A Fair To Remember - May/June 2009
By Jonathan Thomson
Given the general talk of economic gloom around the world, the recent Art Dubai was nevertheless well-attended and buzzing with activity. One of the advantages of the Fair is that it is relatively small. This gives people time to see the work on show and to consider it carefully, as well as interact more with dealers.
In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, the editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour, was asked what we might see in the new season if fashion is a barometer of the prevailing mood. Her answer was telling. She said, “to be honest there’s been too much product, too much copy-catting, and probably too much consumerism. I think a sense of clarity, a sense of leveling off and a sense of reality is needed…. I don’t think anyone is going to want to look overly flashy, overly glitzy, too Dubai, whatever you want to call it.”1
“Too Dubai” has now entered the lexicon as something excessive, over the top, and beyond whatever is desirable, fitting, or right. The explosive growth of the city, its ceaseless search for the superlative, and its grandiose plans for the future have now come to be seen as going beyond the bounds of what is proper. In the middle of the severest financial crisis since the Great Depression, Dubai has come to represent the built environment’s equivalent of the excesses that brought the world economy to the brink of collapse.
In light of various signals that indicated that the oil rich Emirates were in economic trouble, the current edition of the region’s major art fair Art Dubai was the subject of considerable attention in both political, economic, and art circles. As a sign that the government was standing by its strategy of making Dubai an events capital of the region, the Emir himself, HRH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates and Ruler of Dubai, and his entourage personally visited the exhibition on the opening day and the next day the Fair was closed to the public when his senior wife HH Sheikha Hind bint Maktoum bin Juma Al Maktoum made a private visit.
This was a visit that was welcomed by the dealers. “This royal visit is actually better [than the public],” said Leila Taghinia-Milani Heller, owner of the eponymous gallery in New York. “It is nice for them to have some privacy.” Michael Schultz was also very happy by the interest she paid to the work of Ma Jun.
The work of young Chinese artist Ma Jun at Galerie Michael Schultz was impossible to miss. Located at the entrance to one of the two exhibition halls, his work included a full-size Buick concept car that was made in porcelain and decorated in brilliantly colored high-gloss glazes. While Chinese ceramics have been coveted by people around the world for a thousand years for their functionality and exquisite beauty, Ma’s work is entirely non-functional despite its similarity to the full-size modeling processes used by motor vehicle designers. His works adopt the aesthetic qualities of traditional media to examine what it is we find of value in contemporary culture.
For Michael Schultz it was a good fair. “It is my second time here. I am very happy that I have come back. We have good contacts here, to collectors and to curators, and we do a little bit of business. This year is better than last year, really better. The interest of the people is much more than last year. Instead of just looking they are asking questions and talking about the work.”
An installation by Valay Shende at Sakshi Gallery from India may be seen as a metaphor for Art Dubai, which began in 2007 just as the art market boom was gathering steam. For many, the Gulf region was an important new market. With the price of oil rising to unprecedented levels, with massive reserves accumulated in sovereign wealth funds, and the unveiling of plans for blockbuster museums designed by I.M. Pei, Jean Nouvel, Frank Gehry, Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, and others, the Gulf was seen as a potential cash cow.
Shende’s installation consists of not just one cow but six, which occupied the whole of the gallery space. His water buffalo cows allude to the fact that the animal is valued throughout Asia for its versatility and endurance. But, as his bright shiny golden animals are made of brass, we are reminded that all that glitters is not gold.
Many of the galleries appeared to have taken Dubai’s reputation for conspicuous consumption to heart. Some work appeared to have been selected on the basis of its eye-catching quality alone although others were both eye-catching and very substantial works of art. The Lisson Gallery, London, presented Anish Kapoor’s Untitled (2009), which is a highly reflective stainless-steel dish made up of hundreds of precisely engineered octagons and squares. This work continues Kapoor’s fascination with the polarities of presence and absence, solid and intangible, real and imagined.
Following the opening of the Fair, this work was featured on the front page of Dubai’s main English language daily. Director Nicholas Logsdail was very impressed by the whole organization of the Fair. “I think they have done a brilliant job. They are to be congratulated. They are doing everything to make it a thoroughly enjoyable experience for everybody.
This year there are more international collectors who have come and they are overwhelmed by how well it has been done, especially the hospitality. The other thing I like about it is the scale of it because it is a much more human scale [than other fairs]. You can hold the Fair in your head, you don’t wander around getting lost and wondering if you have seen something twice.”
Lisson’s approach to Art Dubai was very simple. “We brought two works each by five artists. They are five of our most important artists but they are also artists whose work is compatible with the region we are in. It seems to me looking around, that not a lot of galleries are thinking about that very much and they are doing the same thing that they would be doing in London or New York or Miami and I’m not sure they [this market] are ready for that.
In terms of sales, we think that we have been successful but in these times people take their time. We have had some silly offers that we wouldn’t insult the artist by passing on, but we have also had some serious offers. We had the same experience at the Armory Show in New York. Up until the last day everyone was a bit gloomy but then on the last day it was very busy and within two weeks we had $2 million in sales.
There were negotiations over the phone and by e-mail and then it all came together. From a sales point of view, if you are an international collector, it is a good time to get the choicest work. Even a year ago we would not have been able to put together such a strong collection of work. We wouldn’t have been able to get the work—they would have already been sold. It is a great time for collectors who have got cash.”
Despite Logsdail’s comments to the contrary, a great many of the galleries did present work that was compatible with the region. Gallery Sfeir-Semler of Hamburg and Beirut presented a stunning work by Timo Nasseri called Epistrophy II. This work is a glittering void in stainless steel that gives the viewer the impression of looking into a massive 1.7 x 1.7 meter brilliant cut diamond.
Nasseri was born in 1972 in Berlin of German-Iranian parents. The study by Arabic scholars of geometry and astronomy helped develop the art of infinite decorative patterns harmonized by rigorous mathematical analysis. Islamic scholars recognize geometry as an intermediary between the spiritual and the material world. The star pattern is also symbolic of the logic and order inherent in the Islamic vision of the universe and the spread of Islam throughout the world.
At Edwynn Houk Gallery Moroccan-born photographer Lalla Essaydi showed work inspired by Orientalist painting. By appropriating these images of women she reflects upon the complex female identities found throughout the Muslim world. Her photographs provide the opportunity for the artist and her subjects to engage with notions of Islamic feminism.
Her women are dressed traditionally but their clothes and veils are made of gauze, which has been hand-painted with Islamic script in henna. Her figures are then posed against a backdrop of the same material so that they seem to merge into one another. While these works have some connection with Shirin Neshat’s Women of Allah series, Essaydi’s calligraphy and the power of the word empowers her subjects and liberates them from traditional restrictions.
Iranian artist Shirin Neshat has long focused on women’s social, political, and psychological experiences in contemporary Islamic societies. She was represented by a number of galleries. For Volker Diehl, director of Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin, participation in Dubai was in part a geographic decision. “I came here last year. I had some Indian collectors who had bought from me. So I came last year and was very successful and this year I thought the Western world is all complaining so I decided to skip the Armory Show in New York and came here. The atmosphere so far, the first two days, is very positive, very good.” He showed a series of photographs by Neshat, Youssef Nabil, and Shadi Ghadirian together with a gilt-framed mirror by Farah Monfaradi etched with the words “What do you see princess?”
A number of galleries showed work from Tehran-based artist Shadi Ghadirian’s Like Everyday series. In these works she challenges the preconceptions of women’s roles within society and takes issue with the traditional roles by which women are defined—both in the Middle East and the West. In her staged photographs, everyday kitchen and domestics utensils are substituted for the faces of women fully shrouded by the burqa. Her work cleverly reinvents the notion of the stereotype as each “portrait” seems to take on the character of the object whether it is the hardness of an iron, the sharpness of a cleaver, or the abrasiveness of a grater.
Anumber of artists physically deconstructed cultural artifacts in order to better describe their origins and meanings. Kamel Mennour Gallery showed a group of works by Moroccan artist Latifa Echakhch. Fantasia is a network of bare flagpoles that are fixed to the wall and intrude into the gallery space. Without any flags the poles may symbolize the potential presence of all nations and states and the way in which they crowd and intrude upon each other can be seen as a metaphor for their political interactions and infringements upon one another.
Frames is a group of hand-woven carpets that have been physically stripped of all of their cultural content. The body of the carpet that contains all of the design elements that identify the work as coming from a particular country or region has been cut away, leaving just a narrow border on all four sides. Simple but tremendously effective, these works allude to the power of borders to contain and define cultures.
Pouran Jinchi is an Iranian-born, New York-based artist. The Third Line gallery showed a work that combines her interests in Islamic literature and calligraphy. Her Tajvid #7 (Sourat Al Maaida) is an extract from the Koran written in green ink, but where all of the text has been removed, leaving punctuation and diacritical marks only. In this way she alludes to the sound of the text but none of its substance.
The centerpiece of Dubai’s Artspace Gallery was a deceptively simple work, Magnetism, by Saudi Arabian artist Ahmed Mater Al Ziad Aseeri. Magnetism comprised a scattering of iron filings inside a Perspex box. The iron filings were arrayed in a spiral around a small, black rectangular magnet that was standing on its end and looking like a miniature version of the Kaaba. The patterns formed allude to the circumambulation of pilgrims around the Kaaba during the Hajj.
But all is not quite as it seems. If it were just a simple magnet, the iron filings would not be holding their positions at some distance to the magnet but would be drawn to it. The secret is another magnet or magnets underneath the work, which holds the iron filings under tension in a form of static equilibrium. The power of the metaphor is thus enhanced as we consider the relations between Islam and the rest of the world and within Islamic world itself.
Some artists used unconventional media to make landscape images. At Edwynn Houk Gallery a photograph by Brazilian artist Vic Munitz, entitled New York at Night, appeared, at first glance, to be an urban nocturne, with the lights of high-rise buildings picked out against an inky sky. Closer inspection revealed the patterns of light to be made by the careful placement of thousands of diamonds on a black background. A more local landscape was made by Oliver Millagou and Bischoff/Weiss Gallery using thousands of drawing pins to mark out a series of palm trees on the wall of the booth.
The work of Australian artist Phillip George was also striking. Dubai is on the edge of a vast desert and the dead calm waters of the Persian Gulf. It is an unlikely place to find a group of surfboards, even though they are decorated with motifs drawn from mosques throughout the Middle East.
Australia has had a sustained love affair with the beach and the culture of surfing is an important part of that relationship. Australia also has a significant Muslim community and a history of engagement with it that has at times been very ugly. In Australia the adoption of very beautiful Islamic motifs for surfboards suggests a space for dialogue between two cultures. However, it is difficult to see how they might function in the same way in Dubai when one half of the cultural context is absent.
Thai artist Araya Rasdjarmreansook is also interested in cross-cultural dialogue. Her video work from the Two Planets series is a brilliant depiction of difference and understanding across time, place, and culture. Her protagonists are both agricultural laborers. She sets up her dialogue by placing a gilt-framed, full-size colored reproduction of Jean Francois Millet’s The Gleaners on an easel in front of a group of Thai farmers who are resting on a riverbank somewhere in the north of Thailand and recording their comments.
Their observations about this image are wonderfully engaging. They may often be wrong but their dialogue is a very effective piece of Socratic questioning. They make insightful comments on the time of day, the age of the gleaners, their physique, and diet. One observer thinks they may be “searching for insects, just like us.” Another thinks the haystacks are yellow trees. They are not sure about the identity of gray animals pulling the wagon (and on subsequent examination of the reproduction myself, I confess a similar difficulty) and assume they must be elephants. They know they are not Asian elephants and so they conclude they must be from Africa. For them the landscape of Barbizon is like a desert. One wonders what they would make of Dubai?
Note:
1. Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2009. Online at http://online.wsj.com.
Reprinted with kind permission of Asian Art News. Copyright (c) Asian Art Press (International) Limited 2009.
