For Art Basel Miami Beach 2023, Ortuzar Projects is pleased to present a selection of paintings and sculptures by Carlos Almaraz, Ernie Barnes, Lynda Benglis, Matt Connors, Dorothy Iannone, Suzanne Jackson, Claudette Johnson, Ben Sakoguchi, Linda Stark, Anita Steckel, Joey Terrill and Takako Yamaguchi. The works on display, which range from the 1970s to present day, are representative of the gallery program’s commitment to experimentation by practitioners pushing against the established confines of artistic media, subject matter and taste.

Jackson’s veils (2019) features layers of translucent acrylic paint suspended over wire. The artist’s pinching, crimping and hanging transform material often associated with painting into a sculptural anti-canvas, which suggests draped fabric over a phantom body. Centaurus (1987), a large-scale pleated wall sculpture by Benglis, is emblematic of her career-long dedication to the mutability of materials. After manipulating mesh screens into twists and folds she sprays aerosolized aluminum onto the support, playfully fusing organic form and industrial processes to create “frozen gestures.” In her meticulously crafted paintings, Stark imbues a lexicon of popular symbols and motifs with an esoteric quality. Her Envelope (1997) is a canvas-turned-object made through an alchemical process of oil painting that takes on a fleshy presence. And in his abstract paintings, Connors creates canvases that archive his ongoing relationship with the world of images around him. Self-translating (2014) features blue brushstrokes reminiscent of scuffs on the floor. Interspersed with strategic blocks of vermillion, this unremarkable residue of human presence becomes a poetically orchestrated score.

Representations of overlooked and misunderstood subjects are the focus of figurative painters on the booth. The elongated, sinuous figures in Barnes’ paintings take inspiration from the Italian Mannerists to depict scenes of Black joy. Slam Before the Storm presents the quotidian scene of young, barefoot men playing basketball with a makeshift hoop in transcendent terms. A former NFL player, Barnes demonstrated a keen sensitivity to the nuanced representations of Black athleticism and movement. His Juba Dis an Juba Dat (1976)—which references the West African repercussive dance adopted by Black slaves in the Antebellum South—highlights the artist’s capacity to recreate movement and soul. Grasping disposition, personality, and mood, Johnson’s compositions in pastel and oil-stick confront the distortions and erasures that obfuscate the Black figure in Western art history. The interplay of positive and negative space in Self Study (2022) fosters a sense of incompleteness, which recreates the feeling of the evolving process in an artist’s studio. Joey Terrill’s A Bigger Piece (2008) is from the artist’s series of still lifes which he began in 1997 as a strategy to queer and, in his words, “Mexicanize” the genre. The products Terrill incorporates are symbolic of both American and Latino consumerism; the table is lined with a colorful sarape blanket, a stark revisioning of the classic American checkerboard. The enlarged blue Truvada pill, for years part of the artist’s daily HIV treatment, is now commonly used as a “preexposure prophylaxis” (PrEP) drug, a testament to the evolving nature of HIV care. With Innate Behavior (1990) Yamaguchi illustrates a recumbent female figure merging with the earth in a style reminiscent of Diego Rivera. By modeling and revisioning nudes à la Rivera, Yamaguchi challenges assumptions of what is expected of a Japanese artist, playing with her adopted home of Southern California and the cultural hybridity of her artistic identity.

Other figurative works confront staid notions of high art with playfulness and panache. NY Skyline on Canvas #2 ((Red White and Blue) Black Cock Cannon) (c. 1971) embodies Steckel’s pictorial critique of the prudishness of postwar American society. Here, she overlayed a photo transfer of the iconic Manhattan skyline with paintings of an erect peniscannon in battle with colossal nude women. Pleasure is the focus of Iannone’s JE VEUX TE POSSÉDER MALGRÉ MES PRINCIPES (1972). The erotic scene is illustrated in bright acrylic and felt tip pen and framed by blocks of ornamentation and poetic, handwritten notation melding Iannone’s personal love stories with a transgressive longing for erotic domination.