The Class of 2019? Meet 6 Fast-Rising Artists Having Star Turns at This Year’s Art Basel Miami Beach

As the art world descends on Miami for the annual Art Basel
Miami Beach fair and the accompanying constellation of fairs and
parties, there can be a lot of noise to distract you from the main
event. To keep your focus on the art—and, more specifically,
emerging artists worth knowing—we’ve pulled out a few buzzed-about
rising talents you should make sure to seek out at the fair this
year. Just don’t blame us if you can’t get off the wait list to
buy.

Amoako Boafo

Who: The Ghanian artist just had his first
US solo show this year, but he is already being treated as the
country’s biggest talent since Ibrahim Mahama.

Based in: Vienna

Notable Resume Lines: After his January
2019 show at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles, word spread quickly,
and he was picked up for representation by Mariane Ibrahim, a
leading dealer of African artists who this year moved from Seattle
to Chicago. More recently, it was announced that Boafo had been
offered the star-making residency slot at the Rubell Family
Collection, and as a result of the resultant buzz, one of his works
was offered at the ICI benefit in a charity auction, where it went
for $46,000 over an estimate of $10,000.

Where to See It: In addition to work on
view at the Rubells’s space, Mariane Ibrahim will be bringing
a solo booth of his work to Art Basel Miami Beach. The new works
are large-scale portraits presented against monochromatic
backgrounds.

What to Look Out for: He often makes bold
portraits of friends in Accra and Vienna, including the author and
musician Steve Mekoudja. He hit his artistic stride three
years ago, when he began rendering his compositions with
paint-dipped fingers rather than brushes. The effect hovers between
figuration and abstraction.

Prices: His works at Mariane Ibrahim
are priced between $15,000 and $45,000.

Fun Fact: Boafo worked as a pallbearer in
Ghana to help put himself through art school. He was first brought
to the attention of Robert Projects by another one of their
artists, Kehinde Wiley, who found Boafo’s work on Instagram.
Wiley was so taken by it that he brought it to the attention of his
dealers, who quickly arranged for a solo show, purely over
email.

Up Next: In 2020, Boafo will have a solo
show of brand new work at Ibrahim’s gallery in Chicago and will be
included in a group show at Marianne Boesky in New York.

Woody De
Othello

Who: Still south
of 30 years old, this ascendant Miami-born sculptor has become
known for comically surreal ceramics of oversized household
objects, which usually look to be in the process of melting,
sprouting cartoon limbs, or both. Think Dali’s
The Persistence of Memory adapted for Nickelodeon.

Based in: Oakland,
California

Notable Resume Lines: De
Othello currently has a solo exhibition at the San Jose Museum of
Art (through April 5, 2020), and, in February, the San Francisco
International Airport unveiled three of his new bronze sculptures
permanently installed on its remodeled observation deck. His work
was also featured in the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts in
Slovenia this year, as well as the inaugural Front Triennial in
Cleveland in 2018. 

Where to See It: Art
Basel’s new Meridians section as well as the main gallery section,
where his work will be presented by Jessica Silverman Gallery and
Karma.

What to Look Out for: Cool Composition, De Othello’s contribution to Meridians,
recalls the Miami summers of the artist’s youth, where the box fan
was the nexus of home life and his Haitian-descended family told
tales of spirits inhabiting everyday objects. The installation
consists of a giant bronze fan—sagging from exhaustion, or perhaps bending
down to whisper secrets—surrounded by a set of life-size stools and
citrus trees. His dealer’s booths will host wall sculptures of
telephones, vents, and clocks, along with freestanding sculptures
and works on paper. 

Prices: De Othello’s
works are priced between roughly $8,000 and $15,000.

Fun Fact: De Othello is a
CrossFit die-hard. 

Up Next: 2020 will keep
the artist busy with a solo show in esteemed Mexico City project
space Lulu, a residency at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center in
Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and a solo booth with Jessica Silverman at
Art Basel Hong Kong.

Simphiwe
Ndzube

Who: This 29-year-old artist, born in Cape
Town, South Africa, has earned an enviable reputation—fast—for his
Surrealist, otherworldly depictions of  life in post-apartheid
South Africa.

Based in: Los Angeles

Notable Resume Lines: Ndzube, who
holds has a BA in fine art from the Michaelis School of Fine
Art, University of Cape Town, was featured in this year’s Lyon
Biennale and the Curitiba Biennale in Brazil. But his big break in
the US came last year, when the Rubell Family Collection featured a
large display of his work during Art Basel Miami Beach. At the 2018
Armory Show in New York, his solo presentation at Nicodim Gallery
was an instant hit and sold out within the first hour of the VIP
opening.

Where to See It: Stevenson Gallery’s booth
at Art Basel Miami Beach

What to Look Out for: Some of Ndzube’s most
compelling works are inspired by “swenking,” an informal contest in
which working-class Zulu men face off in a combination of fashion
show and dance-off. Ndzube works on linen with a variety of paint
and found objects.

Prices: Works currently range between
$18,000 and $50,000.

Fun Fact: While in the studio, the artist
often gives his works-in-progress nicknames after people in the art
world or his own social circle (unbeknownst to them).

Up Next: Ndzube has a solo show coming up at
Stevenson in Johannesburg in 2020 (his first in that city) and
another at the Denver Art Museum in 2021 (his first institutional
US solo exhibition). Next summer, he will co-organize a show with
Nicodim Gallery’s Ben Lee Ritchie Handler at Harper’s Books in the
Hamptons.

Tau Lewis

Who: The self-taught, 26-year-old artist
uses textile, sewing, carving, and assemblage to create figures
that look as if they have stepped out of a dream and into your
space.

Based in: Toronto, Canada

Notable Resume Lines: Lewis has been
included in exhibitions at the New Museum and MoMA PS1 in New York
as well as this year’s Yorkshire Sculpture International at the
Hepworth Wakefield in London. She was also the subject of a solo
exhibition at the Atlanta Contemporary in 2018.

Where to See It: Cooper Cole will present
a solo booth of the artist’s work at Art Basel Miami Beach.

What to Look Out for: Lewis is best known
for her soft sculpture and quilts.

Prices: $10,000 to $50,000

Fun Fact: Lewis scours Salvation Army
shops on her travels to find the textiles she uses in her work.

Up Next: Next year, the artist will have a
solo show at Cooper Cole, a solo museum show at Oakville Galleries
in Ontario, and will be included in an exhibition at the Hammer in
Los Angeles.

Nona Faustine

Who: The 50-year-old African American
photographer became something of a viral sensation on the strength
of her powerful self-portraits, in which she wears only white heels
and poses at sites in New York linked to the slave trade, offering
a powerful reminder of the city’s dark history and the economies it
was built on.

Based in: Brooklyn, New York

Notable Resume Lines: This year alone,
Faustine was one of 10 winners of both the inaugural Colene Brown
Art Prize and the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman
grants. She also received a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship for
Photography and was a finalist in the Outwin Boochever Competition
at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.
A graduate of New York’s School of Visual Arts, Faustine got
her MFA from the International Center of Photography/Bard College
program, also in New York.

Where to See It: New York print studio Two
Palms’s Art Basel booth.

What to Look Out for: At the Two Palms print
shop, Faustine has produced her first-ever silkscreens, based on
her 2016 series “My Country.” Each image in the series features an
instantly identifiable US landmark that has been partially obscured
by a fuzzy black or red stripe. (The first image was taken
serendipitously, of the Statue of Liberty as seen behind a bar on
the window of the Staten Island Ferry; Faustine then began putting
tape across her camera lens to replicate the effect.) Each image
questions the official version of American history, asking the
viewer to consider reframing American identity to be more inclusive
and less colonial. The work is all the more timely now, given the
continued attention being paid to US monuments and their
representation of the nation and its people.

Prices: $8,500 unframed

Fun Fact: At Art Basel Miami Beach, Two
Palms is pairing Faustine’s work with that of appropriation artist
Richard Prince, which promises to be a fascinating
juxtaposition.

Up Next: Come fall 2020, Faustine will be
featured in the “Fantasy American” exhibition at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. You can
also currently catch her work in several group shows—”Photography Now 2019: The
Searchers” at the Center for Photography at Woodstock in New
York; “Shadowboxing” at FreedmanArt
in New York, and the “Outwin Boochever
Competition” exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery
in Washington, DC.

Torey
Thornton

Who: The artist, still not yet 30, has
become a favorite among brainy dealers and collectors for their
paintings made atop paper, wood, and slatted panels—materials the
artist chooses because they are populist, rather than elitist. More
recently, Thornton has begun to explore installation and sculpture
as well.

Based in: Brooklyn, New York

Notable Resume Lines: Since graduating
from Cooper Union in 2012, Thornton has developed a resume any
young artist would envy: the artist had a solo show at the
Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and was included in the 2017
Whitney Biennial. Thornton’s work has also been acquired by the
Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Guggenheim Museum in
New York, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

Where to See It: The new “Meridians”
section of Art Basel Miami Beach.

What to Look Out for: How literal you
want, me?… in Meridians, a brand new painting presented by
Morán Morán, is eight feet tall and almost 12 feet long—the
artist’s largest work to date.

Prices: Thornton’s works range from
$40,000 to $100,000.

Fun Fact: Thornton’s sense of humor and
poetry is evident in their titles, such as  First,
After I saw Elvis Look At Me And Imagined Him Looking
and What Angel Do You Look Towards When You Are Damning
Your Tears, Sweet Sis.

Up Next: The artist will have a solo booth
at the Independent art fair in New York with Morán Morán next year
as well as solo shows with Morán Morán and Essex Street
Gallery.

The post The Class of 2019? Meet 6 Fast-Rising Artists
Having Star Turns at This Year’s Art Basel Miami Beach appeared
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