Dan MartensenThe New York artist Agathe Snow had a busy fall: she presented works at three shows at Art Basel 2009. To prepare, she arrived a month early in Miami, where she spent her days creating on top of a skate ramp tucked inside a
secret recreational room behind Ohwow, a friend’s gallery. The final product was a neo-renaissance exhibit presented by James Fuentes gallery at the official Art Basel convention center (minus the skate ramp of course).
Growing up in the hedonistic boys’ club of influential downtown artists — Ryan McGinley, Dan Colen, Dash Snow (to whom she was married for nine years) and Aaron Bondaroff
— Snow is an island unto herself. Her roots are literally that: she was born on Corsica, the Mediterranean island surrounded by blue waters but formed by volcanic explosions. She creates a world that is messy, isolated
and full of decay, with beauty revealing itself in the least likely places. (Such as at this Christmas dinner party for the Times in 2007.) Like her
friends, the work has a sense of immediacy that is somehow daring.
For this installment of Something Big Something Small, our Art Basel short video series, Snow shows us a precious trinket, the type of thing she feels lost without. Finding herself freed from past demons, Snow has matured into a solid artist, showing her work in such grand venues as the 2008 Whitney Biennial. “I think I’m living my dream,” she said.