Roberts Projects is pleased to return to Art Basel Miami Beach, where the gallery will present a curated selection of new and recent works by Luke Agada, Amoako Boafo, Daniel Crews-Chubb, Lenz Geerk, Suchitra Mattai, Mia Middleton, Wendy Red Star, Betye Saar and Kehinde Wiley. Moving between historical dialogues and contemporary reflections, at scales both intimate and expansive, these works provide novel expressions of each artists’ perpetually evolving practice.
In honor of her upcoming centennial in 2026, Betye Saar—who was named a medalist at this year’s inaugural Art Basel Awards—debuts a new site-specific installation for the Kabinett sector that embraces the passage of time as an ineffable force of nature. Saar's work transports viewers to a mystical, otherworldly realm by juxtaposing man-made items with objects sourced from nature, and meditates on themes of ancestral memory, spirituality and personal narrative. Central to this new installation is a freestanding assemblage, Seeking the Promise (2025), which features an upright, vintage rowboat containing a selection of found objects that collectively draw from Saar's singular visual language. Through her ritualistic process of accumulation, Saar merges and transforms these individual components into a powerful shrine-like entity that simultaneously evokes different histories layered with her own dreams and experiences, culminating in an immersive environment filled with sacred energy.
Ahead of his forthcoming solo exhibition with the gallery in January 2026, Amoako Boafo will debut new paintings that enrich the vital dialogue between contemporary and historical forms of portraiture which characterizes his body of work. This presentation follows Boafo’s critically-acclaimed exhibition at the Belvedere Museum in Vienna, Austria—the artist’s first institutional solo show in Europe—which thoughtfully paired a selection of his paintings with works by canonical figures from the museum’s esteemed collection.
Wendy Red Star will present new works from her ongoing series A Float for the Future, which depicts Montana’s annual Crow Fair Parade through recent photographs taken by the artist. The traditional celebration takes place over six days and includes events such as horse races, dance competitions and the titular parade of trucks, cars and floats decorated with intricate beadwork and blankets. Through this series, Red Star invites audiences to witness the evolution of an important and long-standing cultural tradition that centers the historically-overlooked creative practices of her community while asserting her unique perspective as a contemporary artist in the process.
A special highlight of our booth is Kehinde Wiley’s Rumors of War Study, Kéwé Lô, a variation of the monumental bronze sculpture commissioned by Destination Crenshaw, Los Angeles’s open-air museum which will be unveiled in Leimert Park next year. As the most recent iteration in Wiley’s ongoing series of sculptures that subvert historic conventions of power and representation—and the first in the series to feature a woman—this bronze depicts the Founding Director of Wiley’s artist residency, Black Rock Senegal, holding a flagpole in her hands as she sits astride a horse, creating a striking image of freedom and self-determination. At the end of the flagpole is a figure of Wiley’s mother, Freddie Mae Wiley, modeled after the Statue of Liberty in honor of the liberation and creative possibility she inspired throughout the artist’s life.
Renowned for paintings that explore the uncanny and alienating nature of contemporary life while also attending to moments of hope and possibility, Lenz Geerk regularly depicts solitary figures absorbed in contemplation and groups of people unable to connect with one another. His paintings are archetypal and liberated from historical context, often using titles that allude to recurring settings and characters such as night skies, hotel rooms, badminton players and beach-goers. The resulting compositions poetically revisit elements of early-20th century Modernism from a point of view thoroughly situated in the present.
As if mapping the blurred and sinewy terrain of his psyche, Luke Agada paints in pursuit of visualizing the ‘third space’: an internal precipice first articulated by postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha at which interdependent forces of anxiety, bravery, stability, chaos, survival and collapse must each be wrestled with. Through a combination of oil paintings and charcoal drawings on canvas, Agada translates his firsthand experience and individual study of complex sociopolitical systems into chimerical visions of bodies in transit.
Daniel Crews-Chubb has centered the figure in his work for nearly a decade, using it as a flexible motif that blends ancient references to Aztec deities and Hindu gods with 20th and 21st century art historical influences including Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and the CoBrA movement. In his new paintings, Crews-Chubb continues to eschew features that might define the figure through specific identity markers, opting instead to describe them as vessels of universal experience.
Through a group of new paintings, Mia Middleton explores the alchemical effects of planetary motion. Across eight canvases that depict various moments of supernatural possession, Middleton creates an atmosphere charged with psychological and emotional tension—imbuing the banality of existence with sensations of foreboding and anticipation.
Drawing on her Indo-Caribbean heritage, Suchitra Mattai combines richly-colored textiles, found objects, beads and other materials to create two- and three-dimensional works that offer a reimagined vision of the past centering the perspectives of women and people of color, especially those from South Asia. The process and technique of mixed-media collage holds deep significance for Mattai, with each work presenting a rich layering of ideas, textures and materials that convey the infinite curiosity at the heart of her practice. For this year’s fair, Mattai debuts a new mixed-media wall tapestry titled take cover, which upcycles discarded mass-produced objects into a coat of armor for contemporary life that reflects on courage in the face of adversity.
Seen as a whole, this presentation reaffirms the importance of remaining connected to history and attentive to the specificities of experience.
Roberts Projects booth is located at D22.
For additional information regarding Art Basel Miami Beach, the please visit artbasel.com
For additional information, please contact Clare Joelson, Associate Director at 1.323.549.0223 or clare@robertsprojectsla.com
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