A Day in the Life: Javier Peres

MIAMI—To get at the real insider experience of being at Art Basel Miami Beach, ARTINFO asked several art world figures—a museum director, a collector, a consultant, an artist (actually two), a PR representative, and, in this case, a dealer—to tell us about the wheeling, dealing, wining, dining, schmoozing, courting, negotiation, resting, and—oh yeah—looking at art that they do in a day at the fair.

With galleries and projects in a variety of time zones (Los Angeles, New York, Berlin), a roster of top notch talent—including Terence Koh, whose provocative photographs fill his booth at Art Basel—and a magazine called Daddy, dealer Javier Peres is on a 24-hour schedule. He’s also a 24-hour party person. This is how he passed Thursday, December 6, the first day Art Basel was open to the public, in his own words:

Morning "Woke up in my big bed at the Shore Club, hung out on the balcony looking at the ocean while I waited for my big-ass breakfast of New York steak and fried eggs. Ate my breakfast and headed to the fair, it was around 1 pm—the jet lag has been kicking my butt this time around for some reason."

Day "The fair was busy, loads of people and loads of questions, but no real business was taking place. But then again I was pretty out of it all day and let my colleagues from the gallery handle the work. I instead decided to focus on getting through the day, so that I could rush back to my hotel and take a nap before the nighttime festivities got started."  

Night "At around 9:30 Terence [Koh] was banging on my door hurrying me to wake up and get ready because we were already late to the dinner at Calvin Klein's new Miami house as well as to the Artist Ball. We decided to go to Mr. Klein's dinner first. It was very casual, great food, and each and every single server was a stud-muffin male supermodel. Holy shit, I can't recall the last time I saw that many muscles...I spent most of the time hanging out with the lovely Yvonne Force Villareal. She is really great and is always working on realizing these amazing public art projects. I am really into her, and it is always great to catch up with her...Also chatted with the lovely Beth Rudin de Woody and with a really nice dude who heads up W magazine, but whose name escapes me. He shared a really funny story loosely related to the name of my magazine, Daddy, and to, what else, daddies...go figure.

"Hung out with Jack Pierson before we left the dinner, and, because we stayed longer than initially planned, we had to go straight to my party at Goldrush Gentleman's Club to launch the fourth issue of Daddy. The place was a bit of a mob scene when I got there with my crew—Terence, Klaus Biesenbach, and two other dudes who Terence knows but whose names I can't recall, one a writer for the New York Times, the other a blond, mega-stud dude from NYC that Terence met earlier in the night. We finally got into the club and it was thumping!!! Girls all over the place, on various stages and strutting around, getting their game on and taking cash from eager dudes....Richard Lidinsky, who runs the magazine with me and who oversaw the party, handed me a bag full of dollar bills, all labeled with the word "daddy" which I handed out to friends and to the girls. The funnest part was making it rain, showering the girls with dollar bills....They loved that too....

"The night was long, I think I got home at 6 a.m. or so, and I was pretty exhausted, so much so that I didn’t even call my man, Jeppe, back in Berlin. I just crashed."

Sarah Douglas is staff writer for Art+Auction.