By JOSH LEWIS

SCOPE Miami 2012 Vernissage in Midtown is moving full steam ahead with the first view. Over a 100 galleries featured international contemporary artists, proving a real challenge for the art-enthusiast to see it all. Every year, SCOPE has grown exponentially at Art Basel. When the doors opened at 4pm, everyone from collectors, dealers, general VIPs, and press took to the floors to get a glimpse of the absolute best in fine arts today. SCOPE is also recognized for exhibiting emerging artists with fresh voices.

As a young man, Ernesto Kunde worked on his father’s farm in Rio Grande de Sul, Brazil near to where he sold his first painting of bananas hanging upside down. He says that his work is tied to the earth, using sustainable materials when he paints, such as pieces of scrap wood, which he then treats and burns with old phone books, to give the wood a black, scorched texture. Painting with the natural grain is important in his art; it brings to life a course movement as though one could count the rings on a chopped tree. His works also tend to comment on political and social upheaval, focusing on the subject of disenfranchisement of invisible people leading up to full-scale culture wars. Ernesto Kunde’s wood paintings have also been featured in the Boca Raton museum and he now lives in Miami Shores. www.kundeart.com.

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