MARRAKECH ART FAIR 2011

Back To Current Exhibitions

ARTSPACE SHOWING AT MARRAKECH ART FAIR 2011

Dubai’s leading contemporary art gallery, ARTSPACE, to showcase exhibition of contemporary Middle-Eastern artists Adel El Siwi, Hussein Madi, and Adam Henein at Marrakech Art Fair 2011.

As the first modern and contemporary art fair in Morocco, ARTSPACE is proud to be a participating gallery this year at the second edition of the Marrakech Art Fair, from the 30th of September until the 3rd of October 2011 at the Palace Es Saadi, Marrakech. Following on from the success of its first edition in October 2010, Marrakech Art Fair will be bringing together some fifty international galleries, establishing itself as a key event in the North African region from which modern and contemporary art can be appreciated and enjoyed.

Showcasing renowned Middle Eastern artists Adel El Siwi, Hussein Madi, and Adam Henein, ARTSPACE is excited to be presenting the works of some of the leading and foremost artists in the Arab world. Individually their unique artistic visions each have been lauded as pioneering in their own right, having exhibited around the world in numerous galleries and esteemed institutions, and bought by important collectors and art enthusiasts.

Egyptian painter Adel El-Siwi was born in Beheira, Egypt in 1952. Between 1970-1976, he studied medicine at Cairo University before seriously considering a career as a painter. Like other Egyptian artists of the late 1970s, El Siwi, who had emigrated to Europe and North America, was compelled to return to the motherland, drawn by the power of Egypt's legacy of art aesthetic achievement. In 1980 he moved to Milan only to return to Cairo in 1990 where he currently lives and works.

After twelve years of self-training and traveling Europe and Egypt he had his first major show in 1985 at the Cairo Atelier. Since the 1980s he has had solo exhibitions in Egypt, Germany, Lebanon and Italy. He has participated in group exhibitions as far across the globe as Brazil and Mexico. A 1988's exhibition at the Mashrabia Gallery in Cairo marked El Siwi's transition from the human figure to the interiors cape. This new phase attempted to give the traditional still life object pride and powerful presence. His latest works have been more narrative and ironic. Pure colors pierce the tonal elements, but are restrained by the somber Egyptian landscape marked by the monochromes of the desert and the grayness of Cairo. El-Siwi chooses to use the trite, simple themes of flower pots, palm trees, camels, etc. For considerable time, El Siwi strongly believed that the more limited the means the stronger the potential of the expression. Hence, he refused to use any other medium of painting than painting on paper or canvas. However, in his most recent work in the 1997's Venice Biennale's exhibition Modernity’s & Memories: Recent Works from the Islamic World, a room installation entitled The Face and Beyond, El Siwi explores the new genre of conceptual art through painting.

Hussein Madi, painter, sculptor and printmaker, is considered amongst the Arab world’s primary artists. Born in 1938 in Chebaa, Lebanon, he lived between Rome and Beirut from 1973-1986. In 1986 he decided to stay permanently in Beirut. His art has been viewed by thousands of people around the world at such venues as the British Museum, the Venice Biennale and Tokyo’s Ueno Museum.

Madi’s joyful experiments in colour and form have resulted in a unique body of work that relates to modern artists like Matisse and Picasso as well as to the principles of divine harmony that inform the abstract designs of Islamic art. Whether in two or three dimensions, Madi’s lines sing with a spontaneous freedom that belies the careful, even exacting, calculations that the artist invests in each work. The combination of meticulousness and sensuality is everywhere evident in Madi’s work, inspired by his profound belief in “God’s universal order, in which everything is different and yet composed of the same cosmic elements.”

Sculptor Adam Henein was born on March 31, 1929. Greatly influenced by the Pharoanic wonders of his homeland as a child, he completed his training as a sculptor at the Cairo Faculty of Fine Arts in 1953. Since that time, he has steadfastly devoted his life to the art of sculpture, from which nothing has distracted him, except the practice of colour drawing, in keeping with traditional Egyptian techniques. Today he is considered to be one of the major sculptors of our time. His work has been shown in Egypt, in the Arab world, in Europe, and at the Metropolitan in New York.

Ten years ago, after having lived for almost a quarter of a century in Paris, Henein returned to live in the country of his birth. Over this past decade, he has produced a number of granite sculptures. It was in Aswan, a city that since Antiquity has been famous for its granite quarries, that Henein established the International Sculpture Symposium, of which he has been director since 1996. He was awarded the State Award for the Arts in 1998 and the Moubarak Prized in 2004.

Note to Editors:

ARTSPACE Gallery

Launched in May 2003 at the Fairmont Dubai, ARTSPACE Gallery invited Dubai and the region to acquaint themselves with Contemporary Middle Eastern Art. Having dedicated it’s time to promoting and establishing Contemporary Middle Eastern artists in the region, ARTSPACE Gallery now boasts a portfolio of over 20 artists, and is now located in the art district of The Gate Village, DIFC.

The gallery’s diverse clientele includes private collectors, art consultants, corporate art consultants, architects, interior designers as well as business-people, government, diplomatic and social VIPs. ARTSPACE Gallery offers the client an extraordinary opportunity to acquire and taste some of the most contemporary art. For more information and location:
Visit www.artspace-dubai.com
Or Call +9714 3230820