Newsletter Art Dubai 2014
Rashid Rana Born 1968 in Lahore, Pakistan. Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan. A leading member of Pakistan s contemporary art scene, Rashid Rana has established himself as the most renowned international Pakistani artist. His works reflect upon the relationship between tradition and modernity, particularly the impact of globalisation on local cultures. In his photography, sculpture, and digital printmaking, the artist transposes imagery from one time and place to another, through manipulation, repetition, and rearrangement. Rashid Rana has a reputation as a neo-minaturist, and his oeuvre explores the aesthetic concept of the grid along with minimalism and geometric abstraction. To Find is to Search is part of Rashid Rana s most recent Transliteration Series. In these works, the artist selects a random image from one time and place in history, cuts it into pieces and reassembles it together to form a new image from another time and place, creating what he refers to as a visual transliteration. In this work, Rashid Rana has reconfigured The Madonna of the Green Cushion painted by Andrea Solari in 1507. Although the original image is from an older artistic period, the process of pixilation establishes a relationship between both the new composite image and the fragments from the original, aiding the work s ability to transcend historical boundaries. Rashid Rana has exhibited internationally at prominent venues including the Mohatta Palace Museum (Karachi, Pakistan, 2013), the Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2011), the Pacific Asia Museum (Pasadena, USA, 2010), the Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK, 2010), and the Musée Guimet (Paris, France, 2010). Rashid Rana s work is represented in various public and private collections including the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), the Queensland Gallery of Art (Brisbane, Australia), the Fukuoka Museum of Asian Art (Fukuoka, Japan), the Asia Society Museum (New York, USA), the National Gallery of Art (Islamabad, Pakistan), the Frank Cohen Collection (UK), and the Devi Foundation (Delhi, India). Title: To Find is to Search Date: 2013 Medium: C-Print + DIASEC Size: 90 x 110 cm contact@newartworld.co.uk 2
Hassan Sharif Born in 1951 in Dubai, UAE. Lives and Works in Dubai. Considered to be a founding member of the UAE s contemporary art scene, Hassan Sharif is a pioneering Emirati artist renowned for his experimental and conceptual practice. His work engages with ideas of consumerism, commenting on its far-reaching effect on society. In this work, Hassan Sharif experiments with semi-systems, utilizing the grid to draft constructivist structures. Organizing geometrical forms in space, Sharif follows complex mathematical models of his own invention, incorporating discovery, errors, and chance. Creating art that is linked to society and universal aspects of daily life, the artist uses ordinary materials such as cotton, textile, metal, chord, plastic, and ordinary objects that reflect contemporary concerns of consumerism, manufacturing, and the commercialization of handicrafts. Hassan Sharif was selected to be the debut artist to represent the U.A.E. during its first national pavillion at the Venice Biennale in 2009. He has exhibited internationally at prominent venues including the Musée d Art Moderne et d Art Contemporain (Nice, France, 2012), the DUCTAC (Dubai, UAE, 2013), and the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar, 2010). The artist s work is represented in the prestigious permanent collections of the Guggenheim (Abu Dhabi, UAE), the Emirates Investment Bank (Dubai, UAE), the Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, UAE), the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), the JP Morgan Chase Collection (New York, USA), the Sittard Art Centre (Sittard, the Netherlands), and the Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar). Hassan Sharif has also participated in several Sharjah International Arts Biennial (Sharajah, UAE), the 18th Biennale of Sydney (Sydney, Australia, 2012), and the 53rd Venice Biennial (Venice, Italy, 2009). Title: Rug, Cotton Rope and Glue Date: 2013 Medium: Rug, Cotton Rope and Glue Size: 146 x 67 x 4 cm contact@newartworld.co.uk 3
Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige Born 1969 in Beirut, Lebanon. They live and work in Beirut, Lebanon, and Paris, France. Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige are collaborating, multi-award winning Lebanese artists and filmmakers whose cinematic and visual art practices intertwine. Their films and installations emerge from a common concern with image-making and storytelling with a particular focus on the representations and history of their home country, Lebanon. The Lebanese Rocket Society is a documentary telling the strange tale of the widely forgotten Lebanese Space Race. The film is centred around the Space Project of the 1960 s, which was conducted by a group of students from the Armenian Haigazian University of Beirut and their professor Manoug Manougian. Hadjithomas and Joreige re-created a model of the rocket, placing the object in and around momentous sites around Beirut. The work, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2012, is comprised of a video, sound installation, photographic series, and a commemorative rug.. In 2012, Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige were awarded the prestigious Abraaj Capital Art Prize. Their artwork has been shown in many museums, biennials, and art centres around the world, including the Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton (Paris, France, 2014), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France, 2012), Biennale de Lyon (Lyon, France, 2011), Queensland Art Museum (Brisbane, Australia, 2011), and the Musée de Gigon (Spain, 2008). Their work is represented in numerous public and private collections, such as the Musée National d Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris, France), the Guggenheim Museum (New York, USA), the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), Sharjah Art Foundation (Sharjah, U.A.E.), the Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, U.A.E.), and the VIctoria and Albert Museum (London, UK). (Top Left) Title: The Lebanese Rocket Society: Restaged No 1 Date: 2012 Medium: C-Print on Dibond Size: 78.8 x 104.5 cm (framed) (Bottom Left) Title: The Lebanese Rocket Society: Restaged No 3 Date: 2012 Medium: C-Print on Dibond Size: 78.8 x 104.5 cm (framed) (Top Right) Title: The Lebanese Rocket Society: Restaged No 4 Date: 2012 Medium: C-Print on Dibond Size: 78.8 x 104.5 cm (framed) (Bottom Right) Title: The Lebanese Rocket Society: Restaged No 6 Date: 2012 Medium: C-Print on Dibond Size: 78.8 x 104.5 cm (framed) contact@newartworld.co.uk 4
Ahmed Alsoudani Born 1975 in Baghdad, Iraq. Lives and works in New York, USA. Since graduating from the Yale School of Art in 2008, Ahmed Alsoudani has become one of the most prestigious Iraqi contemporary artists earning admiration in global art circles for his abstract and turbulent paintings that deal with his concerns for current global conflict. Alsoudani s inspiration comes directly from his own experiences as a child, as well as his concerns over contemporary global conflicts. Furthermore, his works are an amalgamation of elements from New York, the city he lives and works in, and symbolic elements that relate back to Iraq. Ahmed Alsoudani s drawings ruminate on Iraq s troubled history but manage to display more universal themes of struggle, despair, and destruction through their creation of ethereal landscapes and bursts of bright colour. The bright canvases convey surreal scenes of sometimes incredible violence, yet are arrestingly beautiful. His gestural, painterly style is evocative of works by the likes of Picasso, Francis Bacon, and Willem de Kooning. Ahmed Alsoudani has exhibited his work at some of the most renowned institutions such as the the Palazzo Grassi (Venice, Italy, 2011), the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minnesota, USA, 2011), The Arab Museum of Modern Art (Doha, Qatar, 2011), and the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK, 2009). His work is included in various important public collections including the Burger Collection (Switzerland), the Pinault Foundation (Paris, France), the Saatchi Gallery (London, UK), Dar Noor Collection (Kuwait City, Kuwait), Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, USA), the Qatar Museum (Doha, Qatar), and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Richmond, USA). Title: Untitled Date: 2013 Medium: Charcoal and pastel on paper Size: 76.2 x 56.5 cm contact@newartworld.co.uk 5
Raed Yassin Born in 1979 in Beirut, Lebanon. Lives and Works in Beirut, Lebanon. Raed Yassin is an artist and a musician who utilizes various mediums to examine his personal narratives in society s broader collective memory, exploring themes of consumer culture and mass production. These works are from a series titled China II consisting of vases of Jingdezhen porcelain decorated with key battles from the Lebanese civil war. The vases hold resonance threefold - they are part-beautiful object, parthistorical document, and part-mass produced product. They reflect on the ancient tradition of commemorating victories on ceramics. Raed Yassin has skillfully merged the traditional, historical, and the artisanal, creating a conceptually complex and multi-layered work. Raed Yassin was a founding member of the Atfal Ahdath the Beirut-based art collective as well as an organiser of the IRTIJAL Festival. He has exhibited and performed in numerous museums, festivals, and venues, including the Sharjah Biennial (Sharjah, UAE), the Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan, 2013), the Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2013), the Beirut Art Centre (Beirut, Lebanon, 2012), The New Museum (New York, USA, 2012), the Museum of Photography (Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011) and the Centre Pompidou, (Paris, France, 2011). Raed Yassin was awarded the Abraaj Capital Art Prize (2012), the AFAC grant for production (2010), the Fidus Prize (2009), and the YATF grant for production (2008 and 2012). (Left) Title: China II Date: 2012-2013 Medium: Hand-painted porcelain vase Size: 50.5 x 28 cm (Right) Title: China II Date: 2012-2013 Medium: Hand-painted porcelain vase Size: 44 x 26 cm contact@newartworld.co.uk 6
Moataz Nasr Born 1961 in Alexandria, Egypt. Lives and works in Cairo, Egypt. Moataz Nasr is a prominent Egyptian artist who combines art and cultural activism in order to address pan-arab issues. Unpacking the complex cultural processes currently underway in the Islamic world, Moataz Nasr s work surpasses idiosyncrasies and geographical limits, voicing the worries and torments of the African continent on the whole. His practice has a particular focus on Egyptian society with its traditions, people, and colours, without an agenda that might be seen as navigating it through the lens of exoticism or cultural dislocation. Since 2008, Moataz Nasr has worked with matchsticks. Whether they are presented to us as a map, or lit and laid amongst ashes, or arranged in colourful abstract Islamic patterns, the possibility of fire and destruction is ever present - suggestive of the fragility of Egyptian society, literally going up in flames. This presents us with an oxymoron between this choice of medium and the question of material value: here we have a precious art object that projects its own erasure, as if the material itself resists to be imprisoned within its own form. Moataz Nasr was awarded the grand prize at the Sharjah Biennale (Sharjah, U.A.E., 2005) and the Grand Prix at the 8th International Cairo Biennale (Cairo, Egypt, 2001). Moataz Nastr has exhibited at numerous renowned venues including the MAAXI (Rome, Italy, 2013), Singapore Art Museum (Singapore, 2013), Faurschou Foundation (Copenhagen, Denmark, 2013), Al Madad Foundation (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 2013), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, Japan, 2012), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, USA, 2012), and many more. He has been awarded many public commissions from prestigious institutions such as the Musée d Art Contemporain Africain Al Maaden (Marrakech, Morrocco), Musée des civilisations de l Europe et de la Méditerranée (Marseille, France), Barjeel Art Foundation (Sharjah, U.A.E.), to name a few. Title: The Flowers Date: 2013 Medium: Matches on Wood, and Plexiglass Size: 150 x 150 x 10 cm contact@newartworld.co.uk 7
Mounir Fatmi Born in 1970 in Tangier, Morrocco. Lives and works in Paris, France. Mounir Fatmi is a highly acclaimed Moroccan contemporary mixed media artist. His works aim to provide an alternative view on the changing landscape of society whilst dismantling preconceptions of historical and religious concepts. Utilising unconventional materials, Mounir Fatmi s works challenge notions of traditional art form in an imaginative way. This work is a sculptural painting made of coaxial antenna cables (old fashioned cables) composed in circular forms. For Mounir Fatmi, the circle motif holds strong connotations of religious symbolism and spirituality that relate to his fascination with the Descartian theory of the circular spiralling into the spiritual. Thus, this work transcends the geometric and holds a greater spiritual value as well as referencing the complexity of human relationships, of the intricate and elaborate connections that exist. Mounir Fatmi has exhibited extensively at prestigious venues such as the Centre Culturel de Bruges (Bruges, Belgium, 2013), the Menil Collection (Houston, USA, 2013), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France, 2008). He has participated in several biennials including the 54th Venice Biennale (Venice, Italy, 2011), the 8th Sharjah Biennial (Dubai, UAE, 2007), and the 10th Lyon Biennial (Lyon, France, 2011). Mounir Fatmi has received multiple prestigious awards such as the Cairo Biennial Prize (Egypt, 2010), the Urlöt prize (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2006), and the Grand Prize Leopold Sadar Senghor of the 7th Dakar Biennial (Senegal, 2006). The artist s work is represented in numerous public and private collections including The Brooklyn Museum (New York, USA), the Rijksakademie Collection (Amsterdam, The Netherlands), the Farjam Collection (Dubai, UAE), the Fondation Louis Vuitton pour la création (Paris, France), Museum Kunstpalast (Düsseldorf, Germany), and many more. Title: Cercle 05 (Circles 05) Date: 2011 Medium: Coaxial antenna cable, staples on plywood, plexicase Size: 70 cm diameter contact@newartworld.co.uk 8