Thursday, December 04, 2008

A Night in the Life


Managed to hit a few events last night. Here's a play-by-play.
5:45pm
Where: Art Basel VIP Collector's Lounge
Spotted: Chad Oppenheim, Maarten Baas, Cem Kinay.
Highlights: Chatting with starchitect Oppenheim, he and wife Ilona have a newborn at home. His next project in Miami is an art storage facility called The Vault. Baas's melting glass installation for Ruinart champagne (above). Noticing that the food menu prices in the VIP lounge are way, way overpriced. $35 for chicken salad? Yowzahs! That Ed Ruscha for $8.5 mil is sarting to look like a bargain.

6:30pm
Where: Art Basel Vernissage
Spotted: Everyone with a pulse. Seriously, this "invite-only preview" is about as exclusive as Costco membership.
Highlights: The people-watching as usual. It's hard to see the actual art with so many drag queens and Europeans in crayola-colored suits walking around.

8:15pm
Where: Kelly Klein's book party at the Raleigh.
Spotted: Andre Balazs, Rachel Zoe.
Highlight: Overhearing Balazs say to someone: "You can do that, you have a real house. I have a shack." Of course he does.
8:30pm
Where: Olaf Breuning's Sphinx sculpture on the sand behind the Sagamore.
Spotted: A small crowd, a big sand sculpture, tikki torches.
Highlight: The quiet.
8:45pm
Where: Ritz Carlton's Masters Mystery Art Show
Spotted: Local media types.
Highlight: Top Chef contestant Jeff McInnis's fried haloumi cheese and mozzarella salad.

10:15pm
Where: Mondrian Miami Opening
Spotted: Marcel Wanders, Jeff Morr, Gil Dezer, the usual hoi polloi.
Highlight: The outdoor pool area which was spacious and crowd-free. The only saving grace of being indoors was the sublime DJ prowess of Alexander Dexter-Jones.

11pm
Realizing that the fight for a drink at the bar was too Darwinian and deciding to go home.
11:30pm
Annie's mac & cheese on my couch in my PJ's.

2 comments:

SteveBM said...

I was at the Vernissage event and that pic you posted was one of the pieces I thought was really cool but the words kinda ruined it for me. The one to the left of that, a painting of 6 different chicks on bikes with some glittered bling on 2 corners, was one of my favorites. The crowd was pretty big, I mean, even I was there and Id never been to Art Basel before (7 years here and just never managed to go).

sara said...

Glad you finally made it out! Quite a trippy experience, isn't it?