Audemars Piguet, Swarovski and Gemfields Woo Art Lovers At Art Basel Miami Beach

An aerial view of the “Curiosity” exhibit, commissioned by Audemars Piguet for Art Basel Miami Beach.

Luxury brands like to be where the wealthy mingle which leads them to support events like the recently concluded Art Basel Miami Beach. Among the companies jockeying for a marketing advantage by associating with the finest works in modern and contemporary art were Swiss luxury watch manufacturer, Audemars Piguet, luxury crystal manufacturer, Swarovski and colored gemstone, mining and marketing company, Gemfields.

A closer view of the “Curiosity” installation. Photo credit: Anthony DeMarco

Audemars Piguet has been out front in its support of Art Basel. In May, the company announced that it has signed on as a “Global Associate Partner” with its three fairs in Basel, Switzerland, Miami Beach and Hong Kong.

A close look at the "snow" covering the chalet and the drawing of the wood grain. Photo credit: Anthony DeMarco

In Miami, the company partnered with contemporary Parisian art gallery Galerie Perrotin by presenting a new site-specific work by French artist duo Kolkoz. The installation, titled “Curiosity,” came in the form of floating snow covered Swiss Chalet placed off the pier of the Miami Marine Stadium on Virginia Key.

The graffiti-filled site has been closed for more than 20 years and at first glance didn’t seem like a suitable place for an art installation befitting a luxury watch brand. However, it turns out that was one of the reasons the site on nearby Virginia Key was chosen. The other was the water and the heat of a typical South Florida day, which also contrasts with the snowy winter scene. The “snow-covered” chalet and pier from a distance appears to just pop up out of the water. Up close it’s easy to see that the pier is covered in a white fabric while the “chalet” is an inflatable house similar to an inflatable play station for children.

Clever and playful, this installation provides a proper setting in a number of ways. It alludes to Audemars Piguet’s wintry home in the Vallée du Joux and it gives focus to the marine stadium. The stadium, which was forced to shut down following the destruction of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, is being slated for a complete renovation.

The watch brand also had a large display of its watches in the Art Basel Miami beach “Collectors’ Lounge,” which included a retrospective of its Royal Oak watch.

An art collaboration with Brazilian architect and designer Guilherme Torres and Swarovski Crystal Palace.

In the contemporary art world South America is hot and Brazil is the epicenter of this hotness. Taking advantage of this, Swarovski Crystal Palace—a program created by the crystal company where it collaborates with artists, architects and designers to create works of art with Swarovski crystal components—teamed with Brazilian architect Guilherme Torres to create the roots of a Mangrove tree in an installation titled “Mangue Groove” that focuses on conservation for Design Miami, a contemporary art show held alongside Art Basel Miami Beach.

The installation takes the form of an abstract diagram that describes the division of spaces into cells with corresponding focal points, combined with the mangrove-root imagery. The artwork used design angled structures of acrylic tubes filled with amber-colored Swarovski crystals and illuminated from within by LEDs. The metal joints of the structures are covered with dodecahedron-shaped wooden caps. These “root” structures, which Torres wanted to look “as if they were made of crystals,” are set into shallow pools of water, against a backdrop of projections of an Amazonian sunset.

Torres used the 2014 arrival in Brazil of Swarovski Waterschool, a project that teaches children about water conservation. Water is a key component in the manufacture of Swarovski’s crystals, as the theme. However, he said he didn’t want to make obvious references to it.

Gemfields made its presence known not with an art installation but with a movie project titled, “React to Film,” by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The emerald and now amethyst mining and marketing company sponsored an event at the outside orchid gardens of the Delano Hotel (still cool after all these years). The event featured three five-minute documentaries of three groundbreaking modern artists, John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, and David Hockney, by young filmmakers, Henry Joost & Ariel Schulman, Lance Accord and Lucy Walker.

The event gave Gemfields the opportunity to show its own promotional film of its Kagem emerald mine in Zambia, starring its ambassador, Mila Kunis. It provided an opportunity for a company that owns the Fabergé luxury brand and commissions one-of-a-kind jewelry from internationally known designers to associate its company with great artists.

Assistant Editor Maria Ling contributed to this story.

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Jewelry Sparkles at Art Basel Miami Beach

Large Kinetic Earrings (1968) by Jesus Raphael Soto

By any measure Art Basel Miami Beach, which just completed its 11th year, is a huge success. One of the ways its success has been demonstrated is the more than 20 art shows that have grown around the big event, held this year on December 5 – 8 at the Miami Beach Convention Center.

18k gold bracelet with white gold balls by Pol Bury, 1968, being shown by Didier Ltd.

Probably the most important of those fairs is Design Miami, which was held in a big white tent across the parking lot of the convention center. This was my first year attending what is now known as ABMB and was surprised to learn that Design Miami was focusing on art jewelry with no fewer than seven galleries dedicating at least some of their space to jewelry created by artists. The pieces included works by those who are known for their jewelry as well as world class artists who normally use other mediums. Among the highlights:

Ross Lovegrove 18k ring, made with 3D printing technology. Photo credit: Anthony DeMarco

* Louisa Guinness Gallery of London presented a show celebrating its tenth year of collaborating with artists to make jewelry. Ross Lovegrove was among the artists featured with a collection of 18k gold rings using 3D printing technology titled “Foliates.” Other artists on display included Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Alexander Calder.

Didier Ltd. of Londonde dicated its space to the 40th anniversary of a ground-breaking jewelry exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 1973, "Jewelry as Sculpture as Jewelry." Photo credit: Anthony DeMarco

* Didier Ltd. of London paid homage to the 40th anniversary of a ground‐breaking jewelry exhibition held at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 1973, "Jewelry as Sculpture as Jewelry." This exhibition brought together 131 pieces by 50 of the most avant‐garde jewelry designers and artists of the time. Didier Ltd presented a retrospective of this exhibition, including several unique pieces that were shown in Boston. It included pieces by Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Jesus Raphael Soto.

White gold necklace with colors and lines by Carlos Cruz‐Diez.

* Elisabetta Cipriani of London presented 11 pieces of jewelry by Carlos Cruz‐Diez, (three bracelets, two necklaces, two rings and four brooches) the artist hand made in the 1970s for his family and friends. Cruz‐Diez specializes in kinetic and op art and his jewelry pieces reflect this through the use of colors and lines that produce movement in relation to how light is directed at them.

Brooch by Margaret DePatta, c. 1950.

* Mark McDonald of Hudson, NY, presented several jewelry pieces by Margaret De Patta, who specializes in metalwork jewelry using architectural forms.

Butterfly Brooch by Gjis Bakker

* Caroline Van Hoek of Brussels presented the works of Gjis Bakker, which included human figures, automotive motifs and more traditional pieces.

I hope this is a trend that continues at Design Miami, ABMB and at other art shows held during the week in Miami. I need an excuse to attend again next year.

Assistant Editor Maria Ling contributed to this story.

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A Clock Made Up Of Clocks

I try to occasionally attend events and learn about things outside of what I regularly do in order to challenge and expand how I view the world. This is what brought me to Design Miami (December 4 – 8), which is held alongside Art Basel Miami Beach.

It is here that I discovered a most unusual clock. It was actually a clock made up of 60 interconnected mechanical clocks that create the time on a giant display that is similar to a digital watch. Each of the clocks’ minute hands perform a choreographed dance (for lack of a better word) before displaying the correct time.

This work was made by a Swedish design firm by the name of Humans since 1982 and is on display at Design Miami by the Victor Hunt Gallery based in Belgium.

It was developed with customized software controlled by an iPad. There were three versions of the clock on display by the gallery. A white version used 24 clocks and a black version that used 96 clocks. They range in price from 33,000 to 96,000 euro ($45,227 to $131,500). Below is a video of the clock in action.



Assistant Editor Maria Ling contributed to this story.

Please join me on the Jewelry News Network Facebook Page, on Twitter @JewelryNewsNet and on the Forbes website.