PRESS RELEASE:
Leila Heller Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the thirteenth edition of Art Dubai with a presentation in the Contemporary section of the fair.
PRIVATE DAYS (by invitation only)
Tuesday, March 19, 2019: Art Dubai Preview
Tuesday, March 19, 2019: Jumeirah Patrons Preview
Wednesday, March 20, 2019: VIP Opening
VERNISSAGE (by invitation only)
Wednesday, March 20, 2019: Ladies Day Preview, 1-4pm (open to all ladies)
Wednesday, March 20, 2019: VIP Opening
PUBLIC DAYS
Wednesday, March 20, 2019: Ladies Day Preview, 1-4pm
Thursday, March 21, 2019, 2-9:30pm
Friday, March 22, 2019, 12-9:30pm
Saturday, March 23, 2019, 12-6:30pm
Art Dubai Contemporary | Booth A10
For Art Dubai 2019, Leila Heller Gallery is presenting new works from artists including Reza Aramesh, Johan Creten, Ran Hwang, Ibrahim Salahi, Nancy Lorenz, Jason Seife, Soraya Sharghi, Sudarshan Shetty.
Ibrahim El-Salahi is a Sudanese artist who was born in 1930 in Omdurman, Sudan. A leader of the Sudanese Khartoum School and the first African artist to have a retrospective at the Tate Modern in London, Ibrahim El Salahi combines European styles with traditional Sudanese themes in his art. El Salahi studied art in London and takes formal and ideological cues from modernist painting, resulting in a balance of pure expression and gestural freedom in his work. The mask-like faces and earth tones of his early graphic works channel elements of Cubism and Surrealism and incorporate Muslim iconography. El Salahi’s art encompasses and explores a range of compositional forms, including fragments of Arabic calligraphy, but perpetually evokes a transnational, African-influenced surrealism.
Reza Aramesh’s interdisciplinary practice represents the abjection of human bodies sustained during armed conflict and torture. He blends classical aesthetics with anonymous figures from the contemporary moment, thereby bringing to the fore the victims who have been rendered invisible, yet at the same time questioning the traditional representation of suffering throughout the Western art historical canon. For Art Dubai, we will be showcasing a photographic triptych, depicting Palestinians waiting at the Rafah border point to cross into Egypt from the Gaza Strip. Images of oppression and violence have been ubiquitous in Reza Aramesh’s work. This large-scale photographic tryptich, a format commonly reserved for celebratory purposes continues the artist’s multi-faceted explorations of the human ability to inflict suffering.
Born in Sint-Truiden, Belgium, Johan Creten (1963) has been working on the move for 25 years, from Mexico to Rome, from Miami to Amsterdam. He currently lives in Paris, France. Creten started working with clay from the late 80s, when the medium was still a taboo in the art world. Earth was deemed dirty and damp, while the creator was also seen as an usurper of God, transgressing religious interdicts. Yet, at the same time clay represents “Earth Mother”, linking the sacred to the profane. Creten is one of the earliest exponents of using clay in the context of contemporary art and is considered a precursor alongside Thomas Schütte and Lucio Fontana. As a pioneer in the revival of modern ceramics, Creten continues to influence a generation of young artists today. He has exhibited, among many other places, at the Louvre Museum, at the Musée Nationale Eugène Delacroix in Paris, the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, the Istanbul Biennale, the Mamco in Geneva and the Middelheimmuseum in Antwerp.
Ran Hwang was born in the Republic of Korea in 1960, and currently lives and works between Seoul and New York City. In 1997, the artist moved to New York City to study at the School of Visual Arts. Hwang has exhibited at several international institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; the Queens Museum of Art, New York; IMAS (International Museum of Art and Science), McAllen,Texas; The Hudson Valley Center for the Arts, New York; UNESCO Paris; the Third Floor-Hermès, Singapore; House of Dior, Seoul; and the Asian Civilizations Museum (ACM), Singapore. Hwang’s work is also a part of numerous private and public collections including the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Des Moines Center for the Arts, Iowa; the Third Floor-Hermès, Singapore; the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; King County Library, Issaquah, Washington; and the Hammond Museum, North Salem, N.Y. Her collaborative work ‘Lady Dior As Seen By’ was commissioned and collected by the renowned fashion house Christian Dior. Hwang received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2015 and the AHL-Jason J. Kim Grant in 2017. She has an upcoming show at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 2019.
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. Lorenz’s extensive career history includes various solo exhibitions with PDX Contemporary Art, in Portland, Oregon (2003-2012). Many of her works have been either commissioned or purchased by public institutions such as: The New York Public Library; the Portland Museum of Art; the United States Consulate in Istanbul; the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Los Angeles; Gucci Tower, Ginza, Japan and Hong Kong; Mandarin Oriental/Time Warner, New York; Soho Grand Hotel, New York; Tiffany & Co. stores in New York, Hong King, Ginza, Munich, Nice, Montreal, Macao; and, Chanel stores in Paris, Hong King, Ginza, Taipei, Rome, Boston, Dubai, Geneva, and Bangkok, to name a brief selection.
B. 1989 Jason Seife's work references old Persian carpets, an art form that in modern times is taken for granted. Carpets were a large part of his childhood growing up with immigrant parents of Middle Eastern descent. Jason recreates these old weavings by tediously painting them on canvas and other substrate in colors and mediums that were not normally used in their origin, presenting the pieces in a new and exciting way. The creation of these works is both a therapeutic and a spiritual process, being able to channel his obsession with detail into the intricate geometry and compositions of the carpets allows Jason to find himself working hours on end without lifting his brush. What initially drew him to these works was not only the aesthetic but the dense history and meaning behind the imagery. The way the weavers were able to link each rug's particular pattern, palette, and style with a specific and identifiable geographic area or nomadic tribe really stood out to him. Jason aims to mirror this practice with his take on the carpets by having each color and pattern specifically correlate to what state of mind and emotion he was in while creating the specific work. allowing him to be able to look back and see a chronological timeline of both his mental and emotional state embedded in to the paintings. Essentially creating a language through shape and color that is hidden in plain view.
Soraya Sharghi is an Iranian artist living and working in New York City. Sharghi creates works in diverse media, such as painting and sculpture. Her artistic aim is to create new myth and narratives using the ancient mythology including persian mythology, revolving around power. She does not see her process as emulating the scenery of these tales, but instead molds them to serve her purpose and creates extraordinary or supernatural beings. Sharghi collaborates across the history and myth and connecting them with her today personal imaginary world, creating new stories with her new characters while personally reaching for a universal language that creates dialogues spanning different social and political contests. Sharghi holds a BFA in painting from Soore Art University in Tehran, and an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, California. After she graduated she started teaching in SFAI public education. She taught studio classes with the subject of personal mythology in Painting and sculpture.
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 of his practice. A conceptual artist, he is renowned for his enigmatic and often mechanized sculptural installations, Shetty explores the fundamental ontological challenges presented by our immersion in a world of objects. His hybrid constructions question the fusion of Indian and Western traditions as well as exploring domestic concerns and the notion of movement. Large sculptural installations and multimedia works define Sudarshan Shetty’s oeuvre, often employing assemblages of quotidian objects that suggest new possibilities of meaning and perception, through diverse approaches that have included sculptural and architectural elements.