MIAMI, FLORIDA.-This year, for the first time, Art Basel Miami Beach presents the «Art Kabinett» initiative, giving 15 participating galleries from six countries an opportunity to show small curated exhibitions. The projects, chosen by the Selection Committee, will be shown in a separate room of the exhibitor’s booth. The exhibition concepts for «Art Kabinett» are diverse, representing everything from thematic group exhibition and single-work presentation to film program, room installation, and tribute. The spectrum ranges from the very youngest generation of artists to protagonists of Pop Art like Robert Rauschenberg, and on to such modern masters as Alexander Rodchenko. A special section of the catalog presents the projects in detail. «Art Kabinett» is an additional attraction for visitors and enables galleries to complement the conventional arrangement of their booths with a curated exhibition. In undertaking this initiative, Art Basel intensifies its efforts to achieve a meaningful combination of commercial and cultural exhibition activity.

Under the title of «Spread and Scale», the Galerie Jamileh Weber, Zurich, will present works produced by Pop Art icon Robert Rauschenberg in the seventies and eighties. While the Spreads are predominantly two-dimensional, the Scales assume a more sculptural form: some are freestanding, and those mounted on the wall have larger objects projecting from their surfaces. Both series recall the use of found imagery in Rauschenberg’s silk-screened paintings and transfer drawings. The works are also reminiscent of the early Combines in their union of two-dimensional imagery and three-dimensional objects. The exceptional selection of works presented in this «Art Kabinett» is all so called «Keepers», works that the artist kept for his own collection, most of them hidden for almost 25 years.

«North-South/East-West: Geometric Abstraction in Europe, the US and Latin America», staged by Mary-Anne Martin/Fine Art (New York) and Rachel Adler Fine Art (New York), presents a historical exhibition of abstract, geometric art. Geometric abstraction or arte concreto, informalism or art brut, kineticism and conceptual art: all had active and timely participation by Latin American artists working in their native countries as well as in Europe and the United States. In a number of cases the Latin American artists were the innovators, not the followers. The small show will demonstrate that geometric abstraction emerged from experiences and theories in circulation at a distinct period of art history and that artists working in Europe, the US, and Latin America were mutually influential and actively interconnected.

The Austrian Galerie Krinzinger (Vienna) will present rare Viennese Actionist films from the sixties and seventies: films by Günter Brus, Valie Export, Kurt Kren, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, Rudoph Schwarzkogler, and Peter Weibel.

Three artists will be taking advantage of the intimate atmosphere of «Art Kabinett» to present their drawings. «First Sight» is an exhibition of working drawings produced by American artist Alex Katz (Peter Blum Gallery, Zurich, New York) over the past four decades. It affords an intimate view of the artist in process, as though one were looking over the artist's shoulder and watching the drawing unfold in all the directness and freshness of that first sight. Often the original idea for a painting is seen here in its nascent state. In most cases, these sketches are studies for eventual paintings. The drawings of Carroll Dunham (Nolan/Eckman, New York, Galerie Aurel Scheibler, Cologne), which use elements of Surrealism, Pop Art, graffiti, and cartoons, explore the relationship between abstract and figurative elements. Brazilian artist Tonicos Lemos Auad (Galeria Louisa Strina, São Paulo) offers a different kind of drawing: he glues rubies, emeralds, tourmalines, and other gems to the wall in an abstract pattern.