In the Meridians sector of Art Basel Miami Beach, the artist Hew Locke (Almine Rech Gallery) showed his sculptural installation Gilt (2022). Official description: Gilt is the third in a series of commissions for The Met’s historic facade. Borrowing the format of trophies — emblems of competition and victory — Hew Locke created four sculptures that reflect on the exercise and representation of power. Like the façade of the building they adorn, when seen from a different angle, they are shown to be facades or fakes themselves. These works feature objects in The Met collection with interesting provenances, many rendered unfamiliar through appropriation, fragmentation, and recombination. Relying on an aesthetic of excess and artifice, Gilt leverages the relationship between guilt and gold across 3,000 years of art history, exploring the routes objects travel over time as well as the material and symbolic values that accrue to them as they change hands.

Hew Locke’s (b. 1959, Edinburgh, Scotland) practice explores the visual codes of power and cultural diversity and fuses influences from both his Caribbean and British backgrounds.

Hew Locke: Gilt / Art Basel Miami Beach 2023 Meridians. Miami Beach, December 10, 2023.

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