Aqua Art Miami kicks off with an exclusive VIP Preview onWednesday, Dec. 4 and continuing through Sunday, Dec. 8, 2013.  Continuous shuttle service will connect Aqua Art Miami and the nearby Art Basel Miami Beach to Art Miami and CONTEXT in the Wynwood Arts District.

The following are among the most anticipated programs and exhibitions for Aqua Art Miami’s 2013 edition:

Sound Vision - Presented by Lyons Wier Gallery and Audiophile plus, Sound Vision illustrates the synergy between visual art and music through a curated program of emerging and established recording artists, producers and DJs will activate the art fair format with a day-to-evening soundtrack that complements the visual art displayed by Lyons Wier Gallery.

Aqua Video Lounge - Situated in a tent outside the hotel’s entrance, Aqua’s Video Lounge is curated and produced by artist Montgomery Knott of New York City’s buzzed-about Monkey Town, a platform for filmmakers, video artists, musicians, performers and culinary artists.  The program features some of today’s cutting-edge video artists Peter Burr, Theo Angell, Shana Moulton, Jeremy Couillard and Will Rahilly, projected on to and within a video cube customized for the intimate dimensions of the space.

Charlie James Gallery presents Steve Lambert’s “Everything you Want, Right Now” in the fair’s entrance via the hotel’s front windows and lobby.  Consisting of a fabricated commercial sign with flashing lightbulbs and a neighboring panel of commercially painted storefront signs, the installation will provide a witty welcome to the commercial art-world dealings to be found inside the fair.

Shulamit Gallery presents Mythical Homeland, an installation by Gary Baseman.  This installation by the well-known and multifacted Los Angeles-based artist depicts a unique environment dominated by birch trees, an extension of the artist’s personal narrative and ongoing exploration of his heritage and homage to his father’s survival during WWII by hiding in forests on the outskirts of Poland.  The artist will be present for a book signing at Aqua Art Miami on Friday, December 6, at 1 PM; and Baseman will also be among the exhibiting artists featured at Milan’s Antonio Colombo Gallery in Room 206.

Coagula Curatorial presents Tim Youd in “Get Shorty – a Durational Performance”.  Artist Tim Youd continues his ongoing series of durational performances with his retyping of Elmore Leonard’s crime fiction classic Get Shorty throughout the duration of Art Aqua Miami, retyping of entire novel on a single piece of paper, utilizing the same make and model typewriter used by the original author.

Visitors will also be invited to participate in a site-specific variation of Kevin Berlin’s video project Uncensored, presented by Mark Miller Gallery of New York’s Lower East Side, and a premiere US solo exhibition of Korean artist and K-Pop phenomenon Mari Kim, presented by EJMQ of Seoul.

As in years past, Aqua’s offerings will also include a select number of exhibitors featuring new artists and promising graduates: the online network and magazine ArtSlant will unveil the winners of a yearlong contest to select several artists from an open call juried by a panel of international art luminaries; in an ongoing series spotlighting a different institution of higher education each year, the Ernest G. Welch School of Art & Design at Georgia State University will showcase a juried selection of recent MFA graduates; and Island Press at Washington University in St. Louis will share the results of intensive printmaking residencies by prominent visiting artists including James Siena, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Nina Katchadourian, Radcliffe Bailey and Ann Hamilton.