Abu Dhabi Art 2018

Abu Dhabi Art

November 14th - 17th, 2018

Booth M7 and M7B

Manarat Al Saadiyat, Saadiyat Cultural District

OPENING TIMES

Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the tenth edition of Abu Dhabi Art, November 14 – 17, 2018, at the Saadiyat Cultural District, booth M7 and M7B. Highlighting formal experimentations in contemporary art, the booth features a trans-regional group of artists who push the boundaries of aesthetics and material possibilities.

For Abu Dhabi Art 2018, Leila Heller Gallery is presenting a diverse selection of works by various artists including Nancy Lorenz, Ghada Amer, Kenny Scharf, Philip Taaffe, Richard Hudson, Sudarshan Shetty and Farideh Lashai.

Living and based in New York City, Nancy Lorenz considers herself an abstract painter working to incorporate techniques born from traditional Asian craft. She uses materials such as mother of pearl inlay, lacquer, and gold leaf in painterly gestures to create fine and decorative works of art. Lorenz earned a BFA Summa Cum Laude in Painting and Printmaking at the University of Michigan. She also received an MFA in Painting from the Tyler School of Art alongside received a John Simon Guggenheim Award in 1998.

Ghada Amer is a New York-based artist who was born in Cairo, Egypt in 1963. She studied painting at the Villa Arson EPIAR in Nice, where she received her MFA in 1989, and the Institut des Hautes Études en Art Plastique in Paris. A multimedia artist, Amer is known for her abstract canvases that combine painting with needlework. Her work frequently addresses issues of femininity, sexuality, postcolonial identities, and Islamic culture. Much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality.

Kenny Scharf was born in Hollywood, California in 1958, he lives and works in Los Angeles, California and New York, New York. Kenny Scharf rose to prominence alongside his friends and contemporaries Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring in the East Village art scene of the 1980s. One of the first artists to inject elements of street culture into the mainstream of contemporary art, Scharf has continued to pioneer projects like his Cosmic Cavern—a now legendary all-night DayGlo disco party held in the basement of a Brooklyn warehouse from 2009-2010. His paintings incorporate imagery from advertisements, cartoons, and classic Americana into exuberant compositions with an underlying subversive edge.

Philip Taaffe was born in 1955 in Elizabeth, New Jersey (USA), and lives and works in New York City and West Cornwall, Connecticut. Taaffe derives inspiration from a variety of sources, including Islamic architecture, Pompeiian mosaics, 1960s Op Art, and nineteenth century monographs on natural history. His first solo exhibition was in New York in 1982. He has traveled widely in the Middle East, India, South America, and Morocco. Taaffe lived and worked in Naples from 1988-91. He has been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Carnegie International, two Sydney Biennials, and three Whitney Biennials.

Sculptor Richard Hudson was born in 1954 in England. He creates partially abstracted reinventions of familiar sculptural tropes. His hands-on relationship with his diverse materials – most often marble, wood, steel or bronze – produces organic, polished work that is at once timeless and contemporary. Exploring the canon of Western sculpture and changing approaches to beauty, Hudson’s smooth and sensual sculptures concern not only the fields of art and art history but also psychology, anthropology, and philosophy. Hudson’s sculptures, which range in size from miniature to monumental, employ exaggeration and even humor to veil underlying essences of form and beauty. Hudson lives and works in the UK and Madrid.

Born in 1961 in Mangalore, India, Sudarshan Shetty lives and works in Mumbai. Shetty initially trained as a painter, later turning to sculpture and installations which now account for all output. A conceptual artist, he is renowned for his enigmatic and often mechanised sculptural installations. His hybrid constructions question the fusion of Indian and Western traditions as well as exploring domestic concerns and the notion of movement. He has exhibited widely in India and more recently he has become increasingly visible on the international stage as an important voice in contemporary art. His work has been exhibited at the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka and the Tate Modern, London.

Throughout a distinguished career spanning over five decades, Farideh Lashai  (1944 - 2013) has always juggled with varying means of expression, without recognizing any frontiers that might confine her to a rigidly defined artistic identity. A graduate of Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna she worked as a crystal designer at Riedel Studios in Southern Austria, and then Studio Rosenthal in Selb, Germany. Crystal design became her basis for practicing sculpting later in her career alongside her main discipline of painting. Prior to her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts, she studied German literature in Frankfurt, Germany. Lyricism is the reigning characteristic in her works, whether it is painting, sculpture, writing, installation or a combination of animation, video and painting. She has had more than 25 solo exhibitions in Iran, Europe and the USA.

About the Gallery:

Since its establishment over three decades ago in New York, Leila Heller Gallery has gained worldwide recognition as a pioneer in promoting creative dialogue and exchange between Western artists and Middle Eastern, Central and Southeast Asian artists. It has garnered a reputation for identifying and cultivating the careers of artists leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and culture. Currently representing a diverse roster of Western and Middle Eastern artists, the gallery is also active in the American, European and Middle Eastern secondary art markets. In November 2015, Leila Heller Gallery opened its first international location in Dubai’s Alserkal Avenue. At 14,000 square feet, the state of the art gallery features three exhibition spaces, making it the largest gallery in the UAE. Showcasing leading regional and international artists, many of whom will be presenting their work in the Middle East for the first time, the gallery is dedicated to supporting the evolving the practice of established artists.

Press Inquiries:

For more information and images, please contact Clemence Cazeau:

clemence@leilahellergallery