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Agial Art Gallery
Ayyam Gallery
Carbon 12
Casa Árabe
Christie’s
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Fann A Porter
Fann A Porter - Dubai
Fort Gansevoort New York
Forum Gallery
GALERIE BRUNO MASSA
galerie frank elbaz
Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
Green Art Gallery
Grey Noise
Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
Ishara Art Foundation
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
Kohn Gallery
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery - London Bridge
Lawrie Shabibi
Leila Heller Gallery
Leila Heller Gallery - Dubai
Mashrabia Gallery Of Contemporary Art
Meem Gallery
Opera Gallery Beirut
Pera Museum
Perrotin
Pi Artworks Istanbul
Sabrina Amrani
Saleh Barakat Gallery
SALT Beyoğlu
Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis
Serpentine Gallery
Sfeir Semler Gallery
Sotheby’s
Tabari Artspace
Tashkeel Studio and Gallery
Taymour Grahne Projects
The Herron Galleries
Timothy Taylor
White Cube Mason's Yard
Zawyeh Gallery
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai
Zilberman Gallery - Istanbul
Event Organizer
All
Agial Art Gallery
Ayyam Gallery
Carbon 12
Casa Árabe
Christie’s
Contemporary Istanbul
Fann A Porter
Fann A Porter - Dubai
Fort Gansevoort New York
Forum Gallery
GALERIE BRUNO MASSA
galerie frank elbaz
Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
Green Art Gallery
Grey Noise
Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
Ishara Art Foundation
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
Kohn Gallery
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery - London Bridge
Lawrie Shabibi
Leila Heller Gallery
Leila Heller Gallery - Dubai
Mamut Art Project
Mashrabia Gallery Of Contemporary Art
Meem Gallery
Opera Gallery Beirut
Pera Museum
Perrotin
Pi Artworks Istanbul
Sabrina Amrani
Saleh Barakat Gallery
SALT Beyoğlu founded by Garanti BBVA
Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis
Serpentine Gallery
Sfeir Semler Gallery
Sotheby’s
Tabari Artspace
Tashkeel
Taymour Grahne Projects
The Herron Galleries
Timothy Taylor
White Cube Mason's Yard
Zawyeh Gallery
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai
Zilberman Gallery - Istanbul
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17octAll Day30janPIETER VERMEERSCHLive Now
Event Details
There are, it seems, hundreds of ways to make art, and probably a few less to make painting. Pop then minimal, neo-expressionist then Bad, and neo-geo at the same time,
Event Details
There are, it seems, hundreds of ways to make art, and probably a few less to make painting. Pop then minimal, neo-expressionist then Bad, and neo-geo at the same time, painting has successively invested an exciting litany of conceptions in previous decades – it even appears that only recently it was in a “zombie” state. For a long time, it was criticised for being “decorative” (probably because it is hung on walls) and for being, of all the art forms, the most bourgeois and least contemporary (because there are so many new, cooler art forms). Although it may be rehabilitated today, or at least perfectly uninhibited, painting takes advantage of the simplicity of its apprehension: everything is, if not on the surface, then at least in the rectangular surface that the viewer apprehends at a glance. If done properly, it sets our own X-rays in motion and, through it, we see others made by other artists and at other times.
The exhibition that Pieter Vermeersch has created for Perrotin Paris – his sixth solo exhibition for this gallery, the third in Paris – will not, it is to be feared, reassure those who are worried about his art in general and his conception of painting in particular. Worrying, indeed, because without equivalent – but with enough historical reference points to give our X-rays something to work on.
Vermeersch’s artwork feeds on all the antagonisms of the discipline, seeking, for example, to be both figurative (it always has a photographic source, and these photographs are always made by Vermeersch, even when they are what he calls “accidental”) and abstract (because these “accidental” photographs often only have to offer a few informal colour variations). Even when the canvas is “abstract,” it is paradoxically fabricated as a photorealistic painting, the photographic image being reproduced in it through a meticulous system of grids. Of the canvas, it sometimes only retains the format, leading it towards other media: in the Paris exhibition, the first room includes silkscreen prints on marble and the last room displays a set of oil paintings on fossilised wood – a wood that, as Vermeersch puts it, time has “mineralised.” In the marble silkscreen prints, “matter becomes image” in favor of an “industrialisation of pointillism.” Vermeersch’s art is neither illustrative nor narrative: in short, art is its only crutch. His process often starts from the materials – for example, images of marble are silkscreened onto the marble and the image is enlarged to such an extent that each grid dot shows the support around it – and from the virtues and personal stories that the artist projects onto them. The works, and even more so the exhibitions, translate into a physical experience Vermeersch’s scientific and poetic reflections – reflections which focus on time and space. This is not a program that the viewer should decipher or identify traces of in the works and exhibitions (the works are not the literal translation of a thought) but, say, the source from which they flow. Without ever renouncing oil painting on canvas, the artist’s constant experimentation with new techniques (here, silkscreen printing on marble) and new materials (fossilised wood) charges the work with diversity and complexity.
The moment of the exhibition, for Pieter Vermeersch, is truly a moment of crystallisation that goes beyond the presentation of the works. More precisely, his exhibitions are ingenious systems – of perception, reflection, apprehension – which put into practice in a more literal way the divisions of time and space. The “room divider”, work of Pieter Vermeersch and OFFICE Kersten Geers David Van Severen, that contradicts the first room – made of slats (mirror on one side, image on the back) and shaped like a comma – punctuates the movement of the spectator, “slows down” the visit, poeticises the space and multiplies the possibilities of framing the gaze. The paintings and the space of the room are reflected in this mirrored curve, and the white cube is shattered – Vermeersch shapes the context in such a way that, according to his beautiful formula, it is less a question of seeing the works than of discovering them. In doing so, he also takes a step in the direction that is opposed to the “civilisation of access” that characterises the contemporary age.
The ingenious moment of the exhibition is also when the wall works are temporarily confronted with the materials and colors of this “room divider”: in the Paris exhibition, the polycarbonate and the mirror, industrial products, stage the marble and wood in a conflicting manner. Similarly, the works themselves expose conflicts between the industrial and the natural, for example, through the application of the chemical components of screen-printing ink on raw marble. Conflictual or as “beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella?” The system that makes up Vermeersch’s exhibition organises the viewer’s experience of these conflicts in a way that also keeps logic at bay.
Eric Troncy
Courtesy of Perrotin Paris
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Time
October 17 (Saturday) - January 30 (Saturday)
Location
Perrotin
Paris Marais - 76 Rue De Turenne 75003 Paris
Organizer
Perrotin [email protected] Paris Marais - 76 Rue De Turenne 75003 Paris
05novAll Day31marSELMA GÜRBÜZ | THIS PLACE WE CALL WORLDLive Now
Event Details
“This Place We Call World”, Istanbul Modern’s exhibition, showcases the oeuvre of Selma Gürbüz over the past thirty five years through the framework of a number of themes. Taking inspiration from
Event Details
“This Place We Call World”, Istanbul Modern’s exhibition, showcases the oeuvre of Selma Gürbüz over the past thirty five years through the framework of a number of themes.
Taking inspiration from the world we live in and merging it with her own fantasy world, Selma Gürbüz creates a mysterious and colorful world in which symbols and stories regarding humanity, nature and life come alive. Centering on works never before exhibited, “This Place We Call World” presents Selma Gürbüz’s elaborately crafted works woven with myths, legends and fairy tales. Ranging from paintings to installations, drawings, videos and sculptures, the exhibition includes more than a hundred works by the artist.
Selma Gürbüz’s human-animal hybrid entities, her genderless figures defined by black shadows that she frequently uses in her works and that seem to belong to another world, and her depictions of plants and animals, which evoke the feeling of being taken from an ambiguous cross-section of nature, create a mischievous, playful and unique artistic style when combined with her rich imagination. The artist shares the dreams, fears, inner journeys, and themes of life and death found in our collective memory as she narrates different stories in her works; this way, she urges us to face these thoughts and overcome them.
In her art practice, Gürbüz incorporates elements that belong to both Eastern and Western culture and develops uncanny relationships between them by masterfully merging issues and techniques from these two diverse cultures. While building a connection with miniatures from Iran, India and Turkey; and art of the Far East, she also utilises elements from Western painting, with which she is very familiar. The artist’s oil paintings on canvas; her application of ink on handmade paper since the 1980s; and her optical illusions and light and shadow plays, which she produces using a special color palette, give life to symbols, figures, patterns and motifs that open the gates to a world between dreams and reality. The artist produces her works with a breathing technique she has been practicing for many years and likens this creative process to a meditation session in which she dissolves into the painting and becomes a part of it.
Selma Gürbüz invites the audience into her world, where human and animal figures are depicted in an inseparable union. The works she painted after her trip to Africa visualise the intersecting lives of humans and animals in the generous, warm and sometimes menacing nature of this continent. The Oshun statue, which is named after a river in Nigeria and has the same characteristics as Cybele, the goddess of fertility in Anatolia, conveys feelings associated with nature such as fertility, purity, beauty, love and providing shelter. Dancing skeletons, timeless creatures, humanised depictions of nature appear in works about death, survival, sickness and healing—each a part of the life cycle—in which the subconscious manifestations of these themes are visualised.
“This Place We Call World” is more than an exhibition. It is a visual encyclopedia that takes shape through the distillation of Selma Gürbüz’s artistic production refined over the years. Although the works seem detached from the reality of our world, they depict life, the passage of time, and the state of people in this cycle. The viewer experiences an uncanny yet pleasant sense of departure once among the depictions of this visual encyclopedia and its delicious and surprising stories.
Curator: Öykü Özsoy
Assistant Curator: Nilay Dursun
Courtesy of The Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.
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Time
November 5 (Thursday) - March 31 (Wednesday)
Location
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
Asmalımescit Mahallesi Meşrutiyet Caddesi, No: 99 34430, Beyoğlu, Istanbul Turkey
Organizer
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art[email protected] Asmalımescit Mahallesi Meşrutiyet Caddesi, No: 99 34430, Beyoğlu, Istanbul Turkey
09novAll Day29janVirtual EventPHILIP HEARSEY | ETERNITYLive Now
Event Details
Philip Hearsey born in 1946 is an experienced British sculptor who has exhibited his work throughout the UK. He specialises in sand casting to make sculptures that engage the quality
Event Details
Philip Hearsey born in 1946 is an experienced British sculptor who has exhibited his work throughout the UK. He specialises in sand casting to make sculptures that engage the quality of bronze as a noble material in its own right. Casting in sand moulds is a simple and ancient method far removed from the sophisticated lost wax operation used by most art foundries. The sand casting process is relentless and unforgiving – the foundry is no place for a delicate original. It denies a complexity of form that imposes a disciplinary and enriching simplicity. Colour is achieved in many ways. The most common and widely used method is to oxidise (patinate) the bronze by employing the same chemical reaction that occurs in nature, but using a combination of mild heat and stronger solutions to achieve a faster result. Patination can be enhanced by the application of a transparent colourwash that maintains the inimitable variegated effects that are possible with oxidisation, whilst producing a more vivid finish. The most usual colourwash is acrylic, but oil-bound washes or coloured waxes are sometimes used. Colouring can also be achieved by painting alone and often this technique is utilised on part of a sculpture in combination with patination. Painting allows a greater range of colours than patination alone. All colouring is finished and protected by a marine grade lacquer and/or wax.
Philip lives and works on the Welsh borders of Herefordshire – a beautiful place, still remote and largely unaltered, landlocked and very slow in change. This is in sharp contrast to the coast that he also loves, where everything changes twice a day with the rise and fall of each tide.
Courtesy of Galerie Bruno Massa
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Virtual Event Details
Time
November 9 (Monday) - January 29 (Friday)
Location
GALERIE BRUNO MASSA
34-36 Irakli Abashidze Street, Vake, Tbilisi, Georgia
Organizer
GALERIE BRUNO MASSA[email protected] 34-36 Irakli Abashidze Street, Vake, Tbilisi, Georgia
14novAll Day28janSOPHIA NARRETT | SOUL KISSLive Now
Event Details
Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce Soul Kiss, its first solo exhibition by New York based artist Sophia Narrett. Known for her elaborately embroidered shaped canvases, Narrett weaves together spatially
Event Details
Kohn Gallery is pleased to announce Soul Kiss, its first solo exhibition by New York based artist Sophia Narrett. Known for her elaborately embroidered shaped canvases, Narrett weaves together spatially unfolding narratives of desire and sexuality. Each work invites the viewer to engage alongside it in a transcendent exercise of introspection, where the pursuit of sustained love is in concert with the search for the self.
“My work is about constructing something with a language that is problematic but using it to make my own narrative — sitting with what might be uncomfortable, and sometimes it’s about subverting that.”
Exploring topics of role play, the emotional results of escapism and the evolving nature of identity, Narrett’s process of embroidery is both slow and careful. Each stitch is a painstaking practice of self-reflection that emphasises the power of the human touch. At the same time, Narrett’s approach to conceptualising her designs is inherently unconscious. “It’s always a process of fantasy and making the images I want to see, the process is cathartic,” Narrett explains. “As I work through the image, I look back and see what’s going on there, and what are the deeper social implications, how is it engaging with the world outside itself.”
While evocative of Hieronymus Bosch’s densely illustrative worlds of the 16th Century, Narrett’s work is simultaneously in dialogue with the feminist art movement of the 1970s. With its foundations in textile and craft, Narrett’s work explores these canons and decorative history of her medium as it relates to her feminine psyche. Fueled by a fascination with human prurience, Narrett’s erotic imaginations unravel some of our most intimate bonds with each other, speaking beneath its surface and ultimately tying back to human connection.
Narrett’s seductive tangles of surreal compositions repurpose colloquial imagery from the Internet and pop culture. Her wall works are woven with vulnerability and satire as they ruminate about a postmodern existence. “[I use} the language of the internet, and use the TV that I’m watching to make my own statements, as with any language; it shapes what I’m trying to say,” says Narrett. These often explicit scenes unveil her internal contemplations while contributing to a broader commentary on gender, obsession with images, and the collective unconscious. Her material approach to confronting corporeal desire– and divulging the darker aspects of relationships– shrouds layers of affliction under fabrics of lavish beauty. Soul Kiss articulates the energies that exist between people and how our desires bring us together.
Courtesy of Kohn Gallery.
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Time
November 14 (Saturday) - January 28 (Thursday)
Location
Kohn Gallery
227 North Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038
Organizer
Kohn Gallery[email protected] 227 North Highland Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038
17novAll Day28janShakir Hassan Al SaidLive Now
Event Details
This November, Meem Gallery will present a solo, career-spanning exhibition of the work of celebrated Iraqi modernist, Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925-2004). The exhibition will be made up of a
Event Details
This November, Meem Gallery will present a solo, career-spanning exhibition of the work of celebrated Iraqi modernist, Shakir Hassan Al Said (1925-2004). The exhibition will be made up of a collection of fifteen works created over almost half a century, revealing the various phases of the artist’s prolific practice.
A painter, sculptor, art historian, philosopher, teacher, writer and art critic, Al Said is not only considered to be one of the fathers of modern Iraqi art but as one of the Arab world’s most influential and groundbreaking artists of the last century. Deeply involved in the creation of two of the most important art groups which steered the direction of post-colonial art in Iraq and united the concepts of heritage with modernity, many of Al Said’s theories outlined a new Arabic art aesthetic, presenting regional art as uniquely Arabic, instead of through the prism of the West.
The exhibition will include two rare, early oil paintings from the 1950’s, Villager (1950) and Untitled (1954), made before the artist moved to Paris where he studied at Académie Julien, École des Arts Décoratifs, and the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (1955-59), which exemplify Al Said’s work from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Despite displaying a certain affinity with Western art movements such as cubism and expressionism, the artist’s work from this period is primarily characterised by local traditions, with the use of the bright colours and loose geometric lines found in tribal carpets, as well as depictions of rustic scenes and characters drawn from rural life in Iraq, as can be observed in the stylised portrait of The Villager.
On his return to Baghdad, Al Said embraced the teachings and practices of Sufism and gradually abandoned figurative expression, turning his focus to compositions made up of Arabic letters – a very important element in the Sufi tradition. By 1971, he had formed the One Dimension Group, an artist collective that was primarily concerned with the exploration of Sufi traditions through abstract art. It was through the group that the artist further developed his theoretical approach, with the Arabic letter becoming an established element in modern regional art, a movement often referred to as al-hurufiyyah al-‘arabiyyah (Arabic letterism).
Al Said’s utilisation of the Arabic letter was not simply limited to its form or ideography, rather, he saw the letter as an intrinsic component of his vision of the ‘aesthetics of the trace’, put simply, the erosion of life and the patina left by the movement of time. Dominated by earth-tones and resembling neglected and war-torn buildings, many of the highly textured, evocative works in the exhibition make up part of the artist’s celebrated Walls series. Impulsive, clandestine, anonymous and often illegible, as if not intended to be read; the inscriptions in the compositions set against the rough cracks and crevices of his textured wall paintings evoke the furtive nature of an act performed under repressive conditions, hinting at the censorship that the writing sought to evade.
Courtesy of Meem Gallery
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Time
November 17 (Tuesday) - January 28 (Thursday)
Location
Meem Gallery
Al Qouz Dubai United Arab Emirates P.O. Box 290
Organizer
Meem Gallery Al Qouz Dubai United Arab Emirates P.O. Box 290
25novAll Day30janTracey Emin | Living Under the Hunters MoonLive Now
Event Details
The paintings, neon, sculpture and film in this exhibition take their cue from the elemental, sometimes primal, artistic expression that defines the art of Tracey Emin. Timed to coincide with
Event Details
The paintings, neon, sculpture and film in this exhibition take their cue from the elemental, sometimes primal, artistic expression that defines the art of Tracey Emin. Timed to coincide with the major exhibition ‘Tracey Emin / Edvard Munch: The Loneliness of the Soul’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, the presentation culminates with a screening of her 1998 film Homage to Edvard Munch and all My Dead Children.
The title of the exhibition is drawn from a painting that references the ‘Hunter’s Moon’, a variation of a full moon that appears in October or November in the northern hemisphere. Also called a ‘Blood Moon’, this lunar event became known within traditional folklore as the best time for nocturnal stalkers to track and catch their prey. For Emin, who often paints throughout the night, a different kind of quarry is captured in her painting, which shows a couple locked in a carnal embrace atop a blood red mound of gestural marks. In another work, This Was The Beginning (2020), the figure is the conduit for expressions of turmoil and passion, and ultimately, salvation. The treatment of the motifs in the work convey the physicality and expressionism that is so familiar in Emin’s paintings. A reclining body is seen both emerging and collapsing in a tumult of vigorous brushwork and pentimenti strokes; the life force that is the figure, with its crimson contours, bursting out from a background of ghostly, whitewashed passages.
A palette of dark red and blue predominates in Absolute Fucking Desperation (2020), where forms are repeatedly overlaid with robust brushwork, creating an active depth of field within the composition. The partially visible outline of a recumbent figure collapses into an abstracted topography, with strong, staccato strokes punctuating the form, emanating the energy of its making, with stains and drips running down the canvas.
The sculpture in the centre of the ground floor space, There was so much more of me (2019), is the truncated form of a woman which appears both eroticised and defenceless. Kneeling as if in supplication, with legs splayed apart, the figure is bold yet vulnerable.
In the lower ground floor gallery, the film Homage to Edvard Munch and all My Dead Children shows Emin on a pier crouched in a foetal position. The camera pans across to reveal the backdrop of a bay, with its waters shimmering in the sunlight. This is the view from Edvard Munch’s house at Åsgårdstrand in Norway, which featured in a number of his paintings. A moment elapses before an agonised and prolonged scream fills the air, a reverberation, perhaps, of Munch’s most celebrated work The Scream.
Emitting a warm yellow glow, the neon I Made My Way To You (2020), is situated in the adjacent space. As with so many of Emin’s neon works, there is an ambiguity to the statement, which can be read as a personal declaration from one lover to another, or resonate across time, from one artist to another. Alongside this sits the maquette for The Mother: a public art commission permanently sited on the city of Oslo’s Museum Island which will be inaugurated in 2021. The final manifestation of this intimate and tender portrayal of a mother will be a monumental bronze sculpture visible across the fjord. As Emin has said of the work: ‘The Mother sits like a Sphinx, waiting for the tide, looking out to sea – protecting the home of Munch’.
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Time
November 25 (Wednesday) - January 30 (Saturday)
Location
White Cube Mason's Yard
25 – 26 Mason's Yard , London SW1Y 6BU
Organizer
White Cube Mason's Yard 25 – 26 Mason's Yard , London SW1Y 6BU
01dec08:0127jan(jan 27)08:01Virtual EventALFRED BASBOUS | MODERNIST MEETINGLive Now
Event Details
Tabari Artspace is proud to present Modernist Meeting, a digital solo exhibition of esteemed modernist Lebanese sculptor, Alfred Basbous. Having been educated and spending his formative years in Europe studying
Event Details
Tabari Artspace is proud to present Modernist Meeting, a digital solo exhibition of esteemed modernist Lebanese sculptor, Alfred Basbous. Having been educated and spending his formative years in Europe studying in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and socialising with influential figures in sculpture such as Henry Moore, Basbous is part of a pivotal movement that saw post-war, modern approaches to sculpture and the spirit of avant-gardism of the time translate into the topics and aesthetics which were pertinent to the Middle East.
The artist is known for his intimate understanding of human and animal forms which occupy a central place within his oeuvre. Basbous was particularly adept at articulating his appreciation for the female figure into material form as witnessed here in the selected works such as Bédouine (1993) and Pudeur (1988); his sculptures in bronze fluidly blend faces and figures into sublime abstraction. Vache (1964) and Squirrel (1964) exhibit the artist’s long-standing and deep-rooted affinity with organic forms, nature and animals. Other works such as Tête Allongée (2004) and Tete (1975) are explicitly primal suggesting that Basbous was keen to not only extend Western modernist sculpture to his native land but also extend his own country’s history through artworks that feel at once like artefacts while elegantly modern
Courtesy of Tabari Artspace
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Virtual Event Details
Time
December 1 (Tuesday) 08:01 - January 27 (Wednesday) 08:01
Location
Tabari Artspace
The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Tabari Artspace[email protected] The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
15decAll Day30janGHASSAN ZARD| LA DÉCHIRURELive Now
Event Details
Ghassan Zard’s LA DÉCHIRURE puts focus on the break from reality we collectively experience. It emphasises that horizon threshold where we pass from our uncertain existence towards a desired, fancied
Event Details
Ghassan Zard’s LA DÉCHIRURE puts focus on the break from reality we collectively experience. It emphasises that horizon threshold where we pass from our uncertain existence towards a desired, fancied future. Just like the colours of Zard’s paintings, the two realms do not intermingle but complement or juxtapose one with the other.
To look beyond our reality is to look towards our dreams and aspirations in the realm where they have not been created, thus living out of imagination rather than history.
LA DÉCHIRURE is a solo exhibition by Ghassan Zard taking place at Galerie Tanit, hors-les-murs, Starco Center, Bloc C, Unit 117 from December 15, 2020 until January 30, 2021, doors open from 3:00 PM until 8:00 PM.
The artist will be present at the exhibition on Tuesday, December 15, from 5:00 PM until 8:00 PM.
Courtesy of Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth
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Time
December 15 (Tuesday) - January 30 (Saturday)
Location
Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth
East Village Building - Ground Floor, Armenia Street, Mar Mikhael, Beyrouth, Lebanon
Organizer
Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth[email protected] East Village Building - Ground Floor, Armenia Street, Mar Mikhael, Beyrouth, Lebanon
15decAll Day27janUNLOCKLive Now
Event Details
Zilberman Istanbul continues the 2020-2021 art season with a group exhibition that will feature works by international signatures that have never been exhibited in Istanbul before. The exhibition entitled “Unlock” proposes
Event Details
Zilberman Istanbul continues the 2020-2021 art season with a group exhibition that will feature works by international signatures that have never been exhibited in Istanbul before.
The exhibition entitled “Unlock” proposes the constructive, healing and unifying energy of culture and art against the social, cultural, and economic shock created by the coronavirus/COVID-19 pandemic, against which the world has been fighting a battle over a year now at terrible costs, both material and moral. In the face of the “Lockdown”/“Quarantine” practice, which humanity has been exposed to and which caused many cultural and artistic activities to be postponed, the exhibition aims to keep the doors open as a kind of “intensive care” source with a 24/7 responsibility and understanding, and enables that the laborers of this field meet with their audience under every possible condition.
Courtesy of Zilberman Istanbul.
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Time
December 15 (Tuesday) - January 27 (Wednesday)
Location
Zilberman Gallery - Istanbul
İstiklal Cad. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10 Beyoğlu / Istanbul
Organizer
Zilberman Gallery - Istanbul[email protected] İstiklal Cad. No.163 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10 Beyoğlu / Istanbul
16decAll Day16febADLITA STEPHAN | DARKNESS AND ITS CROSSINGLive Now
Event Details
To speculate that darkness is subjected to a crossing is hopeful, since its crossing insinuates that darkness is but a temporary state. The artist’s contemplation of the states of the
Event Details
To speculate that darkness is subjected to a crossing is hopeful, since its crossing insinuates that darkness is but a temporary state. The artist’s contemplation of the states of the obscure, though anchored in darkness, still deludes a certain light.
In Al Daken Wa ‘Oubouroh, translated to “Darkness and its Crossing”, Adlita Stephan undoubtedly forces the spectator to question and baptise themself in differing states of tenebrosity. The exhibition is then transformed into an immersive experience where one is involuntarily transcended into states of the Obscure.
Through the central piece of her latest exhibition, Stephan explores darkness through a mesmerising text. Darkness, is not regarded as strictly a hue but also as a condition. Experiencing her work then transforms the spectator into a prism through which darkness could be divided and explored into its infinite spectrum.
Courtesy of Galerie Janine Rubeiz
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Time
December 16 (Wednesday) - February 16 (Tuesday)
Location
Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Majdalani Building, Ground Floor. Charles de Gaulle Avenue, Raouche, Beirut 1107. Lebanon
Organizer
Galerie Janine Rubeiz[email protected] Majdalani Building, Ground Floor. Charles de Gaulle Avenue, Raouche, Beirut 1107. Lebanon
12janAll Day28febWORKS ON PAPERLive Now
Event Details
Fann A Porter Dubai is pleased to present Works on Paper, an exhibition of drawings by Juri Morioka, Zeina Salameh, Houssam Ballan, Omar Najjar and Majd Kurdieh from 12 January
Event Details
Fann A Porter Dubai is pleased to present Works on Paper, an exhibition of drawings by Juri Morioka, Zeina Salameh, Houssam Ballan, Omar Najjar and Majd Kurdieh from 12 January – 28 February 2021 at gallery located at The Workshop Dubai, with an opening reception on Tuesday, 12 January, at 7pm.
The presented works explore the intimate yet primordial nature of paper drawing. The pieces allow the viewer to engage and experience the artists processes in an exceptionally close manner. The exhibition aims to celebrate drawings as basis to the artist’s practice but as a most fundamental form of artistic expression.
Celebrated New York based Japanese artist Juri Morioka’s ‘Landscapes from other Dimensions’ is a new series of paper works made using pencil, water-based pigments, 24K Kanazawa gold and crushed semi-precious gems. The nature inspired abstract works invites the viewer to experience a sense of belonging, where artist shares the belief that everything has a life of its own and a story to tell. Born in Tokyo, Japan, Morioka spent a year at the University of Toledo before moving to New York City where she earned a BFA in painting at Parsons School of Design in 1990. The recipient of numerous grants and awards, Morioka has exhibited her paintings in galleries and museums across the U.S., Europe and Asia. Since her works were first introduced in Dubai in 2005, they have been showcased in galleries throughout the UAE.
Zeina Salameh is a visual artist and creative graphic designer whose artwork takes the form of etching, lithography, silkscreen, linocuts, monotype, printmaking, installation, and video art.The artist graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts – University of Damascus, Graphics and Printmaking Department in 2000. She has been part of many humanitarian organisations through voluntarily educational workshops of fine arts. She is also a brand strategist and creative consultant for businesses. Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1979, Zeina Salameh lives and works in Dubai. She has participated in group exhibitions and workshops within the Middle East and Japan.
At the center of Houssam Ballan’s work is the idea that representation cannot solely be based on what one sees, but the understanding of what one is seeing and the feelings it invokes in a person – be it through looking at it from different angles, touching it, allowing it to move you subconsciously, as well as other experiential interactions. Ballan takes a large focus on research and the exploration of these ideas within his practice, providing his works with a strong theoretical base. His works on paper, often using ink, charcoal, or markers are informed from this research. Born in 1983 in Sweida, Syria, Ballan was part of the 13th Cairo Biennale, Cairo (2019). Ballan has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including BBA Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2019); Hafez Gallery, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2019); Manara Arts & Culture, Jordan (2019); Atelier Stories, Paris, France (2018); Fann A Porter, Dubai, UAE (2020, 2019, 2018), Mark Hachem Gallery, Beirut, Lebanon (2014); Arab Cultural Centre (2010, 2007, and 2005); Ayyam Gallery, Damascus, Syria (2006); French Cultural Centre, Damascus, Syria, (2004); among others. His works can be found in numerous private and public collections.
Omar Najjar is known for his innovative style that he describes as “structured chaos.” Presented in this exhibition are Najjar’s latest pastel on paper works that continue his modern take on impressionism; their quotidian subject matter is elevated to the sublime, providing a profound, if understated, view of the human experience. Born in 1992 in Nablus, Palestine, Omar Najjar graduated from the Jordan University’s Fine Arts Department. The artist group and solo exhibitions include The artist group and solo exhibitions include BBA Gallery, Berlin, Germany (2019), Manara Arts & Culture, Amman, Jordan (2020, 2019), Bahrain Art Fair (2019); Zara Gallery, Amman, Jordan (2018), Wadi Finan, Amman, Jordan (2016); Al Bareh Gallery, Bahrain (2016); Fann A Porter, Dubai, UAE (2015); Nabad Art Gallery, Amman, Jordan (2014). Omar Najjar’s works are housed in various private and public institutions including the Palestine Museum, USA.
Majd Kurdieh’s practice incorporates painting, drawing, and literature using recurring figures that stand to tell a story, usually carrying a strong moral and positive reinforcement that the artist projects into the world. The artist has created a ‘cast of characters’, the two main ones being the Fasaeen (Arabic for ‘tiny ones’). The stories told through the representation of these figures are not specific stories that the artist references but rather ones that could apply to any viewer, leaving room for personal interpretation. The Fasaeen, one boy (Fasoon) and one girl (Fasooneh), always smiling despite the fact their world is filled with hardships, are usually accompanied by other characters. Featured in this exhibition are selection of ink on paper works, part of artist’s series ‘Hold onto the Flower’. Born in Aleppo, Syria in 1985, Kurdieh has featured in solo and group exhibitions at Azad Art Gallery, Cairo (2020), Egypt Art Fair, (2020), BBA Gallery, Berlin (2019), Manara Arts & Culture, Jordan (2020, 2019); Fann-A-Porter, Dubai (2019, 2018, 2016), El-Sawy Culture Wheel, Cairo (2019), and Athar Al Farasheh, Aleppo (2011), Sikka Art Fair, Dubai (2018) and Art Bahrain, Manama (2019, 2018). His works are housed in public and private collections in the Middle East and abroad, including HE Dr. Zaki Nusseibeh’s private collection and Atassi Foundation.
Courtesy of Fann A Porter Dubai
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Time
January 12 (Tuesday) - February 28 (Sunday)
Location
Fann A Porter - Dubai
The Workshop Dubai, 45, Street 23B, Off Al Wasl Road, Jumeirah 2, Dubai
Organizer
Fann A Porter - Dubai[email protected] The Workshop Dubai, 45, Street 23B, Off Al Wasl Road, Jumeirah 2, Dubai
12janAll Day28febMAYS ALBAIK | A TERRANEAN LOVE NOTELive Now
Event Details
Tashkeel is proud to present ‘A Terranean Love Note’, a solo exhibition by the artist Mays Albaik. The exhibition is a culmination of Albaik’s year-long research and development on the
Event Details
Tashkeel is proud to present ‘A Terranean Love Note’, a solo exhibition by the artist Mays Albaik. The exhibition is a culmination of Albaik’s year-long research and development on the Critical Practice Programme 2020 at Tashkeel with mentors Ala Younes and Lawrence Abu Hamdan.
Through spatial interventions, sculpture and video work, ‘A Terranean Love Note’ explores moments of contact between the self and placehood – constructed sites of physical residence, digital spaces or ancestral homelands. The works triangulate body, language and space by layering a personal poetics onto the social politics that define our relationship to geography.
Mays Albaik’s early practice developed out of the oral narration of her family’s history, the story of her grandfather’s exile from Palestine, and the winding path through geopolitical and cultural landscapes that led to where she is now; a non-citizen resident of her country of birth. She holds an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design and a B.Arch from the American University of Sharjah. An alumna of Salama Emerging Artist Fellowship (SEAF), she has participated in exhibitions including ‘Qala 0.8900’ (Darat Al Funun, Jordan); ‘Before We Were Banned’ (Helix Art Gallery, Brooklyn, New York); ‘Sawt 2a’ (Grey Noise, Dubai); ‘Mind the Gap’ (Tashkeel, Dubai), and ‘Change Coordinates + Someone Else’ (1971 Design Space, Sharjah).
Courtesy of Tashkeel.
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Time
January 12 (Tuesday) - February 28 (Sunday)
Location
Tashkeel Studio and Gallery
PO Box 122255, Nad Al Sheba 1. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Tashkeel[email protected] PO Box 122255, Nad Al Sheba 1. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
14janAll Day20marCLAUDIO BRAVOLive Now
Event Details
Forum Gallery presents its first exhibition of works by Claudio Bravo (1936 – 2011), whose estate the Gallery now represents. The exhibition of paintings, pastels and drawings includes works
Event Details
Forum Gallery presents its first exhibition of works by Claudio Bravo (1936 – 2011), whose estate the Gallery now represents. The exhibition of paintings, pastels and drawings includes works exhibited publicly for the first time in the United States.
In his catalogue essay, Art in America contributing editor David Ebony writes, “Gifted with technical virtuosity, Bravo commands a seemingly effortless sleight-of-hand to enthrall viewers in unexpected ways. Like a modern-day alchemist, he manages to transform everyday objects and ordinary subjects into something inimitable, rarified and extraordinary. Even his most austere and nearly abstract compositions can inspire awe in their transcendental allure”.
Claudio Bravo was a painter of colour and light. It was the extraordinary light of Morocco that drew Bravo to the country where he lived from 1972 until his passing in 2011. He used this light to propel his art, rendering, in his still life paintings, objects from his own collections and his everyday life that he carefully arranged in the light to focus on their enigmatic meaning. His gift for economy and nuance served his interest in evoking an emotional response rather than creating a mere depiction. In the Forum Gallery exhibition, Moroccan Fans, 1994; Ritual Stones, 1997; Camel and Lamb Skins, 2004; and Yellow Marjana, 2008; are imbued with the harmonious colour and spectacular light that set Claudio Bravo’s still lifes apart.
Inspired by the paintings of Mark Rothko and Antoni Tàpies, Claudio Bravo began painting the palpable textures and subtle colours of paper and fabric in the early 1960’s, and these subjects became the best-known of his works, remaining popular throughout the world during his lifetime and beyond. The exhibition includes Three Aluminum Papers, 2010, and Red Cloth, 2011, Claudio Bravo’s last completed painting, a majestic, luxurious work over six feet tall, to be exhibited for the first time.
The earliest painting in the Forum Gallery exhibition is the haunting Nude Male Leaning on Column, 1979, recalling the Artist’s stay in New York City from 1969 to 1972. An important example of Bravo’s figurative mastery, the silent, ethereal drama in this work is emblematic of Claudio Bravo, who said he owed much to Velázquez.
Often celebrated as a consummate draughtsman, Claudio Bravo worked on paper as well as canvas throughout his career, and his pastels and drawings are among his most sensitive works. The shimmering colour of the pastels and the depth and beauty of the drawings in the exhibition are exemplified by the pastels Green Sofa, 1991, and Opening the Door, 1991, and the drawings Two Heads and Hands, 1983, and Said, 1995, as well as the rare still life drawing of Engines, 2008.
Claudio Bravo was recognised with fourteen one-person museum exhibitions in the US, Chile, Mexico and France during his lifetime. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago; the Ludwig Museum, Cologne, Germany, the Museum Boijmans Van Beurugen, Rotterdam, Netherlands; and many more throughout the world. Claudio Bravo was chosen to represent Chile in the Venice Biennale in 2007.
Courtesy of Forum Gallery NY
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Time
January 14 (Thursday) - March 20 (Saturday)
Location
Forum Gallery
475 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022
Organizer
Forum Gallery[email protected] 475 Park Avenue at 57th Street, New York, NY 10022
17janAll Day17febGEORGE BAHGORY | A SKETCH IS A SKETCH IS A SKETCHLive Now
Event Details
Mashrabia Gallery presents “A sketch is a sketch is a sketch”, a solo Exhibition by George Bahgory. How many exhibitions did Bahgory during his long career? It is impossible to
Event Details
Mashrabia Gallery presents “A sketch is a sketch is a sketch”, a solo Exhibition by George Bahgory.
How many exhibitions did Bahgory during his long career? It is impossible to know exactly, but this one is supposed to be the very last one while the artist is still alive. Could we believe that?
This captivating exhibition would like to pay homage to the ingenious artist and his career. Drawing being an integral part of who he is, Bahgory throughout his life couldn’t detain himself from drawing – like a magnificent obsession – his everyday surroundings, whether it was a beautiful scenery or at his everyday cafe.
Divided in different sections ranging from portraits to nudes to streets scenes, this exhibition stresses the ability of Bahgory to create a whole world through a mere simple black line. Colours add to the compositions a touch of sensuality, recalling the freedom of expression which has characterised his entire production.
Courtesy of Mashrabia Gallery
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Time
January 17 (Sunday) - February 17 (Wednesday)
Location
Mashrabia Gallery Of Contemporary Art
15, Mahmoud Bassiouny St. Qasr El-Nil, Cairo, Egypt
Organizer
Mashrabia Gallery Of Contemporary Art[email protected] 15, Mahmoud Bassiouny St. Qasr El-Nil, Cairo, Egypt
20janAll Day31LONDON ART FAIR: EDITLive Now
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LONDON ART FAIR ANNOUNCES LONDON ART FAIR: EDIT PRESENTING LEADING MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES IN A REFINED PROGRAMME OF DIGITAL INITIATIVES. Whilst we are unable to present London
Event Details
LONDON ART FAIR ANNOUNCES LONDON ART FAIR: EDIT PRESENTING LEADING MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY GALLERIES IN A REFINED PROGRAMME OF DIGITAL INITIATIVES.
Whilst we are unable to present London Art Fair in its usual physical format at the Business Design Centre, Islington, we remain focused on delivering a safe and compelling alternative for us to bring our Fair community together.
Returning for its 33rd edition 20 – 31 January 2021 (VIP Preview 18 – 19 January), London Art Fair: Edit will present over 50 leading modern and contemporary galleries in an alternative digital format.
Providing an unmissable opening to the art calendar, London Art Fair: Edit invites collectors and enthusiasts to discover works by renowned artists from the 20th century to today.
The digital Fair will host online Viewing Rooms allowing visitors to discover, browse and enquire upon selected works from the galleries, featuring audio and written commentaries narrated by the galleries themselves; allowing for a more personal interaction and viewing experience.
An inspiring programme of Talks and interactive Workshops will include panel discussions and conversations with artists, curators and leading experts, providing further insight to the work on show and taking an in-depth look at emerging trends and art world topics.
New additions to 2021 include LAF Selects with invited experts, collectors and prominent friends of the Fair presenting their own personal highlights from the Viewing Rooms.
Alongside the galleries curated Viewing Room presentations and continuing the Fair’s role in nurturing collecting at all levels, LAF Editions provides our audience with a unique opportunity to purchase limited edition prints exclusively through London Art Fair website.
2021 EXHIBITORS
Over 50 galleries from around the world are participating in London Art Fair: Edit. With regular London Art Fair exhibitors Advanced Graphics London, Jealous (London), Jill George Gallery (London), Rabley Gallery (Wiltshire), Beaux Art London, Oxford Ceramics (Oxford) and England & Co.; alongside first-time exhibitors EVE LEIBE GALLERY (London), Bavan Gallery (Iran) and African Arty (Morocco).
London Art Fair’s specialism in Modern British art continues to be strongly represented and received through the participation of some of the UK’s leading galleries in the field including Osborne Samuel (London), The Nine British Art (London), Browse & Darby (London), Castlegate House Gallery (Cumbria), Crane Kalman Gallery (London) and Jenna Burlingham (Hampshire).
Also making a welcome to return to the Fair, Richard Green (London) presents No Man is an Island, a selection themed on British artists’ response to the twentieth century: currents of European Modernism entwined with British Romanticism and a strong association with Nature. Highlights include John Piper’s pulsating Abstract Forms on white ground, 1935, informed by his experience of the art of Picasso and Braque and William Scott’s Poem for a jug, no.19, 1980, muses on the purity and timeless beauty of everyday objects.
Contemporary galleries include; CHARLIE SMITH LONDON with Project Papyrophilia, Purdy Hicks (London) presenting new photographic work by Céline Bodin, Sandra Kantanen and Susan Derges, new works by two British painters Gill Button and William Brickel and sought-after works by artist Sikelela Owen. African Arty will be presenting a focus selection of contemporary African art artists including; Cedrick Sungo, Franck Kemkeng Noah, Dagmar van Weeghel and Cinthia Sifa Mulanga.
Platform: Folk Art
Launched in 2019, the Fair’s curated section, Platform focuses on a single distinct theme, with galleries presenting well-known, overlooked and emerging artists that align to the focus. For 2021, the theme is Folk Art and at a time when the world is ever changing, curator Candida Stevens, looks at our cultural heritage, our communities and our identity, and how artists working in the Folk tradition have chosen to pass on this knowledge and inspiration.
Platform galleries at LAF EDIT are Candida Stevens Gallery, Cavaliero Finn, Ed Cross Fine Art, Gibbons & Nicholas, Jaggedart, MADEINBRITALY, Outside In, Robert Young Antiques, Ruup & Form, Ting – Ying and Vessel Gallery.
As London Art Fair: Edit’s Marketplace Partner, Artsy will provide a unique opportunity for exhibiting galleries to promote their virtual booths to Artsy’s global audience. Collectors can experience London Art Fair on Artsy to discover artists, save favourite works, view works on their home walls through Artsy’s AR mobile tool and directly purchase work from galleries.
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Time
january 20 (Wednesday) - 31 (Sunday)
20janAll Day06marSTELIOS KALLINIKOU | NEBOKERULive Now
Event Details
Nebokeru is the first solo presentation of Stelios Kallinikou at Grey Noise, Dubai. Stelios Kallinikou approaches photography as a spatially performative act. An archaeologist by training, he is interested in unearthing
Event Details
Nebokeru is the first solo presentation of Stelios Kallinikou at Grey Noise, Dubai.
Stelios Kallinikou approaches photography as a spatially performative act. An archaeologist by training, he is interested in unearthing narratives of spaces which lie beyond words. He presents us with sequences of imagery, flowing into interlaced dialogues, whilst exploring the nexus between the narrative limitations of photography and consciousness. The photographic effect known as Bokeh has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. The term comes from the Japanese word boke, which means “blur” or “haze”, or boke-aji, meaning “blur quality”.
The exhibition title is derived from the Japanese verb Nebokeru denoting the actions or condition of someone who is half-asleep. Images appear mythological and archeologically proto-human, connecting something primordial to the present by way of narrativising the body’s connection with the earth. In an introspective, meditative pace, Kallinikou brings works together constructing a world serving as a speculative scenario, through which he can better envisage his relationship to politics of vision, challenging the ways in which such mechanisms influence our experience.
Courtesy of Grey Noise Gallery
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Time
January 20 (Wednesday) - March 6 (Saturday)
Location
Grey Noise
Unit 24, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE.
Organizer
Grey Noise[email protected] Unit 24, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE.
20janAll Day10marÀ BOUT DE SOUFFLELive Now
Event Details
Carbon 12 is enthusiastic to announce the group exhibition, À Bout de Souffle. The exhibition includes artworks from artists Omar Barquet, Olaf Breuning, André Butzer, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Jojo Gronostay,
Event Details
Carbon 12 is enthusiastic to announce the group exhibition, À Bout de Souffle.
The exhibition includes artworks from artists Omar Barquet, Olaf Breuning, André Butzer, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Jojo Gronostay, Michael Sailstorfer, Sara Rahbar and Anahita Razmi.
We spend no time in between reminiscing and disremembering. With sights set towards the immediate future, we relinquish all notion of the present. Never remaining within the stillness of a moment. À Bout de Souffle (‘breathless’) is an exhibition that occurs and unfolds as a deconstruction of one, fleeting moment. In isolating a cinematic still, our feet grounded, the exhibition seamlessly flits in and out of the present moment, encouraging us to absorb, and to release.
As a bubble expands in size, with its iridescent walls shifting in endless lucid colours, the ever-growing anticipation of being suspended in tension only grows – the artworks from the exhibition drift between various states of calm and calamity. Jojo Gronostay’s artwork frames the hand of a street vendor, barely grasping ropes connected to blankets that serve as displays for fake designer products. Through capturing a transient state, a moment in transit, he juxtaposes conflicting elements of calm and chaos.
Anahita Razmi’s video installation focuses on hand movements and technological devices, composing a new choreography using stock footage videos of scrolling hands and fingers. Razmi explores and searches for new ways of navigation by reframing these gestures or motions that are seemingly intuitive and internalised by applying a new “non-fitting”, “exotic”, sonic connection to them. Razmi draws a relation to musical instruments – tapping, plucking, scrolling: How are we touching a touch screen? How are we touching a drum or a string instrument?
Witnessing a scene unravel and spiral out of control before you. A buildup becomes a knot in your stomach, not untangling. Almost dangling, Omar Barquet’s sculptural work hangs in a corner, suspended by a delicate thread. The pristine nature of the object, with its sharp, sweeping curves as a harsh contrast to its materially reflective surface, builds an almost palpable tension with its most subtle swaying. This tension only just escapes us – from its striking resemblance to that of a guillotine, to the elegance of its own movement.
Sara Rahbar’s War series (2008-2010) is a reflection on the global sociopolitical context of our times. Her textile-based assemblage, overridden with predominantly military objects – bullets, pickaxes, horse bridles – their brusque material portions splayed and sectioned in a surgical manner. Their arrangement translates an inherent, deep-seated feeling of dread, tightly bundled together and yet, vividly exposed.
Within André Butzer’s N-Paintings (2010–2017), he focuses on a gradual intensification of pictorial means. “N” is an imaginary destination, wherein he encapsulates the concept of a non-place that resides as a frequency on the edge of annihilation. Emphasised by an interstice placed in relation to a plane full of colour, which Butzer explores to the maximum of its potential. The hue of dark light, as Butzer states, inhabits the plane so that the painting itself transforms into a source of light.
Caught in the continuous process of grasping and holding on to fear and tension, we must move on to the search for some semblance of light. Like tense posture and shoulders rigid, the act of exhaling is the final preparation for yet another state: calm. Gil Heitor Cortesão’s painting emanates a melancholy stillness, whilst simultaneously pulling the viewer into its surreal environment. Through his reverse-glass painting technique, Cortesão adds layers to the painting – despite its tranquility, the ambience suggests a slow approaching turbulence, a slow brewing darkness.
Michael Sailstorfer’s salt sculpture, titled I can hear you, is composed entirely of salt – when exposed to the elements, the salt undergoes a transformational process and disintegrates. The erosion process alludes to the very transience of nature, and harkens back to the essence of it all – to draw in a breath of air, and let go of it.
In hopes of going with the constant ebb and flow of daily life, in hopes of returning to regular cycles and systematic processes, we move forward – despite our own halting doubts and litany of questions. In this vein, Olaf Breuning’s humour is the forefront of his artistic practice, wherein his photographic work contains group of people have been transformed into expressionless objects, wearing only wearing paper bags over their heads and cardboard boxes on their hands, feet and torsos. Seeming to question their current predicament of being specifically arranged beside one another, they return to the situation at hand – why, in fact, are they there, with letters on their chests?
Breuning calls the bigger picture to mind through the title of the work itself: Can someone tell us why we are here?
Courtesy of Carbon 12
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Time
January 20 (Wednesday) - March 10 (Wednesday)
Location
Carbon 12
Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
Organizer
Carbon 12[email protected] Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
20janAll Day29aprNABIL ANANI | IN PURSUIT OF UTOPIALive Now
Event Details
In pursuit of utopia, one might never arrive at the destination, although could get close to it. The perfect place keeps running away further ahead like a shadow running from
Event Details
In pursuit of utopia, one might never arrive at the destination, although could get close to it. The perfect place keeps running away further ahead like a shadow running from its owner. Utopia might be an impossible imaginary situation that will not necessary materialise fully, yet it stays central to dreaming, since our utopian thinking fuels the pursuit of our dreams that keeps us alive with motives to realise them. The word utopia comes with a certain criticality as it can voice dissatisfaction with the status quo and/or holds a vision of the future that differs in at least some aspects from the present. It is in this sense that Nabil Anani sees Palestine: a prosperous thriving place free from occupation; a land that takes pride in its nature and parades it jubilantly; a dream worth to pursuit.
In Pursuit of Utopia, the Palestinian landscape is presented without any disruptions; a perfect manicured landscape, that is well tended. Anani paints the picturesque hills of Palestine without the ever increasing Israeli settlements, bypass roads, roadblocks, walls and watch towers that are normally visible in every corner. He creates the Palestine of his dreams, a utopia inspired by his memories as a child growing up on the hills of Halhoul.
Anani’s work stems from his fascination with the Palestinian landscape and rural life, which are subjects that he has addressed throughout his artistic journey. In this series of work, one can rarely spot a human or their shadow, for the primary focus remains on the aesthetic of the place, giving the audience the chance to ponder and appreciate the scenic terrain.
Olive groves, cypress trees and wheat fields dot the hills and horizon as if embroidered patterns. The canvases are divided with horizontal lines and spaces inspired by the ancient terraces separating the fields, conveying a panoramic perspective and a rural ambiance.
Experimentation with different media and using strong vibrant colours remain methods that distinguish Anani’s style. In this series, he uses mixed natural media, such as straw, spices and herbs that vary in colour and texture in addition to dry flowers and plants, resulting in a distinct surfaces and vibrant array of smells.
In this exhibition, Anani chases a utopia that resides in the imagination of all Palestinians whether dispossessed from their lands forcefully, confined in small restricted areas or prevented to access different parts of their homeland. Whether he attempts to capture a moment in the future or protest at the brutal Israeli destruction of the land and the livelihood of its people, Anani offers a vision of a better future; a dream of an ideal Palestine worthy of pursuing.
Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery.
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Time
January 20 (Wednesday) - April 29 (Thursday)
Location
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai
Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8 and 17, Al Quoz 1, Sheikh Zayed: Exit 43 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai[email protected] Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8 and 17, Al Quoz 1, Sheikh Zayed: Exit 43 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
20janAll Day20mayGROWING LIKE A TREELive Now
Event Details
Ishara Art Foundation is pleased to present Growing Like A Tree curated by Sohrab Hura, an exhibition that looks at regional histories of image-making through a visual and sonic excavation
Event Details
Ishara Art Foundation is pleased to present Growing Like A Tree curated by Sohrab Hura, an exhibition that looks at regional histories of image-making through a visual and sonic excavation of place, memory and culture.
Growing Like A Tree represents many firsts for the Ishara Art Foundation. This exhibition marks Sohrab Hura’s inaugural curatorial project as a photographer and filmmaker along with the presentation of several artists and collectives never before shown institutionally in a regional and international context. The exhibition will be on view at Ishara Art Foundation from 20 January 2021 to 20 May 2021.
Hura’s individual and collective journeys through photography and moving image over the years have presented both a form of rooting and uprooting of places as markers of identity. Through this exhibition, he maps a network of past and present collaborators with 14 artists and collectives from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Germany, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan and Singapore, seeking to expand the framework of boundaries set out by the geographical context of South Asia. Together they create a space where multiple voices and experiences are brought into dialogue with one another, capturing dualities in which organic growth is matched with resource extraction, the archival is juxtaposed with the contemporary, and the magic of the mundane is seen through children’s eyes.
Referencing the interconnected spheres of contemporary artistic practice, this show considers photography as a locus in an expanded field of art that includes videos, books and sound installations. In Hura’s own words, “What I’ve been seeing over the years are collective flows in terms of movement and exchange of photographers across political, geographical and cultural boundaries. An osmosis-like relationship with photographers across borders has started to seep through with each one searching for new ways to grow as artists and having at stake something in common that is far more urgent than photography.”
The artists represented in this exhibition tackle themes of changing cities, collective memory, the environment, public spaces and the archive through works that sit at the intersection of documentary and fiction, image and object. The notion of what forms a community emerges in this show as demonstrated in Sean Lee’s photo-montage where fingers rise from the soil like a forest of saplings.
The ensemble of artists and collectives in the exhibition includes Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Anjali House, Bunu Dhungana, Farah Mulla, Jaisingh Nageswaran, Katrin Koenning, Munem Wasif, Nida Mehboob, Nepal Picture Library, Reetu Sattar, Sarker Protick, Sathish Kumar, Sean Lee, and Yu Yu Myint Than, along with site-specific interventions by Sohrab Hura.
Growing Like A Tree will be accompanied by physical and virtual tours, educational and public online programmes, newly commissioned artist texts and artist conversations over the duration of the show.
Ishara Art Foundation is presented in partnership with Alserkal Avenue.
Courtesy of Ishara Art Foundation
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Time
January 20 (Wednesday) - May 20 (Thursday)
Location
Ishara Art Foundation
A3, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE. P.O. Box 181992
Organizer
Ishara Art Foundation[email protected] A3, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE. P.O. Box 181992
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All
Agial Art Gallery
Ayyam Gallery
Carbon 12
Casa Árabe
Christie’s
Contemporary Istanbul
Fann A Porter
Fann A Porter - Dubai
Fort Gansevoort New York
Forum Gallery
GALERIE BRUNO MASSA
galerie frank elbaz
Galerie Janine Rubeiz
Galerie Tanit, Beyrouth
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
Green Art Gallery
Grey Noise
Hauser & Wirth
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
Ishara Art Foundation
Istanbul Museum of Modern Art
Kohn Gallery
Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery - London Bridge
Lawrie Shabibi
Leila Heller Gallery
Leila Heller Gallery - Dubai
Mamut Art Project
Mashrabia Gallery Of Contemporary Art
Meem Gallery
Opera Gallery Beirut
Pera Museum
Perrotin
Pi Artworks Istanbul
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Saleh Barakat Gallery
SALT Beyoğlu founded by Garanti BBVA
Selma Feriani Gallery, Tunis
Serpentine Gallery
Sfeir Semler Gallery
Sotheby’s
Tabari Artspace
Tashkeel
Taymour Grahne Projects
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05junAll Day15augWHERE THE LEMONS BLOOM
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After long weeks of lockdown, Sfeir Semler Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition at their Hamburg gallery. Curated by Ana Siler, the exhibition WHERE THE
Event Details
After long weeks of lockdown, Sfeir Semler Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition at their Hamburg gallery. Curated by Ana Siler, the exhibition WHERE THE LEMONS BLOOM… brings together works by Etel Adnan, Moritz Altmann, Yto Barrada, Bettina, William Kentridge, Timo Nasseri, Ania Soliman, Christine Streuli and Akram Zaatari. “Know’st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom” is a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that speaks of longing for heavenly distant lands: The South, the sun and light, Mediterranean flora, bright white buildings, marble, music, laughter and joy. Goethe’s romantic contemplation echoes into our present, lending its title to Christine Streuli’s series of drawings based on advertisement billboards she saw during a recent stay in Hawaii.
Courtesy of Sfeir Semler Gallery
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Time
June 5 (Friday) - August 15 (Saturday)
Location
Sfeir Semler Gallery
Tannous Building, Str. 56, 4th Floor Jisr Sector 77, Quarantine, 2077 7209 Beirut, Lebanon
Organizer
Sfeir Semler Gallery[email protected] Tannous Building, Str. 56, 4th Floor Jisr Sector 77, Quarantine, 2077 7209 Beirut, Lebanon
06julAll Day31Jack Whitten | Transitional Space . A Drawing Survey
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Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present the first major survey of Jack Whitten’s works on paper, spanning the artist’s six decade career. Jack Whitten (1939 – 2018) made it
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Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present the first major survey of Jack Whitten’s works on paper, spanning the artist’s six decade career. Jack Whitten (1939 – 2018) made it his mission to disrupt the discipline of art history through experiments with material, process, and technique. He effectively constructed a bridge between gestural abstraction and process art, constantly working toward a nuanced language of painting that employs deeply personal expression. Whitten was also a prolific and powerful draughtsman. The unique body of works on view at Hauser & Wirth testifies to the immensity of his commitment to drawing as a means to make manifest his ideas and advance his methods.
Jack Whitten. Transitional Space. A Drawing Survey spotlights the artist’s playfulness and improvisational skill in searching for his own special visual language. Paper was more than an effective medium for Whitten; for him, working on paper was akin to scientific research. With an aesthetic hypothesis in mind, he worked tirelessly on paper to both subvert and elevate the history of art and how best to represent the many layers of information packed inside his imagination
Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
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Time
july 6 (Monday) - 31 (Friday)
Location
Hauser & Wirth
Tarmak 22, Gstaad
07julAll Day10sepFeaturedOut of the Woods
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Carbon 12 is pleased to announce a group exhibition with works from artists Sarah Almehairi, Olaf Breuning, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Monika Grabuschnigg, Amir Khojasteh, Philip Mueller, Anahita Razmi and Amba
Event Details
Carbon 12 is pleased to announce a group exhibition with works from artists Sarah Almehairi, Olaf Breuning, Gil Heitor Cortesão, Monika Grabuschnigg, Amir Khojasteh, Philip Mueller, Anahita Razmi and Amba Sayal-Bennett.
Courtesy of Carbon 12
Time
July 7 (Tuesday) - September 10 (Thursday)
Location
Carbon 12
Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
Organizer
Carbon 12[email protected] Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
07julAll Day15novVirtual EventConstructing a Dream
Event Details
The exhibition focuses on Albanian socialist realism through painting, poster and drawings, and it offers a selection of artworks produced under the dictatorship that aimed to spread socialism’s main principles
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The exhibition focuses on Albanian socialist realism through painting, poster and drawings, and it offers a selection of artworks produced under the dictatorship that aimed to spread socialism’s main principles among the proletarian.
Curated by Artan Shabani, the exhibition investigates the impact of the communist ideology on Albanian visual arts during the second half of the 20th century. The selected artworks reflect the ideology that played an important role in the works’ dogmatic content. The exhibition offers an opportunity to become familiar with the culture and identity of Albanian people who had been isolated from the rest of the world for a long time, and centers around the daily life, working class, portraits of leadership, representations of the regime and a hopeful approach to upcoming generations.
Courtesy of Pera Museum.
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Time
July 7 (Tuesday) - November 15 (Sunday)
Location
Pera Museum
Meşrutiyet Caddesi No.65 34430 Tepebaşı - Beyoğlu - İstanbul
Organizer
Pera Museum[email protected] Meşrutiyet Caddesi No.65 34430 Tepebaşı - Beyoğlu - İstanbul
19julAll Day18augPaul McCarthy | Alpine Stories and other Dystopias
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Hauser & Wirth will present ‘Alpine Stories and other Dystopias’ at Tarmak 22 in Gstaad, bringing together a selection of works by Paul McCarthy that span two decades and various
Event Details
Hauser & Wirth will present ‘Alpine Stories and other Dystopias’ at Tarmak 22 in Gstaad, bringing together a selection of works by Paul McCarthy that span two decades and various mediums to reveal the provocative ways in which both worlds – the storied Swiss Alps and the ersatz magic of Hollywood’s Disney fantasies – overlap, intertwine, and refract in startlingly powerful ways.
Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
Time
July 19 (Sunday) - August 18 (Tuesday)
Location
Hauser & Wirth
Tarmak 22, Gstaad
11augAll Day17janMINIATURE 2.0 | MINIATURE IN CONTEMPORARY ART
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Focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting, the exhibition brings together the works of 14 artists from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. The artists
Event Details
Focusing on contemporary approaches to miniature painting, the exhibition brings together the works of 14 artists from different countries such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. The artists do not treat miniature solely as a historical object, they emphasise its theoretical potential as a contemporary art form. Using various forms such as sculpture, video, photography, and installation, they bring out miniature from books, where it has resided for centuries, give it a new dimension, and search for ways in which miniature can live in the contemporary world.
Contemporary miniature goes beyond its former context in terms of form and content, and it focuses on issues such as colonialism, orientalism, economic inequality, gender, politics of identity, discrimination, social violence, compulsory migration, and representation. The exhibition emphasises the artists’ various approaches to traditional miniature, as well as revealing the commonalities between them.
Curated by Azra Tüzünoğlu and Gülce Özkara, the exhibition features work by Hamra Abbas, Rashad Alakbarov, Halil Altındere, Dana Awartani, Fereydoun Ave, CANAN, Noor Ali Chagani, Cansu Çakar, Hayv Kahraman, Imran Qureshi, Nilima Sheikh, Shahpour Pouyan, Shahzia Sikander and Saira Wasim.
Courtesy of Pera Museum
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Time
August 11 (Tuesday) - January 17 (Sunday)
Location
Pera Museum
Meşrutiyet Caddesi No.65 34430 Tepebaşı - Beyoğlu - İstanbul
Organizer
Pera Museum[email protected] Meşrutiyet Caddesi No.65 34430 Tepebaşı - Beyoğlu - İstanbul
05sepAll Day10octFeaturedARI MARCOPOULOS | INTO THE NOW
Event Details
Into the Now is a body of work that was put together during the Covid-19 pandemic. The center piece of the exhibition is a digitised 7’21’ Super-8 film titled Brown
Event Details
Into the Now is a body of work that was put together during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The center piece of the exhibition is a digitised 7’21’ Super-8 film titled Brown Bag.
The title refers to a brown paper bag filled with exposed Super-8 film cassettes that I found in my studio unpacking some long-forgotten boxes.
I sent the film out to be developed and digitised. When the material returned it turned out to be mostly skate footage from the mid-90’s in New York. The film had sat in that bag almost 25 years, a true time capsule. I sat down with the footage and edited this film.
Also in the show are a series of 14 vintage prints taken in New York in the 80’s and early 90’s, these include images of Spike Lee on the set of Do the Right Thing, and Public Enemy lead man Chuck D in the recording studio.
The most recent work is a recto/verso edition covering the past year, including the doctor who administered my Covid-19 test, my sons and stepdaughter, several up and coming hip hop artists and others.
I have been thinking a lot about living in America during a global pandemic that has simultaneously exposed failure of the health system as well as exposing the blatant racism and white supremacist brutality the US suffers from. These are questions I have long grappled with as an “outsider”. As an artist I often found myself spending time listening and talking to important Black artists, musicians and leaders over the decades.
I think back from when I was a young child and remembered the day Martin Luther King was murdered, the day I saw Tommie Smith and John Carlos bow their heads and raise their black-gloved fists. I was 11 then, now I am 63 and I wonder when will this violence end?
— Ari Marcopoulos
Courtesy of galerie frank elbaz
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Time
September 5 (Saturday) - October 10 (Saturday)
Location
galerie frank elbaz
66 rue de Turenne, 75003 Paris - France
06sep(sep 6)00:0030oct(oct 30)00:00BASHAR ALHROUB | SILENT GARDEN
Event Details
A riot of flowers with jarring colours and harsh angles dominates the forefront, at other times they take a backstage to blue, green, and grey hues, depending on the time
Event Details
A riot of flowers with jarring colours and harsh angles dominates the forefront, at other times they take a backstage to blue, green, and grey hues, depending on the time of the year or the day the scenes were observed.
Surprisingly, Silent Garden was not inspired during the COVID-19 pandemic when isolation became central to humans, and when people started looking inwards for refuge. The series is the result of a few years’ work, simulating the artist’s life and stemming from his own sense of isolation. “I feel that I’m stranger on so many levels, especially on the political level, like everyone else. I have no say in issues that affect my life and existence on this land, and as time passes, I feel more helpless and isolated.” Frustrated and unable to make a change or blend in, Bashar Alhroub made his garden with its exotic plants the center of his attention not only by attending to it but also by painting the new blossoming flowers, the various plants, and the diverse combination of colors throughout the seasons. Using acrylic and coal on canvas, Bashar produced a set of artworks that has roots in impressionism, reminding us of works by Monet and Rousseau.
We can see similarities between the flowers, exotic in nature, and the alienation that the artist feels as he tries to adapt to his surroundings. Looking at the perspective of the paintings, we see these similarities when the artist places himself on par with the plants in the visual sense. In front of the big canvas, we are overwhelmed with the dominant tall plants and can sense a conversation between them and the artist, as if the plants have turned into his intimate soul mates.
Ultimately, Bashar’s Silent Garden transforms into a healing escape rather than a physical reality. It becomes a sanctuary that provides therapy to the stranger in Bashar’s soul, bringing about the peace and tranquility that he strives for in pursuit of his inner reality away from the outside world.
A secret garden can only be accessed through a secret door, and in this exhibition, Bashar opens the door, letting us into his secret wordless world, revealing the intimate, secluded personal journey of the past few years.
Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery
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Time
September 6 (Sunday) 00:00 - October 30 (Friday) 00:00
Location
Zawyeh Gallery
7A President Circle, Al-Balo’ Ramallah, Palestine
Organizer
10sepAll Day14novJORGE TACLA | SEÑAL DE ABANDONO
Event Details
Sabrina Amrani is pleased to present Señal de Abandono, the first solo exhibition by Jorge Tacla in the gallery, for Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend. Like much of Tacla’s work, his paintings
Event Details
Sabrina Amrani is pleased to present Señal de Abandono, the first solo exhibition by Jorge Tacla in the gallery, for Apertura Madrid Gallery Weekend.
Like much of Tacla’s work, his paintings represent a space of social rupture. These works situate themselves in the joints of a new architecture that arises in the wake of catastrophe—natural or man-made. Tacla perceives the devastation that results from such events as an opportunity to investigate structural systems that would otherwise remain unseen. To signify such unsettled worlds, he uses pictorial languages that are obsessive: sometimes repeating the images, sometimes repeating the same gesture in the same space many times until the visual register is analogous to the trauma that prompts it. Tacla Illuminates the variability of identity for victim and aggressor -an agent who is disassociated from his or her own identity- and the complexity of the assessment of guilt. These critical issues, and their situation in the larger, collective human experience, are the defining theoretical inquiries of Tacla’s work.
Faced with this selection of Tacla’s work, the viewer could experience the same fascination that overwhelms when in front of an abandoned building, a forgotten civilisation, the image of what was inhabited, full of life and is now just History. But it is a naked History, already devoid of the humanity that created it.
And if there is something human, it represents the brutal desolation that follows the conflict. Nor has the beauty of nature returned to take possession of the ruin and recover the conquered territory. Señal de Abandono seems to replicate an x-ray in which time has been suspended in a devastated reality that hints at a past, but not the future. And if there is a future to be seen, it is not very optimistic: when the Oklahoma City Federal building was attacked in 1995, images came all together to the artist’s mind: the earthquakes in Chile, the bombing of La Moneda in Santiago, the wars in the Middle East, the Lebanese civil war, the occupation of Beirut, the massacres of Palestine in 1982. “At that moment, the idea that this is just the beginning came also to me immediately, this is what we will be seeing more and more from now on” he predicted. And so it was, perhaps not because Tacla’s skills as a fortune teller, but because it is part of a dark side of human nature and a History that does nothing but repeat itself: later we saw the Twin Towers fall, attacks in Europe, more desolation in the Middle East.
Tacla’s work encloses the magnetism of a frozen moment within History. Or perhaps post-History, because it represents the moments of a recently devastated civilisation. Something inside the spectator plays with the feelings of nostalgia and the seduction of the devastated, of a spell of extinction and horror, “the sublime of the images, without ceasing to see their horror,” sums up the artist. Tacla brings with his paintings the same affliction that seized him after seeing the effects of the devastating earthquake in Chile in 1985: “It feels like a kind – which is the opposite to gravity? – of vertigo,” he explains in an interview with Laurence Weschler. Not surprisingly, Tacla has been defined as the painter of destruction.
The truth is within his work, we observe the traces of the artist’s own history, traces of the history of humanity. His grandparents emigrated from Palestine and Syria at the same time as large numbers of Arab emigrants as a consequence of the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The artist’s youth was also spent at a turbulent moment in the history of Chile, with the rise of communism and the coup d’état of General Pinochet. Tacla could see the effects of the La Moneda bombardment and his own career suffered a slight detour when the conservatory where he studied Music closed. This is how he ended up studying painting and also emigrating at the same time, to New York, and how the artist probably began to form those images of devastation, evoking in turn a memory of his own roots: “my previous history could have made me more receptive to future implications ”, explains the artist. But Tacla sees the ruins, the demolished facades, the shaky structures, as a symbol: “Ruined buildings also contain, for example, intimate scenes, since individual bodies can also be destroyed.” Tacla tries to open a space for reflection, to slow down and perhaps to establish a dialogue about the instability of the world: “everything is constantly moving and destroying itself,” he clarifies. But it is also a criticism and it is that the world “feels as if we were always at war,” he confesses. The artist is interested in representing the exterior, but also the interior, as we can see in Señal de Abandono. And for this, nothing like the gutted buildings in which the interior itself goes out.
Courtesy of Sabrina Amrani.
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Time
September 10 (Thursday) - November 14 (Saturday)
Location
Sabrina Amrani
Madera, 23 28004 Madrid, Spain
Organizer
15sepAll Day27decBETWEEN EMPIRES, BEYOND BORDERS
Event Details
Between Empires, Beyond Borders delves into the memories of the Köpe family, who witnessed Ottoman Empire’s modernisation period as well as its withdrawal from the world stage. The visual narrative
Event Details
Between Empires, Beyond Borders delves into the memories of the Köpe family, who witnessed Ottoman Empire’s modernisation period as well as its withdrawal from the world stage. The visual narrative of the exhibition is based on detailed archival records spanning the Second Constitutional Era, the First World War and the Armistice Period that followed. Carefully preserved personal documents of the family members, whose lives took shape across Brassó, Istanbul, Thessaloniki, Edirne and Konya, shed light on the milestones of political, social and diplomatic history.
The family’s story begins in the Tansimat era, a period of Westernising reforms in the Empire, when the roads of Andras Köpe and Léocadie Tallibart intersect in Istanbul. Born and raised in a village near the city of Brassó, Andras had fled to the Ottoman capital from the pressures of the Austrian Empire. Léocadie, whose family was from Brittany, was in the city accompanying her two brothers; Louis, a watchmaker and jeweler, and Pierre, an architect. The couple married in 1842. The exhibition includes the letters of their second child, Charles, who in turn married Rose-Marie Marcopoli, in 1882. Coming from a Levantine family of Genoese origin in Trabzon, Rose-Marie had six children with Charles: Charlotte, Ida, Taïb, Ferdinand, Antoine and Eugène.
Educated in French, the six siblings never became Ottoman subjects and remained citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Taïb went to Brassó a little after the beginning of the war in 1914 and joined the military of the dual monarchy. Antoine followed in his brother’s footsteps and enlisted two years later in Istanbul, serving in Syria and Palestine in 1917. When the war ended and both empires entered respective stages of dissolution, the majority of the Köpe family members stayed in Istanbul, and witnessed the Armistice of Mudros in 1918, the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, as well as the occupation of the city by the British, French and Italian military officials in 1920.
As multicultural members of a multi-ethnic empire, the lives of the Köpe family and the documents they left behind testify to a moment in time when subjecthood and citizenship were not categorised within stable definitions of nationhood. Through Antoine’s memoirs, volumes of cartoons as well as visual and audio recordings, in addition to a selection from hundreds of photographs taken by his brother Taïb, Between Empires, Beyond Borders explores how the diplomatic relations between the Austro-Hungarian and the Ottoman empires manifested in everyday life. Built on a family history as it moves from the 19th to the 20th century, the exhibition draws attention to the mutability of identities, the mobility of lives, and the uncertainty of borders in the transition from empire to nation-state.
Developed by Nefin Dinç (James Madison University), Erol Ülker (Işık University) and Lorans Tanatar Baruh (SALT), the exhibition is supported by the Hungarian Cultural Center in Istanbul.
Courtesy of SALT Beyoğlu
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Time
September 15 (Tuesday) - December 27 (Sunday)
Location
SALT Beyoğlu
İstiklal Caddesi 136 - Beyoğlu 34430 İstanbul Türkiye
Organizer
SALT Beyoğlu founded by Garanti BBVA[email protected] İstiklal Caddesi 136 - Beyoğlu 34430 İstanbul Türkiye
15sepAll Day24octGAYLEEN AIKEN | INTERIORS
Event Details
Beginning Tuesday, September 15th, Fort Gansevoort will present ‘Interiors,’ an online exhibition of drawings spanning the career of Gayleen Aiken (1934-2005), organized with artist Laurie Simmons. ‘Interiors’ focuses specifically upon
Event Details
Beginning Tuesday, September 15th, Fort Gansevoort will present ‘Interiors,’ an online exhibition of drawings spanning the career of Gayleen Aiken (1934-2005), organized with artist Laurie Simmons. ‘Interiors’ focuses specifically upon Aiken’s drawings, which depict domestic scenes teeming with juvenile revelry and mischief. Although Aiken was not known to be mischievous herself, the artist’s deeper rebellious nature is revealed through the actions and expressions of her adolescent proxies. Never deferential, the Raimbilli Cousins are shown consistently reacting to situations with exuberant disobedience, defying the customary strictures placed upon children’s conduct. With its charming details and lively mien, Aiken’s oeuvre nevertheless also suggests that ominous undercurrents course through American rural life and small town communities. Her images convey an undeniable tension beneath the surface of Vermont’s sylvan landscape. Several drawings on view in ‘Interiors’ are explained by the artist’s hand-written musings, which contextualize the events taking place in her deceptively conventional, truly mythical world.
Some of the defining elements characteristic of American folk-art traditions are on view in Aiken’s portrayal of familial aesthetics. Here we see lovingly rendered depictions of furniture, clothing, and the accoutrement of special holiday celebrations familiar in the America of Aiken’s youth. Through these images, the artist has constructed a concurrent reality that can be understood as a documentary record of our complex human relationships to memory, nostalgia, and fantasy.
The visual vocabulary of Gayleen Aiken’s art finds fascinating parallels in the work of acclaimed contemporary photographer and filmmaker Laurie Simmons. Simmons holds a personal connection to the work on view, stating that it is reminiscent of her “childhood crayon drawings of girls in interiors.” She describes Aiken’s “invented world” as “both joyous and dark, fanciful and hyper real,” while also likening it to the artistic practice of Aline Kominski Crumb, Hollis Siegler, Morton Bartlett, Karen Yassinsky, Henry Darger, and Doris Lee. Both Aiken and Simmons present to the viewer an uncanny representation of the mundane that, upon examination, is equally critical and playful, raising questions about morality and conformity within suburban and rural life. ‘Interiors’ features brief meditations by Simmons upon specific selected works on view, exploring, from the perspective of a fellow traveler across time and art, the special resonances in Aiken’s work for a contemporary audience.
Courtesy of Fort Gansevoort.
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Time
September 15 (Tuesday) - October 24 (Saturday)
Location
Fort Gansevoort New York
5 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY, 10014
17sepAll Day14octBAHAR SABZEVARI | GAZE AND GLANCE
Event Details
Leila Heller is pleased to announce, Gaze and Glance, an exhibition of new paintings by Iranian- American artist, Bahar Sabzevari, opening on Thursday, September 17th, 2020
Event Details
Leila Heller is pleased to announce, Gaze and Glance, an exhibition of new paintings by Iranian- American artist, Bahar Sabzevari, opening on Thursday, September 17th, 2020 and on view through Wednesday, October 14th, 2020 in New York.
Sabzevari’s self-portraits are deliberate and layered, focusing on themes of identity and nostalgia. The artist goes through a technical process of studying Persian mythology, paired with a curiosity for wildlife and animal documentaries resulting in a fusion of themes to create her version of a Persian-wonderland. Prior to painting, Sabzevari conducts a disciplined approach with her creative application. She creates preliminary sketches and then assembles a combination of models and maquettes of the creatures that come to mind. This varying relationship between contemporary culture and art history allows the artist the freedom and conceptual range to arrange her own reality on canvas, wood or linen.
Her self-portraits represent a visual diary of nonverbal record, seeking to convey her identity, beliefs, values, state of mind, and experiences as a woman in Iran. The paintings are emotive, through the eyes, color palette and suspended playfulness around the woman’s crown. Inspired by her love for animals, dream reflections and cultural heritage, her canvases grapple with presenting her personal self-image and self-expression within an age where social media largely skews the public perceptions of the individual.
In Gaze and Glance, Sabzevari considers the importance of the gaze. She simultaneously invites the viewer to observe her and be observed by her, provoking the questions; “Who is the object?” and “Who is the subject?”. Sabzevari notes, “I like when the communication between the two gazes blurs the boundaries between the two roles until it becomes unclear who exactly is gazing at whom…I follow [the viewer] everywhere around the room and I ask them to do the same…challenging them by blurring the lines between subject and object, real and unreal, being seductive, or showing a powerful woman, or both at the same time.”
Courtesy of Leila Heller Gallery
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Time
September 17 (Thursday) - October 14 (Wednesday)
Location
Leila Heller Gallery
17 East 76th Street (off Madison Avenue) New York, NY 1002
Organizer
Leila Heller Gallery[email protected] 17 East 76th Street (off Madison Avenue) New York, NY 10021 Tel: +1 212 249 7695
19sepAll Day12novMOHAMED AHMED IBRAHIM| MEMORY DRUM
Event Details
This September, Lawrie Shabibi is thrilled to present Memory Drum – Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s second solo exhibition. Featuring an exceptional series of recent paintings and sculptures, all created in the
Event Details
This September, Lawrie Shabibi is thrilled to present Memory Drum – Mohamed Ahmed Ibrahim’s second solo exhibition. Featuring an exceptional series of recent paintings and sculptures, all created in the void since March 2020, the exhibition showcases the progression of Ibrahim’s artistic practice.
Courtesy of Lawrie Shabibi
Time
September 19 (Saturday) - November 12 (Thursday)
Location
Lawrie Shabibi
Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Al-Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE
24sepAll Day26novCLARA CARVAJAL | GODS OF THE FRONTIER
Event Details
Gods of the Frontier by Clara Carvajal, will be on view from September 24 to November 26. The exhibition delves deep into Lebanon’s visual memory through the archives of three
Event Details
Gods of the Frontier by Clara Carvajal, will be on view from September 24 to November 26. The exhibition delves deep into Lebanon’s visual memory through the archives of three important photography collections from that country.
During the first quarter of 2019, Clara Carvajal investigated the photographic archives of three important photography collections in Beirut: the Arab Image Foundation, the archives of the newspaper An-Nahar and the collection of photographer Emile Boulos Divers. The project, rather than focusing on major themes like the war and historical events in Lebanon, attempts to explore the way in which the country’s society has been portrayed since it gained independence from France in the 1940’s, and up to the time when the civil war broke out in 1975.
The photographic images that have been selected contain portraits of individuals and may be examined through a symbolic lens based on the social archetypes they represent at a historical moment within the country’s society. Through these images, Clara Carvajal has created a collection of wood engravings that she uses to delve deeper into her iconography, along with a publication that describes the key parts of the process she has sought to follow. She thus reveals what the images show beyond their own formalism. This publication was created with the cooperation of Teo Millán, in terms of authoring the texts, and Clara Sancho, who created the design and layout.
Each of these images is the object-subject on which an analysis of the imaginary of the country’s collective identity is based. Individuals who take on revealing poses in the photographer’s presence, whose intentionality both consciously and unconsciously bears witness to the world which they inhabit, in the way that they interpret it: the happy girl surrounded by her family, the sensual couple in love strolling by the sea, the male body as a divine icon, the father proud of his child, the savior, the caregiver, and so on.
Courtesy of Casa Árabe.
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Time
September 24 (Thursday) - November 26 (Thursday)
Location
Casa Árabe
Arab House Madrid C / Alcalá, 62
Event Details
In this latest installment of the ongoing series of exhibitions focused on printmaking in the Arab world, Meem Gallery presents over 40 editioned works created by Marwan between 1967 and
Event Details
In this latest installment of the ongoing series of exhibitions focused on printmaking in the Arab world, Meem Gallery presents over 40 editioned works created by Marwan between 1967 and 1999.
Internationally celebrated as a master painter, Marwan (1934-2016) also engaged in a less well known but equally accomplished printmaking practice throughout his career. Born in Damascus in 1934, the artist permanently moved to Berlin in 1957 where his exposure to Art Informel and the German Neo Expressionist movements led to the development of his highly distinctive style.
Installing a French printing press in his studio, Marwan’s printmaking developed simultaneously with his painting practice. Masterfully harnessing the complex chemistry and technical processes associated with the medium of etching, the artist skillfully incorporated his signature painterly effects into his printed works.
The earliest works in this exhibition demonstrate Marwan’s initial focus on the human body. Monochromatic studies of stylised, contorted figures, including Der Unverdeckte, a set of six etchings made in 1969, undoubtedly demonstrate the influence of the New Figuration movement on the young artist. The 1970s saw Marwan increasingly focus on the head/ face, soon becoming the subject matter that he would become most renowned for, as evidenced in the many works in this exhibition. Revealing rich topographies of spontaneous, raw expression, these works, generally referred to as the artist’s Kopf or ‘face’ landscapes, poignantly manifest the varied experiences of the joys and hardships of life by utilising the rich contours of the human face.
Notable developments in themes, techniques and use of colour can be witnessed in the artist’s work during a year spent in Paris, in 1973. Marwan’s faces started to transform, gaining new depths from the increased emphasis of wrinkles and crevices. Vivid colours accentuate the works, lending a heightened vibrancy to his characterful subjects.
Besides Marwan’s well-known figures and faces, this exhibition also presents several rare examples of his still lifes. Tables laden with fruit and crockery are rendered in the same sketchy, expressionistic manner as his human subjects, similarly transforming the banal subject matter into complex existential studies.
Brought together for the first time, and created in parallel with his paintings, the works in this exhibition not only showcase the prolific scope of Marwan’s little-known printmaking practice, but additionally display his mastery of the notoriously complex process of etching.
Courtesy of Meem Gallery
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Time
September 28 (Monday) 00:00 - November 1 (Sunday) 00:00
Location
Meem Gallery
Al Qouz Dubai United Arab Emirates P.O. Box 290
Organizer
Meem Gallery Al Qouz Dubai United Arab Emirates P.O. Box 290
28sep(sep 28)00:0004nov(nov 4)00:00PHILIP MUELLER | THE LAST DAYS OF SOFT MACHINE
Event Details
Carbon 12 is delighted to announce Philip Mueller’s solo exhibition. In the summer of 2017, the notorious Black Flamingo Sad Boys emerged from dark, woodsy pastures, to abandon the confines of
Event Details
Carbon 12 is delighted to announce Philip Mueller’s solo exhibition.
In the summer of 2017, the notorious Black Flamingo Sad Boys emerged from dark, woodsy pastures, to abandon the confines of their Alpine environment for the bleached sand and enticing turquoise pools of former prison-island, Santo Stefano. All inhibition was relinquished, and a seemingly endless summer was birthed in the ruminations of Philip Mueller (b.1988, Austria) where the gang established a new haven in the anti-beach resort, Beach Resort Tiberio. Knowing no home nor respite, the gang saw fit to indulge their hedonistic desires at their seemingly newfound paradise – from racing 60’s, 70’s and 80’s cult car classics, to retiring to the languorous way of life the anti-beach resort implores.
As creator of his intricate universe, Philip Mueller conceives a timely conclusion to the resort series in The Last Days of Soft Machine. Enveloped in dense greenery, every corner of the island is alight. Glasses clink sharply against one another, held up high to commemorate the end of Beach Resort Tiberio, wherein Mueller’s new paintings delineate the detrimental culmination of the Black Flamingo Sad Boys’ exhaustive lifestyle of excess, in the event of one last great celebration.
In a culture consumed by the futile pursuit of countless, short-lived pleasures, Mueller derives elements from Russian Decadence to portray overindulgent habits of the resort’s inhabitants. Influences of 19th century Romanticism pervade Mueller’s overarching body of work; from earlier depictions of lush forests and wooden cabins, to cinematic stills of smooth-edged Sardinian rocks surrounded by sweeping planes of blue sky and sea, and derelict architectural spaces of the former prison, bleached white under the heat of the sun.
Across a vast, sweeping panorama of the cacophonous celebration, we are made witness to a party occurring in slow motion and all at once. Mueller shines a harsh light on a drastic undoing of the “soft machine” – the own human body, as alluded to within William Burroughs’ novel – and like atrophy to fragile anatomy, follows its spiralling descent towards ruination. Undulating intervals of contemplation, throbbing chaos, and all that remains in between, are fleshed out within the paintings of Philip Mueller.
Akin to the nature of a nearly incomprehensible fever dream; fast, yet excruciatingly detailed – Mueller employs and accentuates rich, picturesque imagery with a heavily injected use of saturated color, to elucidate the stark contrast between grandiose illusions of opulence and their very transience. Fleeting impressions of beauty in representations of classical sculpture and idyllic sceneries are juxtaposed with acts of violence and vandalism. “Nothing can be holy that is human built,” are words as spoken by the artist.
After a screeching halt comes silence. Tarnished helmets and car debris lie still in the wake of a new era. In the stillness of the aftermath, as the dust begins to settle from the debris of a lotus-eating culture, the inevitable question of what lies beyond appears: What is next in store for the Black Flamingo Sad Boys?
Courtesy of Carbon 12.
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Time
September 28 (Monday) 00:00 - November 4 (Wednesday) 00:00
Location
Carbon 12
Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
Organizer
Carbon 12[email protected] Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
05octAll Day11Virtual EventSAMAH SHIHADI | TERRA (UN) FIRMA
Event Details
Tabari Artspace is delighted to announce that Haifa-based, Palestinian hyperrealist Samah Shihadi’s solo exhibition, Terra Un(firma), will premiere in line with the launch of the highly anticipated Cromwell Place exhibition
Event Details
Tabari Artspace is delighted to announce that Haifa-based, Palestinian hyperrealist Samah Shihadi’s solo exhibition, Terra Un(firma), will premiere in line with the launch of the highly anticipated Cromwell Place exhibition concept in South Kensington, London. The body of work produced for Terra Un(firma) is divided into two segments, The Living and The Land, which take the artist’s personal narratives and feminist outlook as a starting point from which to explore issues faced by women, across cultures, in the contemporary moment. The Living is a reflection upon the artist’s complex and conflicting internal (psychological) and external (social) worlds. As a dual marginal existing within a liminal space Shihadi navigates the clashes between individuality and responsibility that comprise contemporary womanhood in her society and extend towards women, globally, who face discrimination, marginalisation, identity crisis and other multi-faceted gendered issues. The selected works for The Land turn towards the physical space and natural environment as a site of connection, displacement and contestation, which the artist conflates with notions of the home, family and collective identity. Each large-scale work selected for the exhibition has been painstakingly produced over several months. Shihadi’s work oscillates between classical-figurative realism, which dutifully captures and records that which surrounds her and fantastical surrealism that draws from the artist’spreoccupations with mysticism. Shihadi employs a dramatic approach to hyperrealism sketching using chiaroscuro to form a magical reality which blends both fiction and fantasy. Symbolism –
religious, ritualistic, political, and cultural – is interwoven into much of Shihadi’s work, forming
complex layers that the viewer must unpack in order to absorb deeper meanings.
Courtesy of Tabari Artspace
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Virtual Event Details
Event has already taken place!
Time
october 5 (Monday) - 11 (Sunday)
Location
Tabari Artspace
The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Tabari Artspace[email protected] The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
14octAll Day12novAmmar Abd Rabbo | To Beirut...
Event Details
In tribute to the Lebanese people and with deep compassion, Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present To Beirut…, a charity exhibition featuring, Ammar Abd Rabbo’s latest photographs from August fourth’s
Event Details
In tribute to the Lebanese people and with deep compassion, Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present To Beirut…, a charity exhibition featuring, Ammar Abd Rabbo’s latest photographs from August fourth’s tragedy. Together with the artist’s generosity, we are donating 75% of the proceeds to Beit El Baraka’s mission to rebuild and help the vulnerable.
Artist statement
Throughout my career as a photojournalist, I’ve faced difficult and emotional moments. Whether it be shots of torn families, besieged cities, or destroyed homes, it was never my neighborhood. For the first time, the atrocity and destruction took place in a very familiar environment. Of course, I felt compelled to capture what was going on.
In just a few seconds, friends were lost, families were separated, people were wounded, and not to mention the material devastation. We all bear scars from August Fourth. Fortunately, I wasn’t in Lebanon during the blast. I can only empathize with the shock everyone lived through and survived. I made sure to take the next flight into Beirut.
Here is a selection of the scenes and moments I captured; trying to mask the explosion, I avoided shots of the injured and vulnerable. The large scale shots not only show the immensity of the catastrophe but are also abstracting the situation. Creating incredible images straight out of Sci-Fi movies such as ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Planet of the Apes.’ I just wish those were also fiction rather than Beirut’s reality.
I believe photographs remain when people separate, dictators fly away, loved ones leave, images are witnesses. They are a constant reminder of the past, a reality we cannot deny, an issue we have to address.
We cannot hide moments we’ve witnessed.
Dearest Beirut, I wholeheartedly hope for all your wounds to heal, all scars to fade, all houses to be rebuilt, all businesses to revive, and that from this tragedy, only these photographs remain.
To Beirut, with Love…
Ammar Abd Rabbo
Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery
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Time
October 14 (Wednesday) - November 12 (Thursday)
Location
Ayyam Gallery
B11, Alserkal Avenue Exit 43 of SZR Street 8, Al Quoz 1 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Ayyam Gallery[email protected] B11, Alserkal Avenue Exit 43 of SZR Street 8, Al Quoz 1 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
17octAll Day31decRuba Salameh | Transegrity
Event Details
Zawyeh Gallery is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of contemporary young Palestinian artist Ruba Salameh, titled Tensegrity at the gallery new permanent location at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai. Opening
Event Details
Zawyeh Gallery is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of contemporary young Palestinian artist Ruba Salameh, titled Tensegrity at the gallery new permanent location at Alserkal Avenue in Dubai. Opening on 17 October 2020, the exhibition explores tension between a set of geometrical shapes and hordes of ants taking over the aesthetically pleasing canvas. In this exhibition Salameh breaks the rules or rather breaks free from the authority of the art form. She builds concrete structures of abstract arrangements compromised of geometrical shapes using cold pastel acrylic colours and distributing the shapes carefully and minimally on the canvas. Yet, this monotonous harmony is disrupted suddenly and in a rather unexpected way. Salameh discretely introduces hordes of small chaotic ants crawling about in curiosity, assembling around the shapes as if trying to jointly carry them away. They gather in the corners as if stuck in search for their nest or are scattering around in conflicting paths.
The artworks bring to mind the notion of resilience of an indigenous population in a situation where their own living space diminishes continuously as a result of an incessant expanding domination by colonial powers. Slowly and discretely, the indigenous population motions transform into a form of disruption in a challenge to the supremacy of the dominant power. Taking all health and safety measures, Ziad Anani, Director of Zawyeh Gallery, expects audiences to be able to attend and enjoy this unique art exhibition, a first of its kind at Alserkal Avenue for a young emerging Palestinian artist especially that this is the first exhibition at the new permanent location of the gallery at Alserkal Avenue.
Courtesy of Zawyeh Gallery.
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Time
October 17 (Saturday) - December 31 (Thursday)
Location
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai
Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8 and 17, Al Quoz 1, Sheikh Zayed: Exit 43 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Zawyeh Gallery - Dubai[email protected] Warehouse 27, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8 and 17, Al Quoz 1, Sheikh Zayed: Exit 43 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
20octAll Day20novTagreed Darghouth | Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll
Event Details
For their forthcoming exhibition, Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll Lebanese painter, Tagreed Darghouth has produced a fresh body of work that began eight months ago and
Event Details
For their forthcoming exhibition, Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll Lebanese painter, Tagreed Darghouth has produced a fresh body of work that began eight months ago and came to completion during the aftermath of the explosion, in Beirut’s port – her studio, located in Mar Mykel, was completely destroyed. This exhibition, then, comes at a moment of heightened pain and need that flows from Lebanon and cries out through Dargouth’s art. As a gallery that has always worked with and propelled Middle Eastern artists, representing several form Lebanon, the recent trauma that ensued from the explosion has shaken and saddened our community their team. they aim to use their platform to support and show solidarity wherever possible, as such, 10% of proceeds from the sales of works included in this exhibition will be donated to the Lebanese Red Cross.
The selected works aim to probe the socially constructed reality of feminine beauty and its relation to the male gaze in contemporary, neoliberal society. Working with acrylic on canvas the artist continues her unabashed social commentary, reflecting upon what she encounters on the streets of Beirut and beyond in the cybersphere where international mass media and social media platforms continue to shape and reinforce limiting and dominant visions of gender.
Darghouth, who regularly connects far-flung influences from literature, philosophy and music to her personal experiences in the modern world now turns to Greek mythology as her point of departure. Pandora was the fabled first woman to be constructed in ancient Greek society and unleashed with unrivalled physical beauty and immense sexual allure. The artist, probes the fabricated nature and superficiality of Pandora, a woman over whom Aphrodite ‘spilled grace’ and whose destiny was to become “an evil men will love to embrace”. Conflating the classical with the contemporary throughout this body of work; Pandora, Darghouth reasons, is a myth but so too is the Barbie doll. Barbie’s plastic physique has become a modern icon associated with pre-packaged western gender expectations and superficiality.
The selected works see Dargouth’s paintbrush activate and amplify the constructed nature of human fictions and the fetishised status of femininity. Skulls, which have featured regularly in the artist’s output since 2010, are included here refer back to her preoccupation with the notion of ‘Memento mori’ and feel all the more poignant now given the backdrop and context of this exhibition. Dargouth also interrogates the frail and fair frame of the Barbie doll, the unquestioned and iconised beauty of Venus and Aphrodite, glossed lips, the human torso and mannequin dummies which exist to be draped. Through prominent, layered brushstrokes and swift flicks of the wrist the artist engages in her own form of seduction as she pushes the viewer to consider her subjects anew.
On Toys and Trophies: From Zeus’ Pandora to Barbie Doll, Tagreed Darghouth Says: “The thin and fair doll became a cultural icon in America and around the world. Selling over 58 million pieces per year, the plastic silhouette became both women’s ultimate ambition and men’s trophy fantasy. Aided by mass media, product slogans, gender stereotypes, female objectification, plastic surgery and social media photo filters the “Pandora’s box” of capitalism released, with the Barbie Doll, its unattainable standards of beauty and perfection. Those standards have since become central to women’s identity and men’s status. In other words it “spilled grace” over a doll’s head to become the toy all little girls want to have, the body all women desire to achieve, and the fantasy all men love to embrace.”
Courtesy of Tabari Artspace.
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Time
October 20 (Tuesday) - November 20 (Friday)
Location
Tabari Artspace
The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Tabari Artspace[email protected] The Gate Village bldg.3, level 2. DIFC DUBAI. UAE 506759. Dubai, United Arab Emirates
20octAll Day20novSPACES, A COLLECTIVE EXHIBITION
Event Details
Fann A Porter Amman and artmejo are pleased to present Spaces, a collective exhibition featuring the works of artists Laila Taweel, Lina Khaled, Sama Shahrouri, Tawfiq Dawi, and Zeina Salameh,
Event Details
Fann A Porter Amman and artmejo are pleased to present Spaces, a collective exhibition featuring the works of artists Laila Taweel, Lina Khaled, Sama Shahrouri, Tawfiq Dawi, and Zeina Salameh, on view from 20 October to 20 November at Manara Arts & Culture, Amman.
The realm of spatial existence carries possibilities of multiple conceptual realities. Of these, our select young artists each focused on a singular ecosystem to examine thoroughly. Separated by geography, personal values and mediums, the full body of presented work examines various realities of Space.
The coming collection highlights various forms of art, from photography to sculpture and installation art. The young artists seem to be dwelling in thought over a brief encounter with a lifechanging event or the memories it rippled.
Personal, Actual, Open, Safe and Mental spaces are studied in the coming works. On their own, each collection by the artists showcases a single conceptual reality, but together they formulate a whole greater than the sum of its part.
Courtesy of Fann A Porter.
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Time
October 20 (Tuesday) - November 20 (Friday)
Location
Fann A Porter
Manara Arts & Culture, Dirar Ben Al-Azwar St. 56, Amman, Jordan
Organizer
Fann A Porter[email protected] Manara Arts & Culture, Dirar Ben Al-Azwar St. 56, Amman, Jordan
27octAll Day08novVirtual EventMAMUT ART PROJECT 2020
Event Details
Mamut Art Project 2020 kicks off its online platform and on-site exhibition at its brand new venue Yapı Kredi bomontiada on Tuesday, October 27. With a focus on discovering independent
Event Details
Mamut Art Project 2020 kicks off its online platform and on-site exhibition at its brand new venue Yapı Kredi bomontiada on Tuesday, October 27. With a focus on discovering independent creatives across Turkey and providing an exhibition platform, Mamut Art Project has provided portfolio days, professional development consultancy and supported networking between artists and art professionals for the past 8 years. This year the exhibition will showcase the works of 49 artists selected from over 1,500 applications.
Yapı Kredi bomontiada plays a leading role in collaborative and participatory commissions and has provided a dynamic platform for innovative artists from all disciplines since its inception. Hosting this year’s edition of Mamut Art Project, a comprehensive system of protective measures has been put in place for a reformatted exhibition programme,whereby visitors are invited to an artist’s loft set up.The visits will be conducted by appointment and free of charge.
For the first time this year, Mamut Art Project offers an online platform for its 8th edition comprising a diverse selection of nearly 400 works by 49 artists, bringing art audiences and artists together in a variety of formats on its website, and social media channels. Functioning as an archive for Mamut artists, the website mamutartproject.com will create access to the artist’s works, provide free consultancy services for visitors and in the future develop into an international platform connecting Mamut artists with art lovers all around the globe.
Courtesy of Mamut Art Project.
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Virtual Event Details
Event has already taken place!
Time
October 27 (Tuesday) - November 8 (Sunday)
Organizer
Mamut Art Project
28octAll DaySotheby’s | Contemporary Art Evening sale
Event Details
Sotheby’s is honored to present highlights of our upcoming Contemporary Art Evening sale. Highlighted by a majestic Mark Rothko painting from 1958 which preempts the artists celebrated Seagram Murals in
Event Details
Sotheby’s is honored to present highlights of our upcoming Contemporary Art Evening sale. Highlighted by a majestic Mark Rothko painting from 1958 which preempts the artists celebrated Seagram Murals in the Tate Collection in London, the sale continues in an abstract vein with masterpieces by Clyfford Still and Brice Marden from the Baltimore Museum of Art. We are also honored to present a spectacular Robert Ryman painting from 1980 which has resided in the storied Crex Collection since its acquisition from Konrad Fischer in the year of execution.
Courtesy of Sotheby’s
Time
All Day (Wednesday)
Location
Sotheby’s
1334 York Avenue New York, New York 10021 U.S.A. +1 212 606 7000
Organizer
Sotheby’s[email protected] 1334 York Avenue New York, New York 10021 U.S.A. +1 212 606 7000
30oct(oct 30)00:0020nov(nov 20)00:00FOR BEIRUT WITH LOVE
Event Details
In the wake of the terrible explosion that extensively harmed the city centre and harbour area of Beirut, Lebanon, Opera Gallery wishes to give back and participate to the reconstruction
Event Details
In the wake of the terrible explosion that extensively harmed the city centre and harbour area of Beirut, Lebanon, Opera Gallery wishes to give back and participate to the reconstruction of this beloved city.
Notwithstanding the severe damage sustained by the gallery space, Opera Gallery Beirut takes a stand as active contributor to rebuilding the city. Convinced that appreciating art and beauty is a matter of Love, Opera Gallery wants to give love back.
All proceedings of this show will be donated to four prominent Lebanese NGOs: Arc-en-Ciel, Caritas, Beb w Shebbek and Offre Joie.
Courtesy of Opera Gallery Beirut.
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Time
October 30 (Friday) 00:00 - November 20 (Friday) 00:00
Location
Opera Gallery Beirut
Foch 94, Foch Avenue Beirut Central District, BEIRUT
Organizer
Opera Gallery Beirut Foch 94, Foch Avenue Beirut Central District, BEIRUT
04novAll Day10janELIZABETH M. CLAFFEY & RANIA MATAR | A TACIT INHERITANCE
Event Details
Throughout its relatively short history as a medium, photography has been credited with the power to evoke a sense of immediate intimacy and connection. This power is on full display
Event Details
Throughout its relatively short history as a medium, photography has been credited with the power to evoke a sense of immediate intimacy and connection. This power is on full display in A Tacit Inheritance, with a collection of traditional and conceptual portraits by Elizabeth M. Claffey and Rania Matar. The photographs made by these two talented artists advance a layered celebration of connection by depicting cross-cultural and cross-generational themes of our shared humanity.
Elizabeth Claffey’s series, Matrilinear, offers a poetic window into the layers of memory embedded in a series of object portraits that represent a collective thread weaving together past, present, and future. The stark black and white of these photographs invoke x-ray images that incisively reveal the underlying personal histories and memories literally woven into the fabric of each garment. “Women play many complex roles within the structures of kinship: daughter, sister, cousin, mother, aunt, grandmother; these roles can be fluid and at times overlap,” says Claffey. She continues by observing that “Matrilinear aims to create space for the deep knowledge base that women can develop through interaction with home space and each other.”
Rania Matar’s project, Unspoken Conversations, is a series of meticulously crafted portraits that explore the formation of generations through womanhood at two seminal stages of life, adolescence and middle age, with both mother and daughter included in a single frame. The images reveal each subject’s subtle glances, gestures, and emotions that convey simultaneously the personal and universal complexities of the mother and daughter relationship. “In this work,” writes Matar, “I seek to focus on our essence, our physicality, our vulnerability, on growing up and growing old – the commonalities that make us human, to emphasise underlying similarities rather than apparent differences across cultures and to ultimately find beauty in our shared humanity.”
The relationships on display here are unique and powerful. The subjects, represented before the lens in Matar’s images and metaphorically in Claffey’s, are the givers and caretakers of life, the original “originators” who quite literally carry humanity forward. Side-by-side, the photographs in A Tacit Inheritance might evoke the phrase Nature vs. Nurture, the classic debate about our existence that is as old as humanity itself. Where Matar’s portraits could represent the Nature side, through the physical connection of mother and daughter, Claffey’s images are the Nurture side with their deliberate curation and maintenance of generational memory. Rather than in opposition to each other, we should view these two bodies of work together as representing the nurturing nature of our shared humanity through inherited memory and connection.
—Aurora PhotoCenter
Courtesy of The Herron Galleries
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Time
November 4 (Wednesday) - January 10 (Sunday)
Location
The Herron Galleries
735 W. New York Street. Indianapolis, IN 46032
Organizer
The Herron Galleries[email protected] 735 W. New York Street. Indianapolis, IN 46032
05novAll Day23janJACK WHITTEN | I AM THE OBJECT
Event Details
Hauser & Wirth New York presents rarely seen works made by American artist Jack Whitten (1939 – 2018). The exhibition focuses on his practice from 1991 through 2000, a period
Event Details
Hauser & Wirth New York presents rarely seen works made by American artist Jack Whitten (1939 – 2018). The exhibition focuses on his practice from 1991 through 2000, a period of intense experimentation during which, deeply affected by tumultuous world events, he strove to incorporate them into his work. Blurring the boundaries between sculpture and painting, and between the studio and the world, the multidimensional works on view combine geometric abstraction and found objects to mine spiritual and metaphysical thematic veins.
Among works on view are examples from Whitten’s Totem and Mask series of paintings, powerful elegiac works inspired by contemporary events that held deep significance for the artist. These commemorative works reveal Whitten’s ongoing fascination with African sculpture and his use of unconventional materials – acrylic, recycled glass, plywood and eggshells – in intricate, mosaic-like compositions. In ‘Mask II: For Ronald Brown’ (1996), Whitten recalls the Commerce Secretary in President Bill Clinton’s cabinet, whose untimely death in a plane crash was mourned in the Black community across America. Whitten’s homage to Brown contains layers of reference imagery forming a triangle, reflecting the symbiotic relationship between spirituality, thought, and syntax. For Whitten, honoring the contributions by important Black figures was a recurrent theme in his work, as seen with his Black Monolith series.
The Black Monolith series began in the mid 1980’s, in which Whitten honored various African American intellectuals from the 20th and 21st century. These laid the groundwork for the subsequent Totem and Mask works. In the context of the events of 2020, these works have acquired added significance and portent. ‘Totem 2000 IV: For Amadou Diallo’ (2000) pays tribute to the young, unarmed Guinean immigrant whose wrongful death at the hands of four New York City plainclothes police officers ignited outrage. In a letter written in May 2000, Whitten explained, ‘I constructed a dark totemic elegy in memory of Amadou Diallo…The preservation of memory interests me. Memory is preserved in the paint.’
The layered and reflective surfaces of many of the works on view are more akin to relief sculpture than conventional painting. Whitten used pieces of dried acrylic paint chips – what he dubbed ‘tesserae,’ referring to ancient Greek and Roman mosaic tile – to construct a unique visual language enriched by the various chemical compositions of his embedded materials. In ‘Totem 2000 VIII: For Janet Carter (A Truly Sweet Lady)’ (2000), muted monochromatic shades of grey and black are juxtaposed with a warm palette of pastels at the center of the work. In the acrylic collage ‘Totem 2000 VI Annunciation: For John Coltrane’ (2000), Whitten pays homage to the complexity of the work created by an iconic jazz master. The artist’s deep appreciation for free composition jazz, with its spontaneous call-and-response inventiveness, surfaced as a regular motif in his work. In the landmark painting ‘Memory Sites’ (1995), Whitten experiments with the surface effects of acrylic paint to address man’s inhumanity to man. Made in tribute to Israeli politician and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated on 4 November 1995, ‘Memory Sites’ uses acrylic paint chips to resemble the texture of bone. This reconfiguration is reiterated by the shapes of skulls that emanate from the bottom of the work when looking at it from a distance. Combining abstraction and representation in using acrylic to replicate natural materials, this powerful painting evinces Whitten’s exceptional technical powers as well as his deftness at conveying the effects of tragedy on the human spirit.
Art historian Richard Schiff has written: ‘Some of Whitten’s memorialising images, following a death or a disaster, are celebratory of the person or of a resistance to adversity. Others convey the tragedy of a situation, and without lifting the weight of the pain, may still induce a rewarding state of contemplation, both aesthetically and thematically. The range of emotion captured in or projected from Whitten’s art is remarkably broad— multifaceted like his tesserae surfaces.’
Together, the works on view reveal an artist of extraordinary sensitivity, capable of imbuing modernist abstraction with the vibrations of historical narratives and histories and bringing the spiritual and material realms into alignment.
‘I AM THE OBJECT,’ will coincide with a second printing of ‘Jack Whitten: Notes from the Woodshed (2018)’ from Hauser & Wirth Publishers.
Whitten’s work from the 1970s will be the subject of a major exhibition at Dia:Beacon in Fall 2022.
courtesy of Hauser & Wirth New York
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Time
November 5 (Thursday) - January 23 (Saturday)
Location
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
Organizer
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street 548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
05novAll Day23janGEORGE CONDO | INTERNAL RIOT
Event Details
Hauser & Wirth presents ‘Internal Riot’ an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by American artist George Condo. Made during the quarantine period, these works reflect the unsettling
Event Details
Hauser & Wirth presents ‘Internal Riot’ an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by American artist George Condo. Made during the quarantine period, these works reflect the unsettling experience of physical distance and the absence of human contact during this prolonged time of social isolation. The pandemic has forced Condo to take his portraiture practice to a new level, with invented characters captured in an abstract web that reveals the humanity inherent in their fractured psychological states.
In this new body of work, Condo’s figures grapple with the overwhelming uncertainty and dissonant emotions that are being felt across the globe. The portraits reflect a range of emotions occurring simultaneously within us. The subjects depicted are devoid of connection to one another in a state where, according to the artist, ‘we are dealing with opposing forces and the elasticity of time.’
Artist Statement
Thought Block: George Condo on ‘Internal Riot’
‘These paintings and drawings explore my experience in isolation and reflect the inner isolation we have all experienced throughout our lives. Internal dialogues while in transit or asleep or in the form of dreams. The pandemic has forced us into that strange, unidentified region of the mind where it seems to function on its own without any guidance. Now our rules and daily lives have been re-ordered as well – face masks, endless sanitization, gloves, and germ warfare. Without structures and data, the humanitarian effort to bring the human essence back into the picture and empathetically solve the virus and our own inner turmoil has turned into a much bigger picture over these last so many months since I left the city. The virus turned deadly and its attack amplified the flaws in humanity, the ruthless denigration of people simply for what they look like and where they come from.
The protests were justified. I protested with my paintings. In a psychological sense, I lit them on fire and turned them upside down in revolt and sickness, ‘Internal Riot,’ which I’m naming this exhibition is about that feeling of just wanting to turn your world upside down and burn it to the ground… and hope a new planet will be born. It’s about that transcendental moment when all things are everything.
Other paintings and works on paper are my interpretations of the abstract web humanity is caught up in. Compositions moving diagonally on the canvas from right to left or left to right, the polarization, no straight up and down, an endless saga of going one way or another, ending nowhere. Clashing profiles, both reasonable and unreasonable, anger, mistrust, and fear. ‘Father and Daughter With Face Mask’ captures the staring eye of the insane father as the younger child is rendered over a silver mask. His protective maniacal head is trapped in a diagonal construction site over which he has no control. ‘There’s No Business Like No Business’ is what appears to be an out of work, unemployed man who could have once stood out in front of a Broadway theatre handing out pamphlets. Covid-19 has shut all those theaters down. Now, he too, is trapped in diagonal suspension, waiting endlessly for the lights to turn green and his job to return. Perhaps it never will.
All the paintings relate to the spontaneous, improvisational nature of the works on paper, their immediacy. The painting Internal Riot and the drawing Portrait of Virginia Woolf, are totally interrelated. I worked on a daily basis, dating each piece when it was finished. Some took days, others weeks. Some took only hours. And then the days of doing nothing seemed longer, the elasticity of time became apparent to everyone I know. People call on the phone and can’t remember what day it is anymore, can’t remember what they ‘used to do’ or know what in fact they ever will do. There is a migratory sense in the air. People want to move… with no clear path in sight. This is the moment for change. As an artist I know I can right wrongs in my paintings and that is what I do. I unite every form and color and harmonize it to the point where it sings like a choir. I’d love to see the world do that.’
Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
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Time
November 5 (Thursday) - January 23 (Saturday)
Location
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
Organizer
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street 548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
10novAll Day01decDORA DALILA CHEFFI | IMITATING EQUILIBRIUM
Event Details
Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Imitating Equilibrium, an online solo show by Tunis-based artist Dora Dalila Cheffi, opening on November 10, 2020. Dora’s series of self-portraits comments on the
Event Details
Taymour Grahne Projects is pleased to present Imitating Equilibrium, an online solo show by Tunis-based artist Dora Dalila Cheffi, opening on November 10, 2020.
Dora’s series of self-portraits comments on the layered relationship we have with ourselves and our values in the cacophony of hyper-connectedness. We’re living through a time where we are experiencing the degradation of a shared reality, seeing the world through the lens of social media and the Internet, while also reflecting on the pseudo-realistic versions of ourselves that we project onto our social circles and the Internet-at-large.
‘Imitating Equilibrium’ is a series of twelve self-portraits discussing the results of these anxieties, longings, and reflections. This series dips into a well of femininity, visiting feelings of loneliness and fragility in what is already a foggy time, and speaks to how human it is to find momentary relief in synthetic iterations of our person at moments when it is hard to face ourselves.
Filtered versions of reality shape the thinly veiled surrealist leanings in certain self-portraits, while others depict a more deliberate presentation of augmented reality, citing the high maniera attitude of art-imitating-art by making references to iconic imagery in popular culture through the use of Instagram filters that went viral throughout 2020. Our personal feelings are reflected in our collective feelings, which are mirrored back to us ad nauseam, forming a matrix through which the Internet imposes itself on reality.
Courtesy of Taymour Grahne Projects
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Time
November 10 (Tuesday) - December 1 (Tuesday)
Location
Taymour Grahne Projects
10 Portland Road, Holland Park, London W11 4LA
Organizer
Taymour Grahne Projects[email protected] Taymour Grahne Projects 10 Portland Road Holland Park, London W11 4LA
11novAll Day24CHRISTIE'S | WE ARE ALL BEIRUT
Event Details
This season Christie’s presents a charity sale, We Are All Beirut dedicated to relieving the arts community following the devastating explosion this August. Offering a unique selection across art, design
Event Details
This season Christie’s presents a charity sale, We Are All Beirut dedicated to relieving the arts community following the devastating explosion this August. Offering a unique selection across art, design and jewelry sourced from our international and Middle Eastern teams, the auction and related programming seeks to unite the regional arts community through this noble cause.
Sale proceeds will benefit Arab Fund Arts & Culture (AFAC) a trusted NGO, to directly assist the arts community in Beirut with additional proceeds given to the Red Cross from a section of the sale which was sourced by a trusted partnership with a Beirut based arts entity.
AFAC will be pooling the resources towards redistributing financial support across all artistic fields, specifically targeting the arts scene in Beirut. Institutions such as the Sursock Museum and local galleries that suffered extensive damage will receive these proceeds, both in terms of repairing structural damages and via rehabilitation programmes that AFAC launched after the explosion.
As part of this charitable initiative, Christie’s is collaborating with strong Beirut based design and production companies. A dedicated e-catalogue will be designed by MFB Studio along with a dedicated video produced by Boo Productions to highlight key cultural figures’ generous support of this initiative.
Courtesy of Christie’s.
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Time
november 11 (Wednesday) - 24 (Tuesday)
12novAll Day19decIDA APPLEBROOG | APPLEBROOG BIRDS
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For more than six decades, American artist Ida Applebroog has continuously engaged with the polemics of human behavior, often exploring interrelated themes of power, gender, politics, and sexuality. Her exhibition
Event Details
For more than six decades, American artist Ida Applebroog has continuously engaged with the polemics of human behavior, often exploring interrelated themes of power, gender, politics, and sexuality. Her exhibition ‘Applebroog Birds,’ opening 12 November at Hauser & Wirth New York, finds the 91 year old artist advancing her trenchant political inquiry through avian portraits, paintings, and sculptures, all of which are ripe with symbolism relevant to this unprecedented moment. This exhibition expands upon the ‘Angry Birds of America’ works she began making in 2016 and reaffirms her status as one of contemporary art’s most consistently inventive political image-makers.
A pioneering artist of the feminist movement since the 1970s, Applebroog constantly evolves her visual vocabulary and draws from a diverse array of themes, memories, and mass media sources. In 2016, Applebroog became captivated by ornithology and John James Audubon’s skill at merging art and nature. She developed an interest in drawing birds nestled in trees. Quickly realising that Audubon and other ornithologists work from taxidermal birds, Applebroog began collecting birds and reading ornithological books, eventually producing her own models in plaster and paint.
Courtesy of Hauser & Wirth
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Time
November 12 (Thursday) - December 19 (Saturday)
Location
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street
548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
Organizer
Hauser & Wirth - New York, 22nd Street 548 West 22nd Street, New York 10011
12nov(nov 12)09:0431dec(dec 31)09:04SELMA PARLOUR
Event Details
Pi Artworks Istanbul is pleased to announce the London-based and award winning artist Selma Parlour’s first solo exhibition in Istanbul. Selma Parlour is known for her meticulously rendered oil paintings
Event Details
Pi Artworks Istanbul is pleased to announce the London-based and award winning artist Selma Parlour’s first solo exhibition in Istanbul.
Selma Parlour is known for her meticulously rendered oil paintings that appear as though they’re drawn or printed. Her invented coda to historic abstract painting and minimalism reassesses in/extrinsic conventions from a contemporary perspective. This is the London-based award-winning artist’s first solo exhibition at Pi Artworks Istanbul and includes examples of her characteristic units of luminous colour, delicately shaded bands, diagrammatic space, and her haptic surfaces.
Centre stage are three paintings from Parlour’s new series Mirror. Here two stacked fictive alcove spaces have had some of their sides erased, bringing the illusion of depth into question. The artist’s refined application and restricted palette recalls pencil shading and polished metal. Parlour states:
“The emphasis is on doubling. And I think of them as machines, but the polished metal effect isn’t the thing, rather it’s how to convey reflected light, I’m bouncing light around. My suspended shapes and missing boundaries alter what we perceive. The back edge of a box space becomes a horizon line and then quicksand. A rectangle with perspective is a trapezium. I’m fixated on our switch of cognition: That we see flatness or illusion but not at the same time.”
Parlour’s Smack Dab series of small paintings are also poised with the potential to morph. An English language expression meaning exactly or directly ‘smack dab in the middle’ implies that something is in the way. Suggestive of shaped canvases or fragments of stained glass, these compact paintings catalogue Parlour’s distinct pictorial vocabulary.
In some works, Parlour has used a laser-engraving machine put into service to remove miniscule incremental degrees of white primed surface, thus creating subtle tonal variations of primer, and finally revealing the actual raw linen surface within/beneath. In the playful Miniaturised Minimalism series, identical mock salon hangs of laser-made ‘paintings’ (floating rectangles) provide a fixed starting point across each canvas ready for varied oil-made compositions of fictitious gallery displays.
Courtesy of Pi Artworks
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Time
November 12 (Thursday) 09:04 - December 31 (Thursday) 09:04
Location
Pi Artworks Istanbul
34425 Karakoy, Istanbul - TURKEY
Organizer
Pi Artworks Istanbul[email protected] 34425 Karakoy, Istanbul - TURKEY
18novAll DayChristie's | Orientalist Art
Event Details
Christie’s is delighted to present masterpieces of unsurpassed quality by John Frederick Lewis, Gustav Bauernfeind and Jean-Léon Gérôme in the upcoming dedicated sale of Orientalist Art. Lewis’ 1872 depiction
Event Details
Christie’s is delighted to present masterpieces of unsurpassed quality by John Frederick Lewis, Gustav Bauernfeind and Jean-Léon Gérôme in the upcoming dedicated sale of Orientalist Art.
Lewis’ 1872 depiction of Cairo’s Bezestein Bazaar of El Khan Khalil is an exciting composition, filled with life and energy, and a true reflection of the bazaar through the eyes of arguably the greatest British Orientalist artist. The impressive scale of the painting has not compromised the artist’s intense dedication to detail, bringing an unrivalled verisimilitude to the painting. On 9 April 1889 Gustave Bauernfeind’s diary describes how he had a chance encounter with the warden of the mosque on his exploration of the city of Damascus, which would form the basis of this very detailed and rare glimpse into the sacred Sinan Pasha Mosque. The painting is characterised by the artist’s very accomplished use of colour and light, which transports the spectator and shares a view into a place and culture unknown to many in its time. Jean-Léon Gérôme’s intensely powerful Un Chef Bachi-Bouzouk, painted when the artist was at the height of his powers, depicts a chieftain of a group the artist prized as a subject for their unabashed masculinity and the individuality and colourfulness of their costumes.
Christie’s Orientalist Art auction encompasses a wide variety of works which form an artistic dialogue between cultures. A variety of mediums – from paintings and works-on-paper to sculpture– show a tremendous variety of creative output inspired by the travels of Western artists to the Middle East. Highlights also include works by famed artists such as Carl Haag, Frederick Arthur Bridgman and Rudolf Ernst. They each draw on their experiences to offer unique insights into daily life in the Middle East in the 19th Century.
A preview of the sale will be on view from Sunday, 25th October to Wednesday, 28th October.
Courtesy of Christie’s.
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Time
All Day (Wednesday)
Location
Christie’s
London 8 King Street St. James 's
Organizer
Christie’sLondon 8 King Street St. James 's
19novAll Day02janNICK QUIJANO | MEMORIES OF PUERTO RICO
Event Details
Organised by Bobbito Garcia Beginning Thursday, November 19th, Fort Gansevoort will present Memories of Puerto Rico, an online exhibition featuring a selection of paintings by Nick Quijano, organised in collaboration with
Event Details
Organised by Bobbito Garcia
Beginning Thursday, November 19th, Fort Gansevoort will present Memories of Puerto Rico, an online exhibition featuring a selection of paintings by Nick Quijano, organised in collaboration with critically acclaimed Puerto Rican author, filmmaker, and DJ, Bobbito Garcia.
Memories of Puerto Rico is Fort Gansevoort’s first exhibition with Nick Quijano, who was born in New York and is now based in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Quijano moved to “La Isla del Encanto,” the enchanted island, in 1967 at the age of thirteen. The foundation of his artistic practice was formed at the University of Puerto Rico, where he focused on architecture and environmental design, and studied under the late painter José Antonio Torres Martinó (1916 – 2011). Crafting a creative philosophy based upon his response to the local context and identity as a citizen of the Caribbean, Quijano experimented with various mediums, from collage and printmaking, to furniture design and assemblage, before devoting himself exclusively to painting.
The energetic culture or Puerto Rico takes center stage in Quijano’s art. In providing perspective on his oeuvre, curator Bobbito Garcia observes, “the good-hearted people of our island really have this sense of respect and care for their neighbors. When I saw Nick’s work, this sensibility was immediately apparent. He is painting for the common people.” Quijano represents his subjects through a patriotic gaze, rendering the specifics with deep affection. Baila la calle (de noche, baila la calle de dia) (Dance night and day) (2014) and El Encuentro (Rendezvous) (2020) incorporate two of the artist’s central themes: music and dance. The former painting portrays a couple dancing hand in hand on a city street, with the pavement beneath their feet mirroring their lively rhythm. El Encuentro captures the allure of an environment animated by music, focusing on a couple’s tentative foray into a crowded disco. Merengue and bolero – two styles of music and dance that enjoy paramount popularity in Puerto Rico – are depicted as catalysts for unity among members of the community – vehicles through which the collective and intimate are experienced.
Influenced by both recollections from childhood and the aesthetics of Caribbean folk art, Quijano also aims to illustrate the sacred nature of quotidian life on the island. La siesta de Tía (Aunt’s siesta) (2020), captures his proclivity for conventional scenes. In this painting, a woman reclines on her sofa, enveloped in a tender atmosphere. The meticulous patterns of her surrounding interior lure the viewer to examine all the painting’s detail closely. Another signature of Quijano’s work, his use of rich color to express emotion and visual wonder, often extends beyond the surface of the painting to implement the picture frame as part of his composition. Two examples of this technique are Mancogero (Mango man) (2020) and Mercado (Market) (2020), in which the boundaries of the frame are breached in order to animate the composition, carry its energy outside of the formal experience of the work itself, and indicate that the imagery we see is an amalgam of what is observed and what is remembered – or, rather, beyond the limits of the physical.
Through the transformation of memory, Quijano creates a portal into the everyday happenings that unite the past with the present in a celebration of timeless experiences. He has said, “I hope that people can relate to these pieces, because they are autobiographical, if not physically or metaphorically, then symbolically,” In this sense, Memories of Puerto Rico is an homage to the distinctive heritage of Puerto Rico, and a means through which the artist introduces elements of this heritage into the conversation of contemporary art.
Courtesy of Fort Gansevoort
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Time
November 19 (Thursday) - January 2 (Saturday)
Location
Fort Gansevoort New York
5 Ninth Avenue, New York, NY, 10014
21novAll Day05janKAIS SALMAN | LIAISONS
Event Details
Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Liaisons, a solo exhibition featuring Kais Salman’s works. The selection spotlights an important body of work from 2012 to his most recent canvases. About the
Event Details
Ayyam Gallery is pleased to present Liaisons, a solo exhibition featuring Kais Salman’s works. The selection spotlights an important body of work from 2012 to his most recent canvases.
About the exhibition
Continuously challenging notions of beauty, Kais is known for his bold and expressionist exploration of the human subject, society, and the collective. The artist critiques humanity’s vanity, materialism, dependencies, and social norms through various compositions.
Kais’ disfigured, nearly nude anti-heroes and heroines are placed vulnerable facing the viewers’ gaze; the characters are left objectified and questioned. The selection of works chosen for this exhibition highlights relationships or the lack thereof between the characters. Kais illustrates a type of disconnect between the characters, implicitly recreating society’s cliques, rivalries, and complex liaisons.
In some paintings, the characters’ poses, stances, and costumes create a hierarchy. While some of the avatars are grouped and paired, others are left alone and alienated from any connection. The figures each take independent roles, playing a part in the collective consciousness. The artist’s new work, on the other hand, differs in composition, creating a different narrative, one of unison and blurred lines, the figures overlap with space.
These associations link in the ideas of greed, and most importantly, ideological extremism embedded in contemporary communities. Kais’s usual expressionism is paired with realism, and beacons of symbolism spread across the paintings.
Courtesy of Ayyam Gallery
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Time
November 21 (Saturday) - January 5 (Tuesday)
Location
Ayyam Gallery
B11, Alserkal Avenue Exit 43 of SZR Street 8, Al Quoz 1 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Organizer
Ayyam Gallery[email protected] B11, Alserkal Avenue Exit 43 of SZR Street 8, Al Quoz 1 Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Event Details
Blue explores the dialectic between meaning and visual sensation. Saturated with meanings – freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, sadness, faith, spirituality, wisdom, peace, serenity, ethereality, infinity to name just a
Event Details
Blue explores the dialectic between meaning and visual sensation. Saturated with meanings – freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, sadness, faith, spirituality, wisdom, peace, serenity, ethereality, infinity to name just a few – blue has more complex and contradictory connotations than any other colour. Always among the most costly, scarce and difficult to extract, it has kept its cachet across the centuries and individual artists continue to respond to it.
Dominated by the colour in its various hues, the exhibition brings together works by a multi-generational group of artists – Driss Ouadahi (b. 1959), Shahpour Pouyan (b. 1979), Shaikha Al Mazrou (b. 1988) and Su Yu-Xin (b. 1991).
Geometric abstraction and transparency suffuse Driss Ouadahi’s practice. For Blue he presents two paintings – Errance / Wandering (2018) and Au Fur et à Mesure (2018). Known for his depictions of brutalist structures and the built environment of urban alienation, Ouadahi’s more recent works are devoid of social commentary,focusing instead on colour, light and transparency, engendering a transcendental feeling through visual sensation.
Similarly, in Unfolded (2020) Su Yu-Xin explores the relationship between visual language and sensory perception, constructing a delicate alternation of horizons, within which varying distances elicit different modes of observation. Yu-Xin’s layered surface and multiple perspectives generate a dynamic composition, an in-between place, which allows her to switch between figuration and abstraction, incorporating aspects of still-life,graphs, digital calendars, and fragments of text and memory.
A group of Miniatures by Shahpour Pouyan, made after a unique and highly unusual manuscript in the Bibliotheque Nationalin Paris, continue a series began in 2008, other examples of which are in The Met, The British Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. These reproduce the illustrated pages of an illuminated Mi’rajnama (Ascent of the Prophet) manuscript made in Timurid Herat and written in the Chaghatay Turkish language in an Uighur script – as culturally diverse as was possible in the 15th century. Pouyan digitally and manually manipulates the images to remove the figures and their attributes.Without their protagonists, what is left are arresting monochrome skyscapes of saturated blue, resembling colour field paintings in miniature.
Finally, in Sky And Ocean And Everything In Between (2020) Shaikha Al Mazrou investigates the perception of colour and the irony between literal meaning and spontaneous perceptions in art. Two blue resin blocks displayed on the floor, minimal in their aesthetics, poetic in their meaning, attempt to give form, both a thought and a sensation. Similarly, Despite The Weather (2020) questions the meaning behind what one sees. By using cyanotypes Al Mazrou manipulates light to superimpose numbers, emphasising the paradox between intangible concepts such as time and the rigid numerical constructs that represent them.
Courtesy of Lawrie Shabibi
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Time
November 21 (Saturday) - January 7 (Thursday)
Location
Lawrie Shabibi
Unit 21, Alserkal Avenue, Al-Quoz 1, Dubai, UAE
21nov(nov 21)12:1316jan(jan 16)12:13HODA TAWAKOL | BETWEEN BODIES
Event Details
Death has never been more alive. Rising tolls seep into our daily newsfeeds; images of the deceased pile up in worldwide media; and mortality rates are on (nearly) every global
Event Details
Death has never been more alive. Rising tolls seep into our daily newsfeeds; images of the deceased pile up in worldwide media; and mortality rates are on (nearly) every global leader’s lips.
For her second solo show at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Hoda Tawakol fathoms death less as an end than as a promise of renewal. In works ranging from large-scale textile pieces to more intimate sculptures, Tawakol freeze-frames an instance of transition, a moment teetering between presence and absence, physical and ethereal.
Liminality is her realm. Here, the body reigns, and the cocoon is the ideal metaphor for this in-between state. The works capture a brief suspension within a transformative cycle, notably the passage beyond death, witnessed by the ancient cocoon-like figures of mummies, sarcophagi, and pyramids.
Tawakol revives charged rituals. She revels in both the materiality they require, and the temporality they inhabit. Her very gestures are liminal, suspended between the ancient and the contemporary.
Wrapping, moulding, binding, freezing—such are the steps that ‘embalm’ her Mummies (2020), a series of nine plump totems. The artist crams nylons with rice, squeesing, twisting, and sculpting the swelling bulges, before enmeshing them in netting. The fleshy assemblages are then ‘frozen’ in resin, channelling ancient funerary techniques that used the viscous material to mummify for eternity, a gesture that undergirds the entire show’s sense of ‘fixing’ a moment between states. Undulating blobs, mangled male genitalia, bulbous charnel abstractions—the works defy easy reading precisely because they conflate an uncanny myriad of corporal contortions and gender allusions.
Tawakol is a sculptor of textile; throughout her practice, fabrics are endowed with a force hoisting them above mere material swathes. They become entities, bristling with breasts or puckered by protuberances. In Tawakol’s hands, fabric is like skin, a sensual membrane between intimacy and exposure. Sarcophagus No. 1 (2019), for example, vibrates with vitality: the left side of the coffin-like enclosure is made of tufted ‘bandage’ fabric, peaking in rounded mounds like some perky mammary landscape, while the right ‘lid’ refracts a rainbow light in uneven silk shafts. The body is physically there—by its scale, its wadded materiality—and yet absent, abstracted. Similarly, the eyes dripping from Sarcophagus No. 2 (2020) emblematise sight. As a presumed soul peers out through the fringes of tentacular eyes on the right (eerily echoing hair that would continue in post-death growth), a cacophony of bandage-wrapping techniques—strapping, binding, criss-crossing—animate the twin lid.
Revivifying, bright-hued dye bleeds through these fabric works like an insidious witness. A diversity of unpredictable hand-dyeing techniques—batik, spotting, painting, tie-dye—creates background vortexes, like portals propelling suspended souls to another state. Or, in the case of Sarcophagus No. 2, the tie-dye ripples stare out at us like an iris—a single über-eye intensifying the chorus of dangling ceramic-eye gazes. Irregularly dyed silk is the backdrop to Sarcophagus No. 3 (2020), riddled with busty amulets and neatly punctuated by a transversal collar, a yellow, spine-like token, and a crotch-level patch pricked with wild, fin-like wads: the viewer finds a legibly mirrored morphology in the here-but-not-quite body evoked by the two-and-a-half-meter-tall work.
The pyramid, unsurprisingly, rises as a site of transition in Tawakol’s cocoon-like, death-as-new-beginning universe. One of a series of fabric works, Pyramid No. 2 (2020), composed of hand-sewn constellations of paint-dyed silk, is a flattened, aerial sweep of a pyramid cluster—a drone’s-eye view hovering over a shift in perspective. Watercolour, often a medium of experimentation for Pyramid and Sarcophagus studies, oozes through a series of works on paper (2019-2020): the familiar shapes of Mummies and Sarcophagi throb with colour, as Tawakol’s hallmark iconography—pendulous, fruit-laden date palms—endows the images with an amplified fertility. A second series of works on paper, Immaculate (2018-2020), relishes the unpredictability of dyeing: whether on paper pleated from a central point, or block-folded according to the Japanese shiboiri technique, the ink does what it wants, with the blind determination of a bodily fluid. Immaculate No. 12 (2018), for example, is a scream of colour, yet it functions as a witness to some vivid, fluid act, bearing the traces of a bodily secretion. It throbs resolutely, like an image striving to be read in a shroud.
Throughout her practice, Tawakol has wrapped uncomfortable questions (particularly relating to the manipulation of women’s bodies) in sharp-witted, spirited works. Like the liminal states she navigates in Between Bodies, her strategy is double—vivacious yet critical, vaguely salacious yet earnest. While her lens on the afterlife may offer glimmers of hope to some in our current moment of biological uncertainly, Tawakol’s works in Between Bodies perform a far more daunting task—they bring us nose-to-nose with our finitude, suggesting it may only be the beginning.
Courtesy Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
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Time
November 21 (Saturday) 12:13 - January 16 (Saturday) 12:13
Location
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde
Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1. PO Box 18217, Dubai, UAE
Organizer
Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde[email protected] Unit 17, Alserkal Avenue, Street 8, Al Quoz 1. PO Box 18217, Dubai, UAE
21nov(nov 21)13:1605jan(jan 5)13:16SARA RAHBAR | THE SPACE BETWEEN US
Event Details
In scarce moments of contemplative silence, we find no short-lived consolation, only sobering reality. There is no refuge from the roaring cacophony of the human experience, no mitigation of our
Event Details
In scarce moments of contemplative silence, we find no short-lived consolation, only sobering reality. There is no refuge from the roaring cacophony of the human experience, no mitigation of our conflicted circumstances, no momentary stillness within the chaos. From underneath the blinding glare of a bright light, New York based artist Sara Rahbar (b.1976, Iran) elucidates numerous contemporary issues within our society as we witness an immense buildup of frustration, a bubbling anger – a relentlessly growing hunger for change and revolution in these continuously evolving times of political, social, economical and environmental upheaval.
Sara Rahbar’s exhibition, titled The Space Between Us, presents an uncanny mirror of mankind’s past and present, and likely future. Through the establishment of direct parallels between the world of then and now, Rahbar encircles the larger context of sociopolitical conflicts that are deeply embedded within both the crux of her art, and in integral history. In her strict formalisation of emotions of fear, pain and violence, the works delineate an underlying, intimate study of the complex human condition.
From fleeting, forlorn glimpses of human emotion, to harsh dissections of human anatomy, to the severity of marred bronze limbs, a human element pervades Sara Rahbar’s overarching body of work. Derived from the coarse language of her sculptural works, Rahbar’s new collage series, Animals, is translated to an intuitive layering of imagery; heavily poured onto and layered with various inks and oils. The paper works portray raw, unembellished themes of military strife and warfare, and reiterated evocations of the iconographic star spangled banner are enmeshed into the saturated fabric of their narrative, touching contradictory concepts of patriotism and belonging.
Away from the unrest portrayed within the repressed assemblages, the sculptural works tread a terse material discourse between the fragility of old wood, and the unforgiving coldness of bronze. Despite the human element that is perpetually manifested within throughout Rahbar’s visual parlance, there is a discernible estrangement in their contrasting forms of media, from the sculptural works to the collages. Through this tactile juxtaposition of vastly differing elements, the works deconstruct intense emotions of discomfort and tension, and are conclusively emblematic of today.
As the discord fades to static sound in the distance, we are left alone in the vast expanse that divides and separates, in between the jagged, crudely drawn lines that part communities and nations. Irregardless of the suffocating distance that exists between us, we stand far apart – and despite being connected to one another, we act separately, without harmony. With head and heart continually misaligned, we retrace our footsteps down the same convoluted, circular path, back to the beginning once more.
Courtesy of Carbon 12 Gallery.
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Time
November 21 (Saturday) 13:16 - January 5 (Tuesday) 13:16
Location
Carbon 12
Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
Organizer
Carbon 12[email protected] Unit 37, Alserkal Avenue, Al Quoz 1. P.O.Box 214437, Dubai, UAE
21nov(nov 21)22:1807jan(jan 7)22:18Maryam Hoseini | AFTER YOU
Event Details
In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, New York-based Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini presents paintings on geometrically shaped, vertically oriented panels that draw the viewer into these abstract containers.
Event Details
In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, New York-based Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini presents paintings on geometrically shaped, vertically oriented panels that draw the viewer into these abstract containers. Within these spaces, Hoseini’s equally abstracted figures – cast between the human and the animal – contest their confinement, displacement, and subjugation.
Hoseini’s dramaturgical plotting of space, both in the composition of the paintings and in their placement in the gallery, yields dreamscapes where bodies float between abstraction and figuration. The large panels simultaneously evoke the shapes of abstracted human forms and familiar architectures, while the shadows cast against the walls highlight the theatricality and fluidity in their relationship to the viewer. One becomes strangely body-conscious encountering the work – simultaneously connecting to the human scale of the panels while being alienated by the flatness of their surfaces.
A sequence of small-scale paintings elaborates on the oneiric experience of this spatial encounter. It begins with an abstracted architecture in which a checkered floor is legible but other elements are vaguely defined, and Hoseini’s signature warped bodies are set at a distance in a landscape. As the sequence progresses, the perspective of each successive painting gradually recedes to reveal more of the architecture while the figures diminish. As we study each painting, the effect is one of sharing our position as viewers with a ghostly third-person observer within the space of the paintings themselves – a voyeuristic experience of looking and being looked at as the definition of inside and outside shift.
This shifting of perspectival space within the paintings has implications on notions of historical time. As history is abstracted from its linear narratives, the landscapes and architecture depicted in the paintings hint at possible futures that evolve without the support of a coherent present, instead rising out of the cyclical ruins of the past. Some of Hoseini’s hybrid figures appear headless in their scenes; others exceed the scale of the picture plane. Each contests the workings of power that would control them: though many coyly retain gendered characteristics, the headless figures resist a narrative reading that would determine their possibilities along the lines of identity; the large-scale figures burst out of the spatial bounds of their confinement. The paintings resist the gravity that would tether them to the past and hamper their visions of alternate futures. In the shifting terrain of these quasi-visionary realms, we meet the physicality of these paintings, at once defined by their material conditions and set free by the imagination the material forms contain.
Courtesy of Green Art Gallery
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Time
November 21 (Saturday) 22:18 - January 7 (Thursday) 22:18
Location
Green Art Gallery
Al Quoz 1, Street 8, Alserkal Avenue, Unit 28
Organizer
Green Art Gallery[email protected] Al Quoz 1, Street 8, Alserkal Avenue, Unit 28
21nov(nov 21)22:3305jan(jan 5)22:33MARIAM SUHAIL | INHABITATE
Event Details
The collection of material is