Art Basel Miami Beach

For Art Nova 2010, GAVLAK presents a two-person exhibit featuring work by Marilyn Minter and Rob Wynne. Both artists will produce new, major works specifically for Art Basel Miami Beach. Marilyn Minter (b. 1948, Shreveport, Louisiana) and Rob Wynne (b. 1950, New York) are both currently living and working in New York.  Minter and Wynne are two artists of the same generation dealing with ideas of beauty, decadence, fantasy and glamour, but with two very different approaches.  In 2009, Lily Wei of Art in America stated, “Rob Wynne is not afraid of beauty and its seductive shimmer” and went on to describe him “often combining the beautiful and the repellent.” The same could easily be said of Marilyn Minter’s seductive paintings and photographs of glamorous, luscious fashion subjects focused on soiled, unsavory aspects of the body. Often times the artificial can be more attractive and enticing than reality, as is the case with fashion photography and advertising, thus affirming Minter’s approach. This also becomes clear when viewing Wynne’s installations with shimmering glass words, sparkling sculptures and embellished “paintings.” In a conversation with Mary Heilmann, Minter said, “I do try to seduce people with my paintings. I want you to get sucked in by their lusciousness.” Similarly, Wynne’s shiny objects may initially draw the viewer but it is merely an artifice used to further engage in an examination of perception through the lens of his deft understanding of art history and literature. While both Minter and Wynne’s use of recognizable, iconic imagery seems to function as deliberate superficiality used to discuss deeper, more meaningful issues, their conceptual divergence is just as complimentary to one another as their aesthetic convergence.

Marilyn Minter has been in numerous museum and gallery exhibitions worldwide.  Her work was included in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and a series of billboards were featured throughout New York City in conjunction with the exhibition. Minter has had solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, The Cannery in Murcia, Spain, Salon 94, New York, Regen Projects, Los Angeles, and Gavlak, Palm Beach. Minter’s work is included in such collections as The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Whitney Museum of America Art, New York, The Guggenheim Museum, New York, MOCA, Los Angeles, among many prestigious private collections.  Coinciding with Art Basel Miami Beach Gavlak, Palm Beach will exhibit a three-person show with works by Anne Collier, Marilyn Minter and Cindy Sherman.   

Rob Wynne has had many solo gallery exhibitions, including JGM Galerie, Paris, Gavlak Gallery, Palm Beach, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, Craig Starr Associates, New York, Galerie Edward Mitterand, Geneva, and Holly Solomon Gallery, New York. Fashion house DIOR commissioned a permanent installation of Wynne’s glass works for their Paris headquarters. He has been included in many group exhibitions, such as P.S.1 Institute for Contemporary Art, New York, Long Beach Museum of Art, The Drawing Center, New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the McNay Art Museum, San Antonio. Wynne’s work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fondation d’art contemporain Guerlain, France, and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris, as well as numerous private collections.