For 5 days only Luis Pons’ Fabulous Floating Villa, an inflatable installation, will be moored for viewing during Art Basel Miami. The inflatable pavilion was designed by the Miami-based, Venezuelan-born architect in response to the current real estate boom in Miami where architectural fantasy has given way to predictable McMansions and uninspired excess. The 30x30x20 foot Fabulous Floating Villa is lodged on a flatbed barge, kept inflated by a generator and fully illuminated so as to be visible all day long. Sightings from today through December 4th.

Artist: Luis Pons
+ luisponsd-lab.com

Austrian artist Maria Lassnig has been creating her body-awareness paintings for well over fifty years. Her most recent series reflects the body in a state of brokenness, and Lassnig acts as her own model for the eleven paintings and eleven drawings which depict various states of disability as well as a flirtation with death. And yet, the pictures are not depressing, but have a vibrancy, a strength about them. Lassnig is equally adept at capturing the body in all its action as reflected by Kampfgeist, an earlier work, not without humour, amongst those vaunting the body’s athletic capabilities.

Artist: Maria Lassnig
+ petzel.com

German artist Sofi Zezmer creates vibrant sculptures of plastic and metal, inspired by biochemistry, quantum mechanics, space travel and genetic stem cell research. These complex ideas are often represented by materials as simple as badminton shuttlecocks, in brights such as lime, orange, red, pink and yellow. Scientific models are certainly what jump to mind when Zezmer’s work is presented, but there is also something anatomical or even undersea about some of her pieces. The marriage of art and science in Zezmer’s work results in a joyfully MoCo effect.

Artist: Sofi Zezmer
+ mikeweissgallery.com

Diana Kingsley arranges her still life shots so carefully that it is hard to take in the fact that housed within the composition is often a small problem, or flaw, or sense that something bad is about to happen. When she was taking art lessons as a child, Kingsley always preferred setting up the still life to the actual drawing. These days her work begs some questions. Will the up-do be pulled awry? Will the pretty saucers cascade to a smashing heap? All we do know is that it is too late for the fondue fellow to save himself from peril.

Artist: Diana Kingsley
+ bellwethergallery.com

The game of chess has intrigued and fascinated people of all cultures throughout the ages and is a motif oft-repeated in literature and the visual arts. The Art of Chess is an exhibition which features chess sets put together by ten important contemporary artists, including Damien Hirst and Yayoi Kusama who encloses the game in one of her trademark polka dot pumpkins. Each artist interprets the game on his or her own terms: Tunga chooses two sets of teeth, Matthew Ronay goes picnic and Rachel Whiteread puts it into cosy domestic terms.

Artists: varied
+ luhringaugustine.com

James Siena’s work is all about movement and colourful lines and forms oscillating across the canvas or paper. Siena’s work can bring to mind the products of computer software and Abstract Expressionism, but really, various paintings can reference a variety of influences or comparisons. Multi-Coloured Nesting Unknots has a flavour of Klimt about it, as does Eight Line Way, while the Unknot conjures up notions of Celtic motifs. And the beauty of Nested Boustrophedonic Unknots is that the title is a perfect description of what the picture is.

Artist: James Siena
+ pacewildenstein.com

The rich tapestry-like layers of Lari Pittman’s newest paintings give rise to the notion that he is portraying the interiors of those who may dabble in alchemy or necromancy. Pittman focuses on the rooms, indoors and out, of an ornately decorated house for this series which does not have the science fiction overtones of his earlier, more graphic-based works. Pittman’s palette is much more jewel-toned, and the baroque ornamentation of his scenes leads to a deeply lush result.

Artist: Lari Pittman
+ gladstonegallery.com

Andrea Higgins was so influenced by her memories of her grandmother taking her to fabric stores during her childhood that she went on to incorporate these formative experiences into her work. Higgins paints the textured fabric of the various outfits of several of America’s first ladies, paintings evocative of a range of eras, politically and socially. Her tweeds and plaids and herringbones are painstakingly made up of thousands of tiny brush strokes, as seen in the detail of the fabric of Jackie Kennedy’s Dallas ensemble.

Artist: Andrea Higgins
+ andreahiggins.com

The muted palette of Belgian artist Luc Tuymans’ latest series of oils is indicative of a fragile America, trauma waiting in the wings. The Perfect Table Setting sets the tone of a desired state of affairs, but some of the other paintings, Mirror and Courtesy, suggest that this has not yet come about, or perhaps has already been left in the past. The intentionally pale hues, the cropped subjects, even the portrait of a public figure usually seen in print or on television rather than depicted in oils, lend a discomfort to the viewing of these paintings, art simply imitating life.

Artist: Luc Tuymans
+ davidzwirner.com

Wendy Walgate is a Toronto ceramicist who focuses on colour by way of masses of small ceramic objects in a single colour group. The effect is stunning. Walgate uses slip cast earthenware, mostly animal forms, with glazes in a range of hues within a family and creates cleverly arranged heaps, often with a vintage container (this could be a suitcase, a desk, a drawer, a vase, etc.) as a base. Accumulation is a clear theme throughout the work, as is the quest to create one solid object out of many smaller, disparate ones. And despite the fragile nature of the medium, Walgate presents us with such bold forms that draw strength from colour and composition.

Artist: Wendy Walgate
+ walgate.com

Eric White may work with traditional media, but the resulting paintings are a far cry from tradition. His Divorce series is comprised of old-style Hollywood glamour shots of couples cheek to cheek, but with the scrawls of a six-year-old defacing the moment. Indeed, White’s paintings do have something photographic about them, if not an obvious photorealism. The One and The Other One are, again, tributes to the head shots of pin-up girls, whereas Dadsville has a touch of Norman Rockwell-cum-70s rec room. White’s styles vary from hazy and fluid to almost harsh and edgy, all of which are worth investigation.

Artist: Eric White
+ ewhite.com