contrasting palates. Miami Mountain is the latest in the series and has been acquired by The Bass. The work, towering 42 feet tall, is permanently installed in Collins Park, on the corner of 21st Street and Collins Avenue. We really enjoyed wandering through the museum and were particularly smitten by the work of Pascale Martine Tayou Pascale Marthine Tayou brings his itinerant practice to Miami Beach for his exhibition, Beautiful, creating an organic and collaboratively formed presentation of work made in the last decade. Visitors will navigate between stacked Arabic pots, Colonnes Pascale (2012), and encounter Tayou’s colorful Fresque de Craies (2015), constructed of hundreds of chalk pieces arranged beneath West African colon tourist figures, gold foil, and plastic eggs. Beautiful centers around an intervention with the museum’s permanent collection where Tayou presents his work alongside his own selection of objects from The Bass’ founding collection.

Another fascinating exhibit is the current Ugo Rondinone show entitled “Good Evening Beautiful Blue”. This exhibition begins with Rondinone’s clockwork for oracles II (2008). The multi-wall installation is comprised of 52-mirrored windows (one for each week in the year) set against a backdrop of whitewashed pages from a local newspaper. Visitors encounter their mirrored reflections, stopping momentarily to contemplate how their temporary presence in the room contrasts with the dated newsprint behind the windows, which becomes more distant throughout the duration of the exhibition. “Vocabulary of Solitude” is an installation of 45 life-size clown figures cast from 22 men and 23 women of various ages and ethnicities. The work takes inspiration from the artist’s reflection on his daily actions, where each figure is engaged in a different quotidian activity, such as sleeping, dreaming, remembering, showering and walking.

We hope you enjoy our favorite pics!