Video art first came to the mainstream art scene with the “digital video revolution” in the 1990’s, and its systematic integration in to galleries and the art market has made it a collectable medium like any other.

Mario Cader Frech and Robert Wennett are collectors based in Miami, Florida. This dynamic duo has been collecting video art since their introduction to the medium thirteen years ago.

written by Claire Breukel

Cader Frech explains how they began collecting video, ”I was always drawn to the avant-garde movement of the 1950’s and 1960’s, but videos (or moving image art) were not readily available to collectors. So back in 1998 when I was living in Washington DC and a cutting-edge emerging artist group named Decatur Blue put video art on the map, I decided to start collecting on the spot.”

Today, the medium has become synonymous with world-renowned artists such as Pipilotti Rist, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik and William Kentridge, with DVD editions being readily collected by museums around the world. But collecting and showing video art in ones home has not always been that easy. Cader Frech explains further, “Years later I questioned myself, how do you share video art at home, especially in a normal size house? So I set up four monitors (with headsets) in a hallway and that became my video booth. I would turn them on when friends were visiting.”

Now Wennett and Cader Frech have had their new home designed by Swiss Architects Herzog and De Mueron who took in to consideration their art and video collection in their design. “Now, I have video art playing on my TV monitors, there is a tiny screen in the toilet room, and a large projector outdoors. It’s actually even easier when an art installation includes a video!” says Cader Frech who has acquired work from artists Pedro Reyes, Jose Ruiz, Walterio Iraheta and Oreet Ashery.

A few blocks down the road the Sagamore Hotel has become the destination hotel for visitors to Art Basel Miami Beach. Owned by husband and wife team Marty and Cricket Taplin, the Sagamore hotel, otherwise known as “The Art Hotel” houses a collection of artwork acquired over 25 years. A rich ensemble of painting, photography, sculpture and installation, the collection has also acquired video pieces, which are on display 24/7 in select areas around the hotel.

The collection comprises a whopping 87 video works by up-and-coming as well as established artists including Assume Vivid Astro Focus, Kota Ezawa, Peter Fischli and David Weiss, Jason Rhoades, Laurina Paperina, Nick Arehardt and many more… Looped on a variety of monitors each piece cleverly integrates in to the hotels interior whilst still providing visitors time and space to suitably view each work.

“Im a huge fan video work and enjoy a lot of video I would love to buy. Two artists I really like are Isaac Julien and Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung” explains Cricket Taplin. In previous years the Taplin’s have creatively installed a selection of monitors to line the outdoor seating area displaying a curation of already, as well as newly, acquired works.

Miami, with its plethora of neon, is a city that is inherently visual, more akin to movie-making than video art. However, video art has its place in the collections of some of Miami’s most ardent art collectors being displayed along with all other art forms. These collectors maintain the distinction that video art is not like other filmic works affording the medium a platform to be displayed as the artists most intended.

Claire Breukel is a Contemporary art curator and writer based in New York and Miami. She is interested in artwork that falls out of conventional modes of exhibition.

Read Part 1 of Video Art Killed the Painting Star by Claire Breukel.

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Sagamore Hotel