Early Tuesday afternoon during Nada Miami’s VIP preview, Alexander Hawkins, the director of the Atlanta-based gallery Hawkins Headquarters, sounded surprised by the fair’s offerings. “Is it always so painterly?”
The gallery is making its debut at Nada Miami with an adventurous presentation by the lens-based artist Jackson Markovic focused on the city’s nightclubs. Markovic’s bleary, fluorescent images were installed on light boxes, with each apparatus priced at $12,000. Several had sold within the preview’s opening hours.
The glow of Markovic’s images certainly made the booth stand out amid the predominantly canvas-based work at the fair, something Hawkins says he was surprised by given the fair’s reputation as a haven for edgier work. “My impression was that Nada has always been the place to be experimental,” he says. “Everything is so safe here.”
Painting a pretty picture
As much as there is safety in numbers, there also seems to be numbers in safety for the dealers at Nada, many of whom reported brisk sales on Tuesday. The New York-based gallery Shrine had already sold most of the works on its stand, which features two very different styles of painting. Paintings from Angela China’s abstract, expressionistic series Wildflower sold out quickly, according to a gallery representative.
Meanwhile, a group of hyperrealistic paintings by the New York-based, Florida-born artist Alex Hutton was mostly gone as well. Many of Hutton’s works focus on maximalist theme-park rides—massive roller coasters, infinite waterslides—although one piece depicting a herd of iguanas had also sold to a local buyer.
Burnaway, a publication based in Atlanta that regularly participates in fairs like Nada Miami, had also sold several works by Clare Torina from its stand, a collaboration with the Memphis-based gallery Sheet Cake. “This is one of the busier first mornings I’ve seen in a while,” Brandon Sheats, Burnaway’s executive director, said during the preview. “People are excited to see work again.”
The New York gallery the Locker Room is showing new work from Eric Diehl, whose Western-inspired scenes recalled the Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas (1984) while delving into the darker aspects of the American
West. Night Fires (2025), a landscape depicting a military drone flying across the Nevada mountains, sold during the preview for $15,000, according to gallery founder Samara Bliss.
The Miami-based gallery Baker—Hall is showing works by the local painter Thomas Bils, whose detailed paintings have been shown widely across the city in recent years. One canvas, Phone Keys Wallet (2025), depicts Bils gripping his own Social Security card (cleverly covering the last four digits); the work has been acquired by the Pérez Art Museum Miami (Pamm) as part of its Nada Acquisition Gift for Pamm programme. (The museum also acquired works by Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe and Pallavi Sen from the fair through the gift programme.)
Miami Beach after dark
Similarly to Markovic’s photographs, nightlife themes permeate Raffi
Kalenderian’s work on the stand of Los Angeles gallery Gattopardo, which is anchored by a history painting depicting the interior of Mac’s Club Deuce, the 99-year-old Miami Beach dive bar favoured by the likes of the late Anthony Bourdain and much of the art-world cognoscenti.
Bathing the bar in lurid red, Kalenderian included likenesses of friends and lovers in the scene and added famous Miami imagery to the watering hole’s television screens: one shows an image from the series Miami Vice; the other displays a locally iconic shot of former Miami Heat teammates Dwyane Wade and LeBron James connecting for a no-look alley-oop dunk.
Kalenderian’s project was proposed specifically for Nada Miami, according to the gallerist Chris Henke, and the gallery has also produced custom-embroidered hats that the fair is selling at its merchandise booth. The $55,000 painting had already sold to a New York-based client prior to the fair’s VIP opening, as many interested locals learned on inquiring.
